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His views suggest he was no radical. He thought it undesirable for flogging to be totally abolished. He reminded the Governor that in spite of its degrading nature it was a universal method of punishment in Chinese courts. If it was claimed that this is a barbarous custom, he held this to be sentiment, “and I say sentiment should not be imported into the administration of law, which for public safety needs to be sternly carried out.”
He further pointed out that even in England flogging was still generally practised for heinous crimes. He advocated the same practice in Hongkong—not total abolition but cautiously administered flogging for only very serious crimes. He believed that "the security, peace and quietness of the good law-abiding people should not be undermined by any sentimental feeling for the roughs."
But if the abolition of flogging was not to be advocated, the indiscriminate practice of the whip was equally undesirable. The writer cited an instance in which a magistrate ordered a horse-boy flogged because his master charged that he had ill-treated a racing horse and therefore had committed a "malicious injury" to property.
He also pointed out that there were laws on the books in Hong-kong which awarded up to fifty strokes for the crime of injuring plants and trees, as well as “for obeying calls of nature in any public, exposed or improper place to the annoyance of others."
Still in force was the provision for fifteen strokes for not co-operating with the Fire Brigade if the Justice of the Peace "shall think fit and the offender shall be a Chinese.”
Another correspondent, who signed himself as "An Englishman," used Ng Choy to illustrate the unreasonableness of the necessity for Chinese abroad at night to carry a light.
He declared: "I consider it a disgrace to British rule that such a man as Ng Choy, a barrister, should be liable at the present day to be stopped in the street here after dark unless he adopts the childish practice of carrying a lantern. It is true that as the holder of a