With reference to another case called the Conspiracy Case, I forward herewith the Calendar for November 1871, which shows that there was one failure of Justice but the Community otherwise unanimously congratulated itself that so gigantic a fraud and conspiracy was after 6 days trial proved and punished.
Except in a charge of Murder long since disposed of by an acquittal, I remember no case in which I can declare that I should differ from the Jury. I attribute (next to the sufficiency of the law) this, to me, satisfactory state of the Administration of Criminal Justice in Hong Kong to the great intelligence and painstaking of the Hong Kong Jurors, and to their familiarity with the character and customs and habits of thought of the Chinese and other Witnesses, and also to the fact that in almost every case (until otherwise instructed, I thought it was in every case) the Attorney General officially conducted the prosecution.
This is no light matter in a Court where the presiding Judge has sentenced to capital punishment prisoners who have been hanged, in number greater than one fourth, probably one third, of the 15. The responsibility of the Judge in Hong Kong is so great that I should shrink from expressing myself if I were not certain in my conviction.
I will not question what Mr. Hayllar says as to the untrustworthiness of Indian Witnesses because I have not sufficient experience of them; but after an intimate acquaintance with the Chinese for just 12 Years, I hold that respectable Chinese, like respectable Englishmen, are usually witnesses of truth.
There are indeed low and untrustworthy Chinese, as in any country, in an incalculable degree of difference between an Englishman and a Chinaman, as Mr. Hayllar asserts. It may be that superficially "customs, habits, and modes of life" differ.
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