238
them
ingendered amongst the Chinese by their being unable to purchase any protections or provisions amongst the Servants of the Law to ensure against the application of the Law. If I had fallen back on the old system, however normal and proper anywhere else, and if I had made suppression of Gambling a principal duty of the Police, I am well convinced that before this a very fair understanding would have been arrived at between several of the Police and the leading Gamblers.
Such understanding simply means that many of those old Gambling haunts would have been recalled to existence, which were so dangerous to the peace of the Community because their necessarily secret and illegal character encouraged and brought into active association the most desperate characters.
5. Your Lordship, however, will bear in mind no doubt that although I may hope that the principal cause of the non-existence, as yet, of any Gambling haunt which would be dangerous depends on some reason, equally potent in the future, as at present, so long as exclusion of Police interference forms part of the system, yet the whole thing is very experimental. Thus the result alluded to might possibly