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H.
3.
At any rate, whatever the reason may have
been, they did not vote against the passing of the bill, There was, as will be seen, a division on the question whether clauses 4 and 5 of the bill which provided that no person should in future take into his employment a mui-tsei or a female domestic servant under ten years of age should be included in the part of the Ordinance which was to come into immediate operation or should be relegated to Part III which is to be brought into force by proclamation. Mr. Pollock proposed that they should be placed in Part III for reasons which, in the course of his speech, be made complete -ly incomprehensible.
4.
Having Your Grace's instructions that there could be no compromise on this point I decided that I could not accept the motion, even if Mr. Pollock's reasons had been intelligible, end the question went to a division with the result that all the Unofficial Members voted for the motion and all the Official Members against. In paragraph 2 of my previous despatch I deprecated the use of the official majority in order to pass the Ordinance but in the present case I felt certain that some at least of the Unofficial Members were not really in favour of Mr. Pollock's motion and that if they voted for it it would only be in order to preserve the solidarity of the opposition. I ascertained afterwards that I had correctly diagnosed the situation and that some of those who voted for the motion did not agree with it and shared my inability to understand Mr. Pollock's reasons. I am fully satisfied therefore that
official the use of the majority on this occasion has left no ill- feeling behind.
B.
The bill was read a third time and passed
on the 15th of February and it is therefore now clearly established that no more mai-tsai are to be engaged and
that no employer of a girl previously taken as a mi-taai can exercise any proprietory rights over her.
The