20%
207
(4)
Government of the Colony owe a debt of gratitude to some of those Chinese doctors. Hongkong is peculiarly situated with respect to the possibility of an influx of small-pox. Perhaps no other city in the world is more liable to a visitation from that disease, and yet, though occasionally I get a report from the Harbour Master of a case or two that may be brought here, it does not spread in the Colony. How does that come to pass? I was talking not long since to the Health Officer, Dr. ADAMS, and he tells me he has to examine the Chinese who emigrate, and he finds nearly all the young Chinese have three or four vaccination marks, or inoculation marks, upon the arms. He says he was often puzzled to know how this vaccination came to be apparently so perfect among the Chinese. Well, the fact is, that for some years past the doctors of the Tung-wá Hospital have vaccinated extensively, and some of them have been employed as travelling vaccinators, who go about this Colony, and who, since 1878, visit the mainland and vaccinate all through the neighbouring province of China. Thousands upon thousands have been vaccinated by them. The returns are printed in our annual Blue Books. Thousands upon thousands have been vaccinated during the last four years.
But when I saw the annual returns sent in by the Colonial Surgeon not many weeks ago, I appended the following minute to that document :-"I cannot find any return showing the number of vaccinations by the Medical Officers of the Colony. Ascertain how many persons have been vaccinated every year for the last four years by the Colonial Surgeon, the Health Officer, the Superintendent of the Civil Hospital, and the Deputy Superintendent." This appears to have been sent to the Colonial Surgeon for a report. The report of the Colonial Surgeon was very brief:-" No return has ever been kept." Whereupon, my honourable friend on my left (the Acting Colonial Secretary) writes to the Colonial Surgeon asking him if he could from his memory, and approximately, furnish the number he has himself vaccinated, and get the same information from the other Medical Officers of the Government.
The reply of the Colonial Surgeon is "I have the honour to inform you that ten persons were vaccinated in the Hospital by the Superintendent. I have not been able to obtain any more information from the Superintendent. The Acting Health Officer vaccinated his own child twice without success. I have performed 32 vaccinations on children, fifteen unsuccessfully, and about as many more on adults.” And then he proceeds to state that he distributed lymph, which I send to him (it comes to me every mail in my despatch bag from Downing Street), amongst his professional brethren in the Colony and at Canton. He adds, that in future he will take care that a record of the vaccinations by the Government Officers is kept.
It may, of course, be said that the Colonial Surgeon and the other Officers of the Government were aware of the fact that this semi-Administrative duty,-in fact, a duty of no slight importance to the Government and the Colony, was actually being performed for them by the directors of the Tung-wá Hospital, and, therefore, they did not think it necessary to interfere with the Chinese doctors, who were vaccinating thousands of people and doing it so well, and who have protected the Colony so thoroughly.
Passing from the doctors, we come to the druggists, who have also increased from 164 to 243. I find, for the first time in the professional life of the Chinese in this Colony, that we have three dentists. About eighteen months ago I visited one, not professionally, but for the purpose of seeing the instruments he used, and I then found he had the same apparatus we find in all dentists' establishments. In fact, he did work for the first-rate American dentists we have here, being fully capable of making or repairing sets of teeth. He was a gentleman of intelligence, and impressed me, I must say, as favourably as a dentist could.
I also find Chinese architects for the first time, five in number. For the first time, we also have in the list one geomancer. I have not seen that gentleman, but I find in the list perhaps an antidote to the geomancer; for the first time we see in this list a Chinese barrister-at-law. I think we may all congratulate ourselves on his appearing not only in the census returns as a barrister, but as being also a member, by the Queen's favour, of the Legislature of the Colony.
I find also on this list three newspaper editors, but there were three in 1876. They are not exactly the same three, because one, a gentleman who was enumerated in 1876, was a friend of mine, the editor of the Chinese Mail, Mr. CHUN AYIN, and I believe that newspaper editor is now receiving a salary of twelve hundred pounds per annum as an officer of the Chinese Government in Cuba, where, I understand, he is the Consul-General.
I don't know whether I am right in classing them amongst the professional portion of the Chinese community, but I find we have 84 fortune-tellers in the Colony, instead of 46 in 1876. The schoolmasters have increased from 114 to 171, and students from 341 to 2,562. These students are not to be confounded with school-boys, who are dealt with in another part of the census.
