78
girls to continue, and from time to time we are horrified to read some story of cruelty to one of these poor little girls.
But the times that cruelty becomes known must be a very small proportion of the times when cruelty is inflicted. The Christian conscience of the civilized world has decided that slavery is an intolerable evil, and we as a Christian nation ought no longer to tolerate a real and practical slavery, by whatever term it may be called, to exist any longer under our flag.
CC
It is the apathy and indifference of the greater number of British people here, that has permitted so old-fashioned an evil to continue. No human being should be able to own another. Least of all should these little girls be owned and bought and sold as is done here. It has long been our boast that our British Empire brings freedom, and technically, of course, slavery is not recognised anywhere within it; but for all practical purposes, slavery does exist here, as far as these poor little girls are concerned, and while such is the case, we have no right to boast that our flag is the symbol of freedom.
*
In this colony there are probably many thousands of these little girls, some of them sold by their parents, some of them stolen from their parents, and sold into slavery. Some of them are no doubt kindly treated, but many of them are not; some of them are grossly ill-treated; and even if they were all well-treated, it would be still a cruel injustice that they should not be free.
While we enjoy our freedom and our pleasures and amusements, these poor children are at the beck and call of every member of the Chinese household into which they have been sold; crouching often in fear and terror from the blows and beatings so freely dealt out to them. It is an injustice in God's sight, and one which we should exert ourselves to bring to an end.
''Justice,' said Edmund Burke, 'is itself the great stand- ing policy of civil society, and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.'
"with no
"These poor children," continued the preacher, knowledge of a parent's love, and knowing nothing of the pleasures of childhood, deserve our interest and compassion, and their very helplessness ought to arouse us all to take up their cause and see to it that this vile system of property in human beings is stopped. 'What doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.'"
That was the text of his sermon.
Well, we were very much aroused, as were many other people in the colony by this most courageous sermon, and we made further inquiries, both among the British residents. and also among Chinese Christians. All that we heard bore out the sermon, and we were to be brought very soon into closer contact still with this appalling cruelty. Below the hotel in which we lived was a Chinese house, the owners of which had many of these girl slaves, one of them being a small child about eight years old.
One evening we were on the balcony overlooking this house, when we heard the most terrible screams from this little child, in which pain and terror were dominant. The owner of the hotel and his wife informed us that they had often heard similar sounds, as of someone in agony," the hotel proprietor said, coming from this house. We reported the matter immediately at the British Police station. The British sergeant said, "It is probably a slave girl!"
44
We then brought the matter to the notice of the Chief of Police, the Secretary for Chinese affairs, and the Chaplain who had preached the sermon. Also to all the people we thought would be likely to feel the position to be unworthy of a British colony.
Finally, I wrote a letter to the local press protesting against the system, and my husband was informed officially that he must stop my protests or relinquish his appointment. He chose to relinquish it rather than retain it on such conditions.
79