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repeat perhaps that its father is dead, and that the person offering it for sale is the mother. Grief at parting with the child is easily assumed to keep up appearances. A bill of sale is made out, the money is paid, and the kidnapper goes away with the proceeds. The old women who are invariably called in to help in the transac- tion get a dollar or two, and the purchaser, who may have bought the child according to Chinese custom in all good faith, finds himself in the hands of the Chinese Mandarins or, if in Hongkong, at the Police Court. There is this difference, however, in the action taken before the different authorities. In China the child's parents cannot get back the child until the purchaser has been refunded what he has paid (I assume that the formal documents have passed); whereas in the English Court the purchaser is very lucky if he can prove that he believed he got the child from its legal custodians. A case occurred in the beginning of this year, Wong a Hoi's case, in reference to a kidnapped or decoyed girl who was taken to Canton from here and sold for $65. A man who recommended the seller was also security as go-between. This Government applied to the British Consul to get the girl back. I gave a letter addressed to the Consul to a witness and the mother of the girl. An official from the Nam Hoi Magistrate's Yamen went to the people who had the girl. The guarantor had to pay up the money and the girl was sent down here through the Consul. The Chinese authorities, I was informed, through the Po Leung Kuk, made the guarantor pay up before taking away the child. The fact therefore that the Chinese systems of adoption and service thus recognise money payments would seem to render Hongkong a desirable market, seeing moreover that the punishment here for kidnapping compared with that of China is of the mildest nature; and hence that crime would appear, at least to some extent, to be fostered and encouraged by such systems being permitted here. There are checks and considerations, however, which counteract the evil, as will presently appear.
IV.
Suggestions for the better prevention of abuses arising from the Chinese systems of Child Adoption and Domestic Service; checks already existing.
The abuses arising from the Chinese system of child adoption and purchased service are therefore:
1o. Fraud in causing females to be reared and pawned or sold as pros- titutes when the parents parted voluntarily with their children for adoption or service.
2o Kidnapping of male and female children because they can be sold for
considerable sums of money.
I have tried to find out what is the number of children, male and female, in the Colony who are adopted sons and daughters and also the number of pur- chased servants, but although I have applied to many well-informed Chinese to give an approximate number I cannot get them even to form a conjecture, and the Registrar General has been unable to get any approximation either. In the absence of a census it would be impossible to form a notion of their number and the Chi- nese say that even a census would not be reliable, for the respectable Chinese do not like to speak of their adopted children. They prefer that the adopted children should think that they are natural-born, and obviously the disreputable people would strive to keep from the knowledge of the authorities the nature of the rela- tion existing between themselves and female children who are being reared for an improper life. Therefore any estimates of the number which have been put for ward by the various writers on this subject must be regarded as purely conjectural.
Although I have pointed out that Hongkong might be reckoned a suitable place for the operations of the kidnapping fraternity, nevertheless the checks now in force have made it an undesirable resort for them. The Government has been fully alive to the abuses connected with the system. The Imperial Act 24 and 25 Vict. C. 100 is in force here. In 1873, an Ordinance was passed for protection of women and children, and in 1875 it was found necessary to amend it-see Appendix. In addition to these stringent laws the following existing safeguards are to be noted:-
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