Committee would go a little further, having suggested already (see paras. 41 to 42 above) that relationships existing before the Appointed Date ought to be Post-Registrable as such.
52. The Sub-Committee believes that the problem of concu- binage is a somewhat theoretical one in the sense that the institution seems to be gradually disappearing in Hong Kong, where the tendency appears to be for men of adequate means to support mistresses in separate establishments in preference to taking con- cubines into their families. However, it is believed that after the abolition of the legal status of concubine had been enacted in Singapore, it still happened that concubines were in fact taken, in ignorance or disregard of the legislation. Accordingly, the Sub- Committee discussed the question whether the simple abolition of concubinage without further provision would most effectively serve the ends of justice, or whether some kind of provision ought to be made for women who enter into permanent unions with men already married, if it should appear likely that there would continue to be a moral sanction for such unions in the Chinese community. The Sub-Committee was on the whole opposed to the extension of any recognition at all, but it might be thought that this is very much a subject for the public and, not being a question merely of legal technicalities, it is certainly not a question on which the Association is in any special or unique way qualified to speak. However, the Sub-Committee considers that it might be useful to make two points. First, that such representations as have been made by women's organizations to the Government have invariably as was the case in Singapore concerned themselves exclusively with the interests of primary wives, and have been almost wholly unsympathetic to the needs of the often unfortunate and usually less well-informed or well-educated women who enter into secondary or unofficial matrimonial unions. A second point is that there is no absolute or unbridgable abyss between the full recognition of concubinage as a status and the total abolition of all concubines' rights. For the purposes of maintenance after the death of the husband, for example, various legal systems at various times have recognized the claims of regular concubines dependent on the deceased for their livelihood, without in any sense recognizing
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