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have no other effect than that of inciting his hearers to defy any law in the Colony.
In our day it is difficult to think of that much-honoured, decorated, revered and praised “grand old man of Hongkong,” Sir Robert Ho Tung, being so maligned by a Hongkong editor. However, when these words were published in 1895, Ho Tung was only on the way to making his multi-millions. This was one of his first appearances in a public meeting which attracted the notice of the English press.
The vitriolic journalist then gave the well-worn advice to dissidents: "If you don't like it here, go elsewhere."
He did not expect his advice to be heeded, for Hongkong Chinese, he claimed, found "it pays them best to live in any country except their own, under any government except Chinese. That is why Mr. Ho Tung and Mr. Ho A-mei stay in Hongkong, and glad they ought to be for the privilege; they would not be allowed to talk such screeching rubbish in any other country."
The editor was ready to give Ho Tung his marching orders. “Let Mr. Ho Tung go to Canton and try to hold a public meeting and say what he thinks of the officials of his own country and state his reasons for not trusting himself and his business in their grasp, and if he does not care to go, it would do this Colony no harm to send him there."
If the Hongkong Government had followed the advice of the China Mail, it might have lost forever one of its most famous sons.
A regular columnist of the Mail, who styled himself “Brownie,” expressed a more moderate opinion than the editor. He felt that “after making all allowances for the translation of Mr. Ho Tung's remarks, I am inclined to exonerate that gentleman from any seditious leanings, and can only marvel at his appearance and attitude at the Tung Wah's meeting." He intimated that it would be well for the young Ho Tung to avoid getting mixed up with Ho A-mei and his party.