busy themselves according to their own inclinations in a place which is at once a mercantile mart, and the abode of traders who have flocked together from every quarter. Hence gaming and prostitution, habitually practised, have become established, and the result is a secret disobedience to the law fraught with hazards.
Your petitioners are of opinion that a good and wise administration has a regard for the feelings of the masses. It was thus that Kwan-tyu made his country rich and Tao kung bequeathed a plan for growing wealthy, and that the adoption of an effective measure would be preferable to the outward conformity but secret disobedience which now prevails in Hongkong; the more so too, inasmuch as the non-prohibition would be unattended with evil and the prohibition is ineffective.
Your petitioners therefore earnestly beg that you will favourably consider and grant their prayer; they are willing...