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and action on the exceptional position demands both exceptional legislation part of the Executive here, because this colony may literally be regarded as maintaining a perpetual struggle for self-preservation, and being in a permanent state of siege by the criminal population, which is ever surging around it and threatening it with invasion.
of the year the Canton correspondents of the Police report frequently the departure thence of bands of professional burglars and thieves numbering from twenty to thirty ill bound for Hongkong in quest of plunder.
Nothing but ceaseless vigilance in the struggle with these desperados and the special legislation by which they are met in this colony enables the Executive to make any head against them. Consequently, the great help which experience shows can be given to Government by the Licensees is far too important a result to be lightly thrown up without incurring a very grave and not unwarrantable responsibility in the absence of any strong and overwhelming necessity to justify such a course. I see no such necessity but I fail to see any reason whatever for not accepting that help in the serious contest which this Government more than any other is forced to maintain with the criminal classes by whom it is beset.
13. Therefore, if the help rendered by the Licensees were to be greatly impaired
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