9
67
while they themselves play for high
stakes in their own houses and
clubs and gamble largely
COUZLEA.
Married Women deserting
(3.)
husbands
The
grievance
on
on race-
their
which the Deputation
insisted most strongly
was that
there is no law in Hongkong
as in some
China, (and in most other countries), to punish adultery criminally. "They
urged, moreover, that it was the
plain duty of the Executive Government of the Colony to arrest the Chinese
wives
from the neighbouring provinces
of China, who sometimes take refuge under the British Flag, and to hand
them over
to the authorities at Canton
according to Chinese
law; - that is, as likewise under the
patria potestas of the old Roman law, at the discretion of their fathers, and
of the husbands, who are invested with the legal powers of fathers. It will be recollected that this patria potestas extended in the early days of Rome, to the right of selling children and wives into slavery, and even,
under
* It was modified under the Emperors, and in
the Code of Justinian.