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healthy under normal circumstances or without becoming a focus of infection in times of epidemic disease.
9. Reference is next made to the absurdity of sacrificing "millions of square feet of land averaging six or seven dollars a square foot" for the sake of a ten foot back-yard. It is to the provision of this back-yard that we understand Dr. HO KAI chiefly takes exception. His objection appears to be based on two separate grounds :-(I) that the Chinese do not require the house-ventilation and light which the back-yard is designed to secure them, and (II) that the tenant will be forced to pay the landlord an "enormous" rent for less space. In the preceding paragraph we have dealt with the first objection, and with regard to the second we beg to call your attention to the opening sentence of the Protest, wherein Dr. Ho KAI states that the Bill will sacrifice millions of dollars worth of property. This sacrifice of landed property was to have been suffered by the landlords, but now-- from the theory of enormous rents for less space to be paid by the tenants- -we gather that the landlords are to recoupe themselves from the tenants and that after all there is to be no sacrifice of millions on the part of property owners.
The two statements are clearly antagonistic, and one or the other must fall to the ground. A very great many Chinese tenements in Hongkong actually have back-yards or smoke-holes as they are called, five feet wide. In many tenements these places are six feet wide, and in some they are actually seven and eight feet wide. The provision of the minimum of ten feet, for the width of a back-yard is not therefore of the enormously exaggerated importance made out by Dr. Ho KAI, for the extra width prescribed is only five feet more than the minimum dimension mentioned above, and two or three feet more than the maximum dimension adopted by the Chinese themselves of their own initiative, and the certainty is that the landlord who has pulled down an old house with a five foot back-yard and substituted it by a new house with a ten foot yard, will be no loser by the alteration as regards rent, inasmuch as the marked improvement in the shape of the additional light and ventilation will make up for the loss of the five feet now transferred from the depth of the house to that of the yard where many domestic duties which are at present carried on in the public street could then be performed. Should there however in certain cases of extremely small lots be actual loss by the provision of a ten foot back-yard, we have given opportunity by Clause 79 of the Bill for the special consideration of such cases on exceptional grounds.
10. We next come to the objection raised in the Protest to the enforcement of Public Order and Cleanliness by legislative means. and to this we beg to rejoin that there are no known methods other than the Law for giving effect to State sanitation.
11. The Protest next condemns the Bill as "unconstitutional and arbitrary," because it does not provide adequate compensation in every case. The Protest does not specify what the compensation is to be given for, but we gather that again the ten foot back-yards are referred to. In this connexion we beg to refer you to paragraph 13 of the letter of the Board addressed to you on the 22nd of December last wherein we advised that in the matter of compensation, the Colonial Govern- ment should follow the line of action adopted by all English Municipalities of late years, in their endeavours to improve the dwellings of the people. Whatever the policy of English Municipal Authorities may be we are sure that in England law and equity are not set aside and individual interests sacrificed for the public good, without due indemnity for actual losses suffered.
12. We next come to the expostulation against the copying-for application at Hongkong-of the Sanitary legislation of the mother country without regard to local conditions and to the idiosyncracies of the Chinese. There might have been grounds for this remonstrance had it been a fact that we had recommended for this Colony English legislation pure and simple, but such is not the case, for the Public Health Bill has been framed by us, by the light of our local experience to meet local requirements. Had we followed English sanitary enactments more strictly the stringency of our recommendation might then possibly have warranted the Protest under reply.
13. Dr. Ho KAI then proceeds to stigmatize the Bill as "unnecessary and inefficient." Previously the Bill was assailed on the score of its alleged severity, now it is denounced on the score of its inefficiency. One or the other of these con- tradictory charges must be fallacious. If there were any truth in either it would most probably be found in the charge of inefficiency, for we freely admit that we have preferred, if anything to err on the side of mildness in order to interfere as little as possible with private interests.
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