6.
unfortunately the former is asked to undertake all sorts of duties, which are not properly speaking police duties at all, with the result that muddle ensues and serious mistakes are
made. As a concrete example, the Government promulgated, without enough consultation with expert opinion the
Hong Kong Piracy Ordinance and it fell to this department to carry out most of the details of the Ordinance. The result
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was that shipowners were hardly aware of what was happening until they found their ships "grilled" out of all recognition. Protest after protest was made and reference to the findings of the Piracy Minority Committee, which you have on your files in London, will illustrate more fully than I need here detail what happened. The report in question left the
Government cold and it was not until a Chinese River steamer "grilled" under the Piracy Ordinance, collided with another craft just outside the harbour and sank with 300 people on board, who were drowned like rats in a trap, that the officials most concerned woke up and rescinded the Piracy Ordinance.
?
The punitive expedition to Bias Bay is an example of how ill-devised Rear-Admiral Boyle was by the local Government in carrying out this expedition, which was effected in cooperation with the Police Department. In this respect I do not blame the police as much as I do the Government, because whatever the department's views may have been, the Government should have known better than to countenance an expedition of
this sort.
Medical Department. I am not properly qualified to
say much about this department, except insofar as it functions in quarantine matters. Two or three British medical officers and one or two Chinese are employed in this department; but it is only within recent years that the Government has paid much attention to quarantine. Hitherto, they were satisfied - with