Mr. Bridges' observations on the subject matter.
The intricacy of legislation presses incessantly on my attention not only as Governor of Hong Kong but also as Superintendent of British Trade in China, in consequence of multitudinous abuses which had grown up, and which were aggravated by the disorganized state and the confusion produced by all those discordant elements in which I had been directed by Her Majesty's Government to preserve a strict neutrality as between political belligerents - while it was frequently impossible to distinguish the marauder and the pirate from those who claimed to be rebels acting only to overthrow the Manchu Government.
And the population of this Colony, from its very nature and from the universality of secret associations, could not fail to be engaged in partisanship likely to compromise "the British name and the British Flag". The difficulty of deciding who is, and who ought either by right or expediency to be deemed, a British Subject in a Colony, a large part of whose population is constantly shifting and in which there have been established only a few years, is a difficulty not only...
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