We shall look forward with great pleasure, and I afraid with some degree of impatience, to the day when we may welcome you back amongst us, accompanied by your noble consort, Lady Blake, to whose gentle kindness and unfailing sympathy we owe so much and for whom we entertain the profoundest esteem and sincerest regard. I beg leave now to read the address.
To His Excellency Sir HENRY A. BLAKE, G.C.M.G., Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Colony of Hongkong and its Dependencies and Vice Admiral of the same.
YOUR EXCELLENCY,
On behalf of the Chinese Community of Hongkong, we beg respectfully to offer to you our best wishes for a pleasant holiday, and to place on record the profound gratitude and admiration which your able and sympathetic administration has inspired in us. Indeed, if we may venture to prophecy, long after the details of your administration have grown dim, it will be remembered among us by its benevolent and sympathetic character. It is by sympathy alone that the gulf that separates class from class, race from race, and religion from religion can be bridged over, and the possession of that quality and your freedom from the trammels that ignorance and prejudice impose have enabled you to take a liberal and broadminded view of all the problems you have been called upon to solve.
During the three years of Your Excellency's rule, we have experienced storm as well as sunshine. Each spring has witnessed a recrudescence of the plague, and each recrudescence has necessitated the adoption of stringent sanitary precautions. But the annoyance and discomfort that these have caused to many of us have been mitigated by the knowledge that we had your cordial sympathy, and that, whilst recognising the necessity of the measures adopted, you recognised also that consideration was due to those who might possibly suffer under them and insisted on the greatest patience being exercised.
The typhoon of November last year (1900), which caused so much loss and suffering to the boat population, gave to us another opportunity of appreciating your sympathy with even the most humble members of our Community when anything touches their welfare, and it was to Your Excellency that were due the measures of relief that were taken.
It will be long, too, before we forget that during the lamentable occurrences in the province of Chihli last year your prompt assistance restored to their homes many Cantonese who were in a state of extreme destitution and danger, and that, during that grave crisis, when the events in Peking had estranged European sympathy, we still received at your hands the same just treatment and consideration, and we feel proud that during that trying time your confidence in our loyalty remained unshaken. Your Excellency is also to be congratulated on having successfully maintained the most cordial relations with the local Government at Canton, thus enabling trade and commerce to be carried on with the neighbouring provinces without interruption or diminution.
Bar out of evil springs good, and the trials of the last few years have served to bring out into stronger relief the sympathetic character of your government and to bind the Chinese inhabitants of the Colony more closely to the British Empire.
Every department of our social and municipal life has experienced the stimulating effect of your keen interest. The increased accommodation at the Tung Wa Hospital testifies to it, as does the Infectious Diseases Hospital which is being built at Kennedy Town; and we recall with gratitude that we are indebted to Your Excellency for the recognition of the justice of our claim to treat Chinese suffering from infectious diseases in our own hospitals under Government medical inspection.
The erection of public bath-houses will give the labouring classes opportunities which they have not hitherto possessed in Hongkong of exercising cleanliness, and the maintenance of law and order will be rendered easier by the erection of the Central District Watchmen's House on land given by the Government, and by the opportunity thus given of improving the discipline of the force.
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