29
or adopted", and with a view to this change they
proposed that a preliminary and complete report of
the whole subject should be made the task of a
Government officer. Their proposal would provide
that this new Official Guardian of all such children
should have the most complete legal and administrative
powers to make such provision in each case as appeared
to him best for the child. His wards would include
not only mui-tsai, but boy children also who had been
separated from their families. The number would also
include all adopted children, and it is pointed out that this would remove the present major difficulty of distinguishing between mui-tsai and adopted daughters,
in and the raising of false pleas prosecutions in
respect of unregistered girls.
It becomes clear therefore that if the
Governor sees his way to approve a change on these
lines, the question of unregistered mui-tsai would be
very largely solved. Sir George Maxwell himself, in
his letter of the 23rd of November (No. 14 on 1901/6 General) points to numbers of prosecutions in Hong Kong concerning
fee unregistered mui-tsai as a matter of contrast with
the lack of similar prosecutions in Malaya, and he
attributes this to a failure in Malaya to ensure
adequate arrangements for inspection.
similar
the Governer
My conclusion therefore is that pending the receipt of the Governor's comments on the major
recommendations of the Hong Kong report, we should not
Sn & Maxwell take up with him the question of calling on him to furnish particular observations on the matter of
mui-tsai who may have escaped registration under the
present system, and I submit a draft letter to
Sir George Maxwell in reply to 55 and 57 on this file.
10.12