Most of these gentlemen who return themselves as students are, no doubt, young men, but some of them possibly are old men, who devote themselves to literary pursuits. Trait painters have increased from 170 to 200, and photographers from 30 to 45. Story-tellers have decreased from 5 to 1. Musicians, also, I am sorry to see, have fallen from 70 to 30.
(5)
It would be one of those statistical fallacies that sometimes occur, even in the best regulated Registrar General's Office, if it were not a melancholy fact, that when our Chinese bankers and bullion dealers come upon the scene, the story-tellers and musicians seem to disappear. Perhaps great material prosperity is not without some drawbacks.
On the whole, it is manifest we have in this Colony an increased Chinese community of great importance to the commercial interests of England, and, therefore, we may at once answer the question as to this large dealing in land, and may admit it was a just and natural process, and that this transfer of property from Europeans to Chinese was not of a merely speculative kind.
Now, does Hongkong fulfil the object for which it was established? That I need hardly ask you, gentlemen, after the brief resumé I have given you of our census returns. But it has sometimes been discussed what the object of this Colony is, and in my time I have heard it said that it is a military object, or a naval object--I have generally been of opinion myself it was commercial-but I find on referring to a despatch of the Secretary of State to Sir JOHN DAVIS, where this question was raised, that there it is briefly and clearly laid down for what object this Colony was really established.
Sir JOHN DAVIS had to forward to Her Majesty's Government a memorial from the foreign merchants complaining of the taxation of Hongkong. They represented that Hongkong had been established, as they thought, for military objects in China, and, on that account, they begged the Imperial Government would undertake to pay for the cost of the establishments, and that they themselves should be relieved from taxes.
The Secretary of State who had to decide this question was a man of great ability. It was in the year 1846. He was then a young man, but he evidently gave due attention to the subject, and, having reviewed the whole question, he expresses his opinion that the occupation of Hongkong was decided on solely and exclusively with a view to commercial interests; and, in a word, his despatch said it was established in the interests of trade alone, and that the traders naturally should pay the expenses of the Colony.
I find that this same Secretary of State had in a previous despatch requested the Governor to have land sales in the town of Victoria at which none but Chinese could bid. Representations came from the Governor,—either Sir HENRY POTTINGER or Sir JOHN DAVIS,--that there was a certain class of Chinese who would be peculiarly suitable for commercial operations, but that, owing to land jobbers, they could not compete at the land auctions in Hongkong, and therefore the Secretary of State took the rather strong course of saying there should be some land sales at which none but Chinese could bid.
Well, he incurred a little local criticism for doing that, but when this despatch of his was published laying down the purely commercial objects of Hongkong, and stating that the Colony should pay for itself, the newspapers then printed here commented on it in these terms: The answer of Mr. GLADSTONE is universally regarded by everyone with whom we have conversed since it was published, as sealing the fate of Hongkong, We do not believe it will be met by any violent recrimination or outcry, but the disgust it has excited is such as will not be speedily eradicated. What little trade we ever possessed here has been all but extinguished.
Well, a generation has passed since that criticism was published in the Colony, but I am bound to say, every year since then has justified Mr. GLADSTONE'S policy; and, at this moment, we are in a Colony whose commercial prosperity is perhaps unrivalled. Who now will venture to say that he was not right to encourage the Chinese to buy land and settle in Hongkong? Who now will differ with Mr. GLADSTONE as to the true character and object of this Colony?
There is one aspect of this progress and prosperity which concerns us as a legislative body dealing with financial matters, and it is this, that as the Colony makes progress, the revenue should improve without the imposition of any new taxes. That has also taken place.
The revenue and expenditure of this Colony for the last three years were as follows-The revenue in 1878 was £197,424; in 1879, £200,853; in 1880 it reached £222,905. The expenditure for each of these years respectively was, for 1878, £189,692; for 1879, £193,097; for 1880, £197,502.
The expenditure was therefore kept, I think prudently, within the revenue. The valuators' returns for ten years past, recently laid before you, show that the valuation of house property fluctuated but little from 1871 to 1876, but that it rose steadily with the influx of Chinese in 1877, and has continued to increase. Hence the house taxes, which were at the same rate (12 per cent) in 1876 and in 1880, produced in these years respectively, £38,439, and £48,032.
The opium farm also rose from £27,500 in 1876 to £42,708 in 1880. The other chief items of our revenue are stamps, postage, taxes on shipping, and certain licences, as well as various fees under the emigration and shipping ordinances.
At a first glance, our taxation appears a little unfair, but in an Oriental community like this, I think it would be impossible to have it otherwise than it is. The opium farm falls exclusively on Chinese.
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