2. Hongkong being conterminous with the Canton Province and in constant intercommunication with the inland districts, nearly forty years have now elapsed since the opening of the Colony, which has become an emporium of trade, and since the last few years many Chinese have brought their property, wives and families to the place, supposing that they would be able to live here in peace and to rejoice in their property. The reason for this movement was a belief in the equitable administration of the criminal law on the part of the English Courts of Law, and the absence of vexatiousness on the part of the Executive. Native residents have, therefore, lately expressed a wish for naturalisation, and native merchants felt a desire to settle down in this trading place for good. Moreover, at the first opening of the Colony, His Excellency Governor ELLIOT issued a proclamation inviting an increase of settlers by the promise that Chinese, coming to reside in Hongkong, would be in every respect governed in accordance with their native customs, and from the time of the publication of this proclamation to the present day people always depended upon it. Chinese residents of Hongkong have, therefore, been in the habit of following all native customs which were not a contravention of Chinese Statute Law. It is said that the whole increase and prosperity of the Colony, from its first foundation to the present day, is all based on the strength of that invitation, which Sir JOHN ELLIOT gave to intending settlers, and that this present intention of applying, all of a sudden, the repressive force of the law to both the practices of buying and selling boys or girls, for purposes of adoption or for domestic servitude, is not only a violation of the rule of Sir JOHN ELLIOT, but moreover will, it is to be feared, not fail to trouble the people.
3. One of the common but evil practices, in vogue in China, is the practice of infanticide in the case of female children, and this practice is most especially followed in the Canton Province. Poor and indigent people, scarcely able to provide food and clothes for themselves, finding themselves additionally burdened with the anxieties and troubles which children involve, will frequently, if unable to find any body willing to take over and rear them, proceed to drown them the moment they are born. This practice has lately abated to a certain extent, as compared with former times. But although the practice of infanticide, a cruel and unnatural proceeding, is of course unanimously abhorred by every body, yet, being really caused by the pressure of poverty and distress, it must be classed with evils which are almost unavoidable. Now, if the buying of adoptive children and of servant girls is to be uniformly abolished, it is to be feared that henceforth the practice of infanticide will extremely increase beyond what it ever was. The heinousness of the violation of the great Creator's benevolence, which constitutes infanticide, is beyond comparison with the indulgence granted to the system of buying and selling children to prolong their existence. Moreover, the families which are able to purchase children have an abundance of clothes and food, which certain offers an advantage beyond anything those children had in their own families, as they are placed beyond all care of providing against hunger and cold. The foregoing considerations are calculated to make people rather rejoice over the fact that these children change hands.
4. When parents are willing to sell their sons and daughters to others, the reason invariably is, that their troubles are innumerable, their plans exhausted, their means squandered, and it is only when they find there is no better way out of their difficulty, that they resign themselves to this resort. As regards the sellers, their own intention is to find some one willing to buy, so that the matter is entirely voluntary, and there is not the least compulsion in it. As regards the buyers, they look upon themselves as affording relief to distressed people, and consider the matter as an act akin to charity, especially as the boys or girls they buy, being of tender age, have, as a general rule, to be clothed, fed, nursed, taught, and if they are sick, a doctor has to be engaged to attend to them, and when they are grown up, the boys have to be provided with a wife and a house, and to be set up in a separate family dwelling, and in the case of girls, a good husband has to be picked out for them to make them happy for life. The love and care devoted to them is often greater than that bestowed on one's own offspring. In view of all this, it is impossible to class this system as identical with lifelong slavery and deprivation of liberty.
5. China honours, above all others, the tenets of Confucianism, that is to say, the teachings of Confucius and Mencius. Mencius says, there are three forms of deficiency in filial duty, but the worst of them is to have no descendants. Consequently every childless person considers it obligatory to adopt a son, for the term "deficiency in filial duty" implies a sin of the most heinous hue. Supposing even, that there were a man showing no willingness (to adopt a son), his relations and friends would certainly do the utmost to exhort him to do so. Hence the number of people who are willing to buy boys for purposes of adoption. But it being once permissible to purchase boys in order to make them one's own sons, it follows that it is also permissible to buy girls in order to make them one's own daughters. This system is the most essentially important of all Chinese customs, and Your Petitioners therefore beg that this statement be condescendingly examined and tested.
6. In China there are fixed rules for the purchase of human beings, which rules bear absolutely no comparison whatever with the mode of purchasing ordinary commodities. For in buying ordinary articles of any kind, the buyer acquires unlimited power over them, and he is entirely at liberty to keep them or reject them. There is no such thing in the purchase of human beings.
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