was tried
which took place in the harbor of Hongkong and which at the Criminal Session of December when two of the prisoners were sentenced each to five years' penal servitude and to be three times publicly flogged with seventy-five strokes.
The defence set up by one of the prisoners was of the most extraordinary character, and to the effect that "Mandarin had been vide Chief Gurling 'staying in a house connected with him any secret within British Harbour watching for the opium smuggler', that the opium was taken from him near Lantao under orders 'by the 1st prisoner under the orders of the mandarin', that 'half of it was given to Mandaw', and that 'the other half it was buried in the garden attached to the third prisoner's house to be kept.'
or as the Chief Justice went on to remark 'in other words take the case he was stealing the opium from the pioneer if wrongly taken; or he was taking it in fraud of the Emperor of China if as the prisoner alleged it had 'been properly taken from the prosecutor'.