468
THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 9TH JUNE, 1880.
able to tell a specially planisible story, get a dole. There is further a Charitable Allowance Fund
annually included in the Estimates and under
the control of the Governor. But as neither Magistrates nor His Excellency the Governor
have or can have any means at hand to discrimi-
indiccriminate between the deserving and the undeserving
diten
indigent, there is grave reason to believe that
even these very limited funds do more harm than
good, as far as Chinese destitutes are concerned,
and for this reason no doubt the Governor's Cha-
ritable Allowance Fund is mostly used for the charitable institutions of the Missionaries.
though many of the Chinese destitutes in the Colony were born here and are consequently
British subjects, they have, happily for the peace of the Government, no notion of the existence
of the Poor Box at the Magistracy or of the
Governor's Charitable Allowance Fund, nor have
they any idea that, as Lord ELLENBOROUGH (see
4 East's Reports, 108) has established, the law
of humanity, to which English Common Law
must be assumed to conform, puts the Govern-
ment under obligation to afford relief even to
aliens and therefore à fortiori to British subjects
to save them from starvation.
2.--The way in which the Government
hitherto dealt with destitution.
Barbaric, as some of the provisions of the Elizabethan Acts (39th and 43rd) were, and deterrent as the leading principle of the English
Poor Law Act of 1834 is, the law of England,
from Queen ELIZABETH to the present day, rested on the two humane and rational principles, viz.: relief to the disabled without work and relief to the able-bodied in return for work. To these old pillars on which the Poor Law of England rested for the last three centuries, the Act of 1834 added the establishment of a powerful Poor Law Execu-
tive, for purposes of inquiry and control, prohibi- tion and direct' on. Whether outdoor relief is combined with the old work-house system as in
England, or excluded in favour of the work-house test as in Ireland, the one leading idea of the English and Irish Poor Law is that no one in the country can by law remain destitute of the actual necessaries of life.
The local laws of this Colony, I regret to say, approach in barbarity the severest provisions of the Elisabethan Acts whilst making no provision whatever for relief even to the disabled, orphans or lunatics. Ordinance No. 14 of 1845,
Section
III, 17 says, “every person who shall beg, or expose any sore or infirmity to view, for the purpose of exciting compassion and obtaining alms, . shall be liable to a penalty not exceed- ing five Pounds."provided this offence is con- nitted in any thoroughfare, or public place or adjacent thereto, within the Colony of Hongkong. Ordinance No. 14 of 1856, recognizes, in a certain legal sense at least, the “ rights of panpers" by making provision in Section X, that nothing contained in this Ordinance (regarding fees and costs in Equity suits) shall prejudice paupers in
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