any injury to conscience, any force applied to unwilling minds. Why should not the same law be extended here.
Up to 1875 the law of Hongkong recognized marriages between Catholics as valid. During all these years there was no complaint whatever about Catholic marriages.
In 1875 under pretense of improving the registration of marriage the Marriage Ordinance was introduced against our protest. It had of course the full sanction of the Secretary of State, but it originated here, I am afraid, on sectarian bitterness, most of its provisions were insulting to Catholics.
We protest against it and we ask Your Excellency to take steps for its early repeal and for the substitution of the law in force in British India and in the Straits Settlements. The just requirements of the State in respect of the Marriage Contract will be better satisfied under the latter than under the former. The Registrar General's enquiry into the position and relationship of applicants for a Marriage license is a matter of form and useless. Our enquiry is conscientious and effective.
The Hongkong Ordinance violates our religious principles and hurts our cause and will be disregarded, and disobeyed whenever law and the dictates of our religion come in conflict. Why should this state of things be allowed to exist? Why should the best and most liberal and wisest Government the world has ever seen maintain this relic of barbarian penal Laws here, without any necessity, when it has done away with all similar laws in other portions of its wide Dominions, and recognised ...