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THE HONGKONG
Government Gazette.
報門 轅 港 香
Published by Authority.
No. 6.
號六第
VICTORIA, SATURDAY, 11TH FEBRUARY, 1882. 日三十月二十年巳辛
VOL. XXVIII.
日一十月二年二十八百八千一 簿八十二第
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
HONGKONG, 7TH FEBRUARY, 1882.
THE GOVERNOR'S ADDRESS.
His Excellency Sir JOHN POPE HENNESSY, K.C.M.G., opened the Session with the following address:-
HONOURABLE GENTLEMEN OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL,
In opening the Legislative Session of 1882, I have to inform you that HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN has been graciously pleased to confirm and allow thirteen of the fourteen Ordinances which were passed
in 1881.
MACAO EXTRADITION ORDINANCE.
Of these Ordinances, No. 1 of 1881, the Macao Extradition Ordinance, is one which deals with a question that engaged the attention of my predecessors for forty years; it has now been settled by the negotiations of Lord KIMBERLEY and Lord GRANVILLE with the Government of Lisbon. And though undoubtedly the credit of that settlement belongs entirely to the Home Governments, nevertheless the advantage of it will be felt by the Governinents of Macao and Hongkong, for the Executives of both Colonies will now be enabled to deal with fugitive criminals in a way that they could not before.
PENAL LAWS REFORM,
Ordinance No. 3 of 1881, the Penal Laws Amendment Ordinance, now confirmed by the Queen, is not the least important reform in colonial penal laws that has been effected in our time. It repeals or amends ten Ordinances, some of them of exceptional severity, and all practically directed against one race only. The Ordinance gives permanent legislative authority to a policy which the Royal prerogative enabled me to enforce for some years past, in spite of some little local criticism; and henceforth it will be illegal in this Colony to brand any criminal, to have public flogging, to allow flogging in Honkgong, except for such offences as entail flogging in England, or to allow flogging on the back. The impolitic system now abolished by the Queen and the legislature of this Colony, though devised for the suppression of crime, had actually manufactured a criminal population and increased crime. This abolition has been followed by the diminution of crime, and a universal feeling through- out the Colony, to which you can all bear witness, that life and property have become more secure in Hongkong.
DECREASE OF Crime.
I have no wish, gentlemen, to weary you with statistics, but I may perhaps quote the authentic figures which have recently been put before me with reference to the class of crimes which some years ago caused so much alarm throughout the Colony. I take the four years during which, as I have just mentioned, under the exercise of the Royal prerogative, I practically suspended those penal laws which Her Majesty has now abolished. In 1878 cases of murder numbered seven, and this number was reduced to four in 1879; in 1880 there was one case, and in 1881 two cases. Of cases of robbery