Preface
which brings the whalers from the Pacific to Hongkong is the cheapness and abundance of the supplies, and the absence of all shipping dues whatever. Hear Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane, who had commanded a warship from the age of eighteen,
a Man
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of opinion that Hongkong is as cheap and well supplied a station as most that he had ever visited; and it has only existed as a Colony since 1842.
With regard to the spicuum farmmon, which the pretended failure of the Colony is attributed, this has been since altered into separate licenses to Opium shops, precisely the same as licences for retailing wine and spirits. No apparent change has resulted from this, except the silence of the objectors to the former system.
The Colony continues to prosper as usual, neither more nor less.
After what has gone before, it becomes less surprising to find Mr. Matheson
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assert that the marriage fee at Hongkong is fifty dollars, the actual fee being five, and this only on marriages by licence; though on being asked if fifty dollars are paid in every marriage, he says, "Yes." He then goes on to add, "I have known instances where people have gone from Hongkong to Macao to get married, in order to avoid the fee."
Now it is absolutely impossible for any member of the established Church to be married at Macao, where there is no Protestant Clergyman, and no British officer to authorize the marriage. No single instance can have occurred. The marriage fee never having exceeded five dollars, the boat hire would come to much more.
Mr. Matheson slanders the Colonial Government by asserting that a Revenue is derived from houses of bad fame. It is almost unnecessary to say that this