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evil should be eliminated completely from the Colony.
That being the case, the burden of the task of the police in dealing with the Mui Tsai evils will be lightened correspon- dingly.
3. Still another objection raised against Registration is the difficulty of distinguishing between Mui Tsai purchase and Child Ad-option. So far as the Society can see, no difficulty of any kind should arise in thafconnection. The suggested regula- tions submitted to you some time ago governing Registration, should compel the owners of Mui Tsai and the mothers of adopted daughters to declare themselves clearly at the time of registru- tion, and the offenders made liable to be penalised for making a false declaration, like everything else in point of law.
4. Over and over again it has been argued that the rich do the poor a great service by buying their children; from the standpoint of those who oppose registration,it has been said that the Mui Tsai system should redound to the benefit of Kwang- tung, in which there is much pauperism. But does it? If anything the perpetuation of the bad old system brings about the necessar- ily lowered standard of wages that gives rise to unemployment.
Obviously, the greater the number of Mui Tsai, the lesser demand for free domestic male and female servants (Amahs and Boys) and the lower the wages for free labour.
The plea of poverty so often put forward to justify the Mui Tsai system is a point that can easily be overlaboured, and therefore must needs be put to the severest test of logic. There is indeed, far too much loose thinking with regard to it.
This Society can see nothing illogical to relieve poverty as such. The fallacious reasoning lies, however, in think- ing it imperative to encourage the barter of human beings in order to ameliorate conditions. Surely there are other poverty stricken countries in the world, and how is it that the Mui Tsai system exists nowhere else to-day but in China? Admitting, for the sake of argument, that none would become inmates of sly brothels or become indentured labourers say, under the pressure of poverty? Yet how is it the law of the Colony pro hibits both sly prostitutuon and indentured labourers, and does not condone them as it does the Mui Tsai system on the grounds of poverty. It is repellent, is it not, to the moral integrity of the British Government to condone sly prostitution and indentured labour ? Then, also, if the law forbids a man becoming involun tarily an indentured labourer, how much more should it forbid forcing a little girl to become a Mui Tsai against her will.