Therefore, whilst it is satisfactory to find that his Lordship is quite agreed with me as to the impracticability of deriving "any analogy between the method of treating Criminals in England and in Hong Kong", it is less satisfactory to Your Grace to learn that this result has been obtained with a simultaneous decrease in the actual total amount of crime. At the same time the apprehensions expressed by his Lordship as to the unduly severe nature of a deterrent native adopted by the exaction of a reasonable amount of labor from the Convicts have fortunately not been justified by actual experience. I feel also that what was then the natural apprehension as to the excessive amount of labor exacted from this class was inferred from their inflicting wounds or stimulating themselves to prevent their being employed on the hardest tasks.
I am not frustrated from my inability to state the result from the data available at the time. On these points, though not perhaps yet in a position to make that full report which His Lordship calls for, I am already able to afford useful explanations and can at least speak with more authority at the close of April than in November. I was then only mitigating a system which was also experimental.
I am now however able to state that since the report of the Commission which...
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