The power of awarding deportation as a judicial sentence in cases of mendicancy - placing the discretionary Crown power of deportation in such cases in the hands of the Governor under the general terms of Section 4.
As the number you reported in par. 30 of your despatch No. 73 of the 25th July 1877, that this power has been exercised in no less than 300 cases in the year 1876, and the circumstances which indicate that the need for some means of dealing with the influx of immigrants from the continent and the mendicants from South China. I have not, so far as I am aware, received any further account from you of the increase or decrease of mendicancy in Hong Kong - but I am willing that no such warrant against abuse of punishments should be made except by the Governor.
I am of opinion, however, that the power to make orders in these cases should rest on a more defined judicial basis than the general words contained in Section 4, or the power under Section 3 of declaring a mendicant vagrant to be liable to imprisonment in the gaol of the Colony without finding security. I think, therefore, that the repeal of subsection 4 of Section 2 of Ordinance No. 8 of 1858 requires reconsideration.
They were fully considered in Despatch No. 80 of 1876, and Section 15 of that Ordinance was enacted in its place. But the effect of this Ordinance...
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