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which I enclose a copy, urging that our regulations
ought so to be amended that registration would have
the effect of "doing away with", and not "keeping
in existence", the mui-tsai in the Colony.
1929
2. I should explain that, on the occasion
of a meeting of the District Watch Committee, which
was held at Government House on the 5th November,
over which I presided, and to which reference is
made in the fifth paragraph of my despatch No. 499. of the 21st idem, the Attorney General stated that the term mui-tsai connotes a relation depending on the existence of two facts, namely (1) a fact in the past, i.e. the fact that money has been paid to
secure the services of a girl as a domestic servant,
and (2) a fact in the present, i.e. the fact that the girl in question is still being employed as a domestic servant by the person who paid the money, or by some person who acquired control of the girl
from, or on the death of, the person who made the
payment. He pointed out that nothing could alter the past fact, and that the present fact could only be altered by the employer's actually ceasing to employ the girl as a domestic servant. In other words, under our law it is impossible for the owner of a mui-tsai to change the status of such mui-tsai while she remains in his employment; and, if the status of a mui-tsai is to be changed in this Colony, it can only be done by transfer of the mui-tsai from her owner to some other person.
statement
This
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