141. Writing from a spot where I have exceptional opportunities of knowing the facts, I must not conceal from Her Majesty's Government that this decline of Christianity is due, not to a want of zeal on the part of the Christian missionaries themselves, but rather to the conditions under which they are willing to work.
142. They proceed from this Colony into China supported by treaties, Consuls and, if need be, gunboats. The Chinese associate them with a system to which, whether rightly or wrongly, they object very much, the system of foreign intervention. A Chinese statesman who was visiting me said: "The missionary enterprises that have their head-quarters under your Government, would "be treated by us with the same friendly toleration that we accord to the Tauists and the Buddhists "but for their constant appeals to what they call treaty rights. But those treaty rights, though "framed by the late Emperor of the French and by the illustrious Lord Palmerston in the interest "of true Christianity only, and not for any political object whatever, do not appear to us Chinese to "be as elevated above worldly considerations as their religiously minded authors doubtless intended "and the consequence is that Christianity is making no way; is, indeed, declining visibly."
143. There are other causes also in operation in the social and commercial life of Hongkong that cannot have a very beneficial effect on the Heathen population near us. In explaining why he did not send a son to be trained in Hongkong, one of the Canton merchants of the old Hongs said to me,- "Your Western progress, which makes children so independent of their parents, and substitutes "individual and youthful energy for family ties and the influence of grey hairs, may suit you, but we do not like it. Your commercial laws, by which a trader can get rid of his debts without paying "them, are strange to us. We prefer the antiquated system by which debts must be paid in full; if "not by the debtor himself, by his children or grand-children, or other descendants."
144. My opinion was recently asked by Her Majesty's Government as to the expediency of discontinuing the ecclesiastical grants which are paid to the Colonial Chaplain and Sexton of the Church of England. I have reported in favour of maintaining them.
145. A certain number of the Government Officials are members of the Church of England, and no doubt, they accepted office expecting to receive gratuitous religious ministrations.
146. Though the wealthiest and most numerous class of ratepayers-the Chinese-get no benefit from the Colonial Chaplain, they have not the slightest objection to see his salary on the Estimates. The few Chinese who trouble themselves about such matters, say that this is a Crown Colony, that Her Majesty is the Head of the Church of England, and that they, therefore, have no desire to see any discontinuance of the ecclesiastical grants.
Government House, Hongkong, 29th of April, 1881.
J. POPE HENNESSY.