under sentence of transportation, and I am directed by the Right Honorable the Governor General in Council to communicate
the following review of the past correspondence and the decision which His Lordship in Council
has now come to on the subject.
2.
It appears that in consequence of the prohibition by Her Majesty's Government in July 1844 of the further transportation of Chinese convicts to Van Diemen's Land, considerable difficulty was felt by the authorities in Hong Kong
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to the mode of dealing with criminals guilty of crimes which, though of a heinous nature, were not such as to merit the extreme penalty of death. It was represented to Her Majesty's Government by the Government of the Colony that the punishment of transportation had exercised a most salutary influence on the Chinese, who entertained a horror of exile in a foreign country, whilst they cared but little for all other punishments short of death, and that no