have induced a less
unfavorable view by Lord Kimberley of my judicial action as to
these matters, and with the more important object of presenting
what appears to me to be the great gravity of the evils I have
denounced, as they affect the moral status of the Colony, in order
that some remedy may be applied to them.... I am informed that His
Excellency the Governor has been unable to obtain the opinion of
the Attorney-General on the points raised." ...
It is impossible not to feel that this neglect on the part of someone
at Hong Kong to forward the Chief Justice's letters until the first of
these was a year old (for they were actually sent in August, 1881),
was a designed obstruction of his endeavors to set himself in the
correct light, and to enlighten the Christian public of Great Britain
as to the abuses existing at Hong Kong.
In this letter expressing regret at the delay of his letters, he
speaks of convictions of eight more cases of kidnaping, and "almost
unprecedented brutal assaults on bought children." "Considering the
special waste of life in brothel life, and the general want of new
importations to keep up the bondage class of 20,000 in this Colony,
the cases of kidnaping detected cannot be one-half of one per cent of
the children and women kidnaped."
"Two cases of brutal treatment of young girls by purchasers, their
pocket-mothers, one little girl having had her leg broken by
beating her, and the other having been shockingly and indecently
burnt,--both probably weakened for life,--illustrate the cruel
passions which ownership in human beings engenders here, as it
ever has done elsewhere. In a case now before the magistrate, the
evidence tends to show that a girl thirteen years old was
bought by a brothel-keeper for $200, and forced, by beating and
ill-treatment, into that course of life in a brothel licensed by
law. Subject to such surveillance as these houses are by law, it
seems to me s