that the marriage fee at Hongkong is fifty dollars,
the actual fee being five,
and this only on marriage
by license; though on being asked if fifty dollars
are
paid
on
every marriage, he says "Yes". He
then
goes
on to add, "I have known instances
where people have gone from Hongkong to Macao
to
be 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
British Officer to authorize the marriage:
No single instance
could
by any possibility 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 statement not
only is, but always has been, entirely false.
Enough has been shown to betray
{
127
the character of this evidence, and its further
analysis becomes a task as forbidding as it is
unnecessary. The condition of the Colony, official returns, the whole of it. And
and the standing refutation of