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remark, and that is in regard to myself personally. As you are aware, by Ordinance the Magistrate presides at meetings of the Justices of the Peace held to consider applications for transfers or for licences. He is also generally used as a medium through which to convene a meeting, but the meetings once convened and opened I am of opinion that the functions of the Magistrate cease, and that after that he becomes merged in the general body of Justices. Therefore, in now declaring the meeting opened, I will call upon you to elect your Chairman. (Applause.)
The Chairman then left his seat.
Mr. Ede proposed that the Hon. H. E. Wodehouse be appointed Chairman of the meeting.
Mr. Mehta seconded.
Carried unanimously.
The chair was again takon by the Hon. H. E. Wodehouse,
The Chairman-I have great pleasure in occupying the chair, and we will now proceed to discuss the answer of the Government which I have already read to you. I will call upon any gentleman present to make any remarks or move any resolution he may feel inclined to move.
In answer to Mr. Crawford, the Chairman said-So far as my recollection goes- I have not the Ordinance with me now-there is no provision in the Ordinance regarding the sale of deleterious liquors. There is a provision for the sale of adulterated liquors, and adulterated liquors are defined in a particular way which does not include the quality of liquors such as we are now considering,
Mr. Crawford-- If there be no special provision for Hongkong we are under the ordinary English law.
The Chairmau-That is not so. The English law is not in force here subsequent to 1843 unless it has been expressly put in force by Ordinance.
Mr. Hooper Is there any law in England at the present time which deals with this question?
The Chairman-I am unable to say.
Dr. Hartigan-As nobody else seems inclined to take the matter up I suppose I must, although I did not intend to do so. With regard to the Government proposal that we should form a Committee, it seems to me that it would be better to ask the Government to form a Commission, or, as has been suggested, that we ourselves, if we form a Committee, should ask the Government to give it the powers of a Commission. I do not think we should be able to carry out the object we have in view unless we get very ample powers-powers to take evidence and compel people to give evidence. If we were simply what I might designate an irresponsible Committee we probably should not be able to get a certain amount of conclusive evidence which we should require, as the Government have asked us to give them certain definite details on which they could found an opinion. Everybody knows that the question of drink in Hongkong is one of the very highest importance. You cannot walk out in the streets at night without seeing the results of the present regulations-or non-regulations-and any medical man bere can vouch for the evil results. Certainly I know that naval and military officers can say that the results on their meu produced by this particular liquor is very bad indeed, as it is not a mere case of drunkenness, but it is a case of frenzy. It is not a case of drunkenness for a day, but for a week. I bave never seen any honest liquor produce this result even when taken in larger quantities. In order to settle this question we should ask the Government to give the Committee the full powers of a Commission as regards the taking of evidence that they think is necessary. This present trouble is, as you all know, of very long standing and I am sorry to say it is increasing. My own idea was that having called the attention of the Government to the matter, the functions of the Justices were finished, but as the Government have not taken that view I see no reason why we should not meet them, and as to a certain extent they have endorsed our opinion that something ought to be done. We certainly ought to meet them half way and if necessary appoint a Commission at once. The one objection taken to the original resolutions was that it was impossible to find any means of nailing this matter;
but it seems to me that if we can prove that this evil is doing an immense amount of injury to those who some day may have to defend us the Government ought to take steps to remedy that defect, no matter what interests are involved. (Applause.) I may say that a gentleman who knows all about these cases told me that you can get quite a respectable drop of good honest Irish or Scotch whiskey for the same price as the poisonous stuff is sold at. If that is so, we can deal with the matter by means of the licences. We can compel licence holders to sell only genuine stuff and not spurious as it is to a great extent at present. Then as regards Chinese liquor, that is more easily dealt with, because we could say it should be kept up to a certain standard, and that could easily be accomplished by putting a provision in the