6. Your Petitioners complain that this Ordinance was introduced info and passed through Council in violation of Her Majesty's Instructions and of the Standing Orders and Rules of the Legislative Council and in defiance of all constitutional prin- ciple and precedent, no opportunity being given either to the public or to the Unofficial Members, or even to Officials, Members of the Executive Council, to consider or discuss the principle of the Bill or its details.
7.-There was no necessity whatever for forting the Bill through Council; no demand by any large section of the population for Legislation on the subject; no crisis of any sort to be met; no reason why the Bill should not have been duly published, introduced, debated and considered in the ordinary way.
8.-There was, on the contrary, every reason why abundant time and the fullest publicity should have been given for the consideration of a measure so largely affecting the business of this port, especially when it is remembered that the Chambers of Com- merce of this Colony and of Singapore, the Governors of Hongkong und of the Straits Settlements, and the Honorable Mr. Fleming, when administering this Govermneut, had declared themselves unable to deal with this question and had advised Your Lordship against legislation to control Sunday labour, and when it is remembered that Your Lordship in your place in Parliament had declared yourself obliged to concur in their opinions.
9.-Your Petitioners most respectfully submit that they are entitled, on the above grounds alone if there were no other, to ask Your Lordship to advise Her Majesty the Queen to disallow the ordinance in question, and, if you should think legisla- tion on the subject necessary or desirable, to direct the introduction into the Legislative Council of an amended Bill, with full notice to the public and to the Members of the Council, after a careful examination of the conditions of trade bere and with ample opportunity for discussion and examination.
10.-Your Petitioners, however, most humbly submit that your Lordship's decision publicly announced in July last, that any interference on the subject of Sunday Labour was surrounded by grave difficulties and was undesirable, was a wise and prudent decision and ought not to be reversed.
11.-Your Petitioners would, further, most strongly urge upon Your Lordship that of all possible legislation with a view to enforce or promote the observance of Sunday, the ordinance recently passed in Hongkong is the most useless and the most mischievous. It cannot benefit the small class of persons for whose relief it has been ostensibly passed. It throws out of employment, for one day in seven, thousands of men and women who are anxious and willing to work. It seriously interferes with a large and valuable trade, in which every moment of time is of importance and to which the Colony is indebted for its growth and prosperity.
12.-Your Petitioners need hardly remind Your Lordship that no legislation enforcing, in whole or in part, a weekly day of rest can now be introduced or supported on religious grounds only. Complete toleration for all opinions and complete freedom for all practices not openly inconsistent with social order and public decency is neces- sarily, at the present day, the ruling principle of all English Legislation.
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-If this is so in the United Kingdom where the vast majority are professing Christians much more powerfully must the rule be enforced in Her Majesty's Dominions in India and the East, where the vast bulk of the population are non- Christian and pagan and are dominated by principles, religious, social and economica), and habituated to practices, opposed to the idea of a weekly day of rest or devotion.
14-In Hongkong the non-Christian population numbers 212,896 or there- abouts out of a total of all classes and creeds of 221,441. The Chinese do not recognise for any purpose a weekly day of rest. Sunday as a day of devotion is unknown to them. From an economical point of view they, the oldest, the most numerous and the most industrious of peoples, with a practical experience ranging over 2000 years, know nothing of the need for a weekly day of rest, do not suffer and do not seem to have suffered in the past from the want of it.
15.-The Sunday Labour Ordinance has been introduced and passed solely for the benefit of a very small class of men, the Officers and European crews of steamers and ships of European build frequenting this port, and to relieve them of what some of them have felt and complained of as a grievance.
16.If it relieves them of a grievance it inflicts a much more serious injury on the large Chinese population of this Colony, traders, shipowners and coolies alike. It will benefit at most a few hundred persons during the year. It necessarily throws out of employment for 52 days in the year, thousands of Chinese, stevedores and their coolies, cargo-boat owners and crews, warehouse keepers and their men. steamer that ceases to work eargo on Sunday, five Europeans on an average may be relieved, not from all work but from one particular description of work. The cessation
gangs,
For every
of work on that steamer on that day throws out of employment, against their will and without their consent, on an average, six large cargo-boats and their crews, and at least 100 other Chinese. They are paid by the day, and the day's wages are lost to
them.
17-Five-sixths of the steamers loading and discharging in this port receive or deliver cargo which has arrived here in Chinese Junks or will be exported from here in Junks. The loading and discharge of the Junks engaged in the trade of the port, aggregating over three millions of tons per annum, is hampered and delayed, if not actually stopped by the stoppage of work on board the steamers.
18.-Three-fifths of the steamers frequenting this port are either owned or chartered by Chinese Merchants. These seldom discharge cargo into Warehouses; almost always into Junks direct. Their outward cargo is mostly received from Junks. They do not believe in a Sabbath day; they need no Sunday rest, yet their whole business is to be dislocated and a seventh part of their year thrown away because there are one or two European officers on board of each of these steamers.
19.--All these Chinese owned and chartered steamers and all the steamers employed in the coast trade employ Chinese Compradores and staff to handle the cargo, and it is only in the large ocean-going steamers that officers and crews are subject to cargo work on Sunday.
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