155
legal system. This, the memorial claimed, China did not have.
It was for this reason that foreign nations had demanded extra-territorial rights. By insisting on this protection for their subjects in China, the Treaty Powers showed, it was affirmed, that “in one most important particular they consider it (China) outside the pale of modern civilisation.”
The foreigners easily recognised that the Chinese legal system was different from theirs, but they did not appreciate the traditional values and procedures it embodied. These had enabled China to survive as a united nation for more than a millennium.
On the other hand, the administration of the law in Hongkong was sometimes arbitrary and unfair. There was special legislation affecting the Chinese only; and an examination of nineteenth century court cases leads me to conclude that it often did not properly ensure the life, liberty and property of the Chinese who were under its jurisdiction.
Nor was every European in that day convinced that the Chinese received fair treatment in Hongkong. In 1863 a traveller, probably a missionary, reported the following incident at a village near Shumchun just beyond the present border:
A Chinese, when he saw the stranger, took off his coat and showed his back to the assembled villagers. It bore the marks of a severe flogging. The victim called upon all to observe "how the foreign devils in Hongkong treat a respectable Chinese.”
The traveller was sympathetic. He observed: "I strongly disapprove of the way such punishments are carried out by the police. It used to be a most horrid spectacle to see, as often one might have done, a poor wretch, with his back all raw and bloody, exposed in Queen's Road, trembling with pain, shame and cold."
He thought it was natural for the Chinese to bitterly resent such treatment, especially those who "had suffered unjustly, or from some trivial offence such as three hairs from a horse's tail, for which I have known flogging with a rattan afflicted.”
Page 180
Page 181