that
OVL a recount is rendered by them of the help which during the month just ended they have given to the Police and also they have given quien to the Police of the Number of servants of Foreigners, whom they have informed against as attempting to frequent the Licensed Houses.
These returns are checked by those of the Police, whose Staff is one not disposed to give their rival detectives credit unless fairly earned. Nevertheless, accepting the Police returns as the correct one, it thence appears that out of a total of 63, viz. 56 dangerous characters and 7 illegal formblers arrested during that period, no less than 50 had been arrested through information furnished at the cost of the Licensees. Of those fifty, 18 were old offenders, i.e. Convicts, most of whom had been branded and conditionally pardoned, but who remained liable to special punishment and also to completion of their original sentence, if subsequently found within the limits of the Colony.
10. Thoroughly to comprehend the great importance of such a result, and of the aid this continuously afforded to the Executive, Your Lordship should bear in mind the special and very exceptional circumstances in which this Colony is placed by its geographical position and close proximity to the most criminal and desperate classes in the Chinese Empire. I have often impressed on H.M.'s Government the obvious inference that such...
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