Fifty
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- presenting my misunderstanding of the clearest instructions and seeking to profit from them. I can assure Your Lordship
that no wish ever swayed my duty has contrary to me. I think it must be the contrary that the
aspersination of any part of the License. Strenuous has been all along a matter of indifference to this Government compared with the maintenance of a system, which I believe has greatly diminished the vice of Gambling amongst the lower classes, and mainly contributed to keep the large prison at Stone Cutters Island empty and the Central Gaol only half full, and which has also reduced Lavany amongst servants to one fourth of its
former amount and ensured the
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recognition and removal of returned convicts and dangerous characters in the proportion of 3 Cases for one that formerly brought to light: whilst above all the source of the monstrous corruption of the Police Force in obtaining bribes from illegal gaming houses has
been removed.
5. Those results from the present system have always appeared to this Government a sufficient justification of it, even though we have never professed to regard the extirpation of the vice of Gambling itself, owing to the peculiar habits of the Chinese,
as an object otherwise indefinitely remote, if not altogether...