HONGKONG, FRIDAY, MAY 9, 1889. The Rev. A. G. Goldsmith, in his letter, published in yesterday's issue, hopes that the subject of Sunday Labour in the harbour will not be permitted to slip into oblivion. We sincerely trust this will not be the case. The agitators for this reform have not received much encouragement or sympathy from those in high places in this Colony; but, as their cause is a just one, they ought not to be disheartened thereby. We fear there is little chance of their bringing the Governor of this Colony to rightly appreciate the movement. The speech he recently delivered breathed such a spirit of heartless materialism that there is little hope of his yielding to the petition of those who are deprived of their day of rest.
Outside Governmental circles, the agitation has to encounter the violent opposition of those who are opposed to everything that is of a Christian character, and the secret antipathy or lukewarmness of a larger class who think that their profits will be diminished if steamers and sailing ships cannot be discharged on Sunday as on Saturday. Sir G. W. Des Voeux, however, has not the final say in the Government of the Colony, and Mr Goldsmith and his friends may knock at the door of the Colonial Office until they obtain a hearing. The sentiment in favour of Sunday rest is strong in England. Employers and employés appreciate the advantage of the relief from the eternal grind, and they are apt to see that England has not lost but gained largely by the observance of a day of rest.
Mr Goldsmith calls upon all the supporters of his movement to meet the objections that have been raised. The difficulty is that there are really no tangible objections to meet. As our Shanghai contemporary, the N.-C. Daily News, remarks, a more hopeless piece of argument than the Governor's speech we never read. Against all precedent and example, he maintains that the stoppage of Sunday labour in the harbour must entail the stoppage of all labour on land. We have already met this argument by showing that all that is demanded of the Chinese is that they allow us to observe our own customs. We allow them to work seven days in the week and take their holidays as they please. It is surely not too much to ask that in a British port, British subjects should not be driven to work on Sundays because a few Chinese are ready to take delivery of their goods.
That the native merchants would not consider it unjust to be called upon to make this small concession to English customs, seeing we concede so much to them, may be taken for granted, for, even at the Treaty Ports, in their own country, they are forced to a large extent to acquiesce in the cessation of work on board steamers on Sunday, and they have never been known to make a complaint. We are firmly convinced that if a law were made in Hongkong forbidding Sunday labour in the harbour, or rather permitting it only on payment of a sum equivalent to a day's demurrage, which would ensure that the permission was only asked for on a stronger ground than the desire to gain one day for discharge, not one ship Captain, or agent, would seek to evade the law.
The idea that the gaol would be filled with Chinese convicted of working on Sunday is too ludicrous to be entertained for one moment. There remains the question of enforcing by law in Hongkong what is elsewhere accomplished by a Customs regulation. The object to be accomplished is the same, and we cannot conceive why there should be much greater difficulty in enforcing the cessation of Sunday work in this harbour by a Harbour regulation than there is at other places by a Customs regulation.
A law can only be difficult to enforce when it is unjust and is opposed by those on whom it operates. It is only the action of a few which keeps ship-owners and merchants from coming to a mutual arrangement on the subject, and we are sure that if by law they were all placed on an equal footing, they would heartily acquiesce in the officers and seamen on board steamers and sailing vessels enjoying the blessing of Sunday rest.
As to mail steamers, it would be well if Mr Goldsmith and his friends would obtain from the leading British ports information with regard to their treatment by the Custom Houses. Our opinion is that there should be no distinction. It is only two or three times a year that the English mail arrives on Sunday, and still more seldom does the French or German mail come in on that day. If the agents of these steamers considered it all-important to gain a few hours by working on Sundays, they would be prepared to pay the day's demurrage.
At any rate, this difficulty ought not to stand in the way of obtaining Sunday rest in this harbour, any more than it does in other ports. As to the junks obtaining an advantage over steamers by being able to work seven days in the week, the idea is preposterous. One might as well argue that all the English and foreign shop-keepers should open on Sunday in order that the Chinese might not obtain an advantage over them.
The truth is, the Chinese take about as many holidays as we do, although they take them in a different manner, and if each nationality were to become envious of the other's working day, the end would be a total abolition of all holidays. We cannot do better than close our remarks by quoting a few pithy sentences from a leader on the subject in the N.-C. Daily News:-
Surely, the fact that the change would only benefit a thousand people at the outside is a proof that it would not be such a very violent measure, and lessens the difficulty in enforcing it, and we cannot believe that the combined wisdom of Hongkong would be incapable of making the change because there is no Custom-house. Not only is Sunday observance enforced on junks in the treaty ports, as far as we know, but we have never heard any foreign shipowners complain that this gives the junks an unfair advantage; nor do we believe that there is any diminution in the wealth of the treaty ports because the Custom-houses are closed on Sunday, and the Governor's argument is an argument against the general observing Sunday at all.
The general belief of the civilised world is that the total wealth is not diminished by one day's rest. We take leave to doubt the infliction of fines and imprisonment would be the only way of enforcing the desired observance of Sunday, and, even if so, are there no gradations of punishment in Hongkong? Committing a nuisance in the street is not an offence in Chinese law, but it is, we presume, in Hongkong. How is it punished? And if by fine or imprisonment, does every coolie who is thus punished at once consider himself on a level with thieves, and say to himself, "Why should I not go and thieve?"
Sir William Des Voeux must have a very poor opinion of the intelligence of his Council to imagine that such an argument as that would impress them. What again does he imagine becomes of the population of the treaty ports who are prevented from working on Sunday by the closing of the Custom-houses? Does he imagine that they all pass the day in idling and its consequent crime? Would it not have been better for him to discover how Sunday observance works at the treaty ports, instead of evolving such untenable arguments against it from his own consciousness?
No doubt our contemporaries in the South have already answered the Governor's remarkable speech, for it is impossible that they can have accepted it in silence as the Legislative Council did, though that silence was possibly the silence of amazement that a person in such a position could make such a preposterous deliverance in public.
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