with a mixture of anger and amusement at the often rude and blundering attempts of the English in Hongkong to force upon them our laws, customs and ideas, which (to repeat what has been so truly said) are to their immemorial nationality a rule of right action and a measure.
"once unintelligible and vexatious?"
8. However, it should always be borne in mind that the position of Englishmen in Hongkong stands on an utterly different footing from that of Englishmen in India. There we are a handful of strangers governing great countries and nations which had been settled and organized for centuries before our arrival among them. But here we took possession forty years ago of an island which was then a barren and desolate rock, visited only by a few pirates and fishermen. The Chinese merchants and others who have since sought the protection of the British flag at Hongkong are not permanent residents any more than the Europeans. The Chinese, like the English,