ADDRESS OF HIS EXCELLENCY SIR JOHN POPE HENNESSY, K.C.M.G., TO THE
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL OF HONGKONG, 7TH OF FEBRUARY, 1882.
HONOURABLE Gentlemen of THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
In opening the Legislative Session of 1882, I have to inform you that HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN has been graciously pleased to confirm and allow thirteen of the fourteen Ordinances which were passed in 1881.
MACAO EXTRADITION ORDINANCE.
Of these Ordinances, No. 1 of 1881, the Macao Extradition Ordinance, is one which deals with a question that engaged the attention of my predecessors for forty years; it has now been settled by the negotiations of Lord KIMBERLEY and Lord GRANVILLE with the Government of Lisbon. And though undoubtedly the credit of that settlement belongs entirely to the Home Government, nevertheless the advantage of it will be felt by the Governments of Macao and Hongkong, for the Executives of both Colonies will now be enabled to deal with fugitive criminals in a way that they could not before.
PENAL LAWS Reform.
Ordinance No. 3 of 1881, the Penal Laws Amendment Ordinance, now confirmed by the Queen, is not the least important reform in colonial penal laws that has been effected in our time. It repeals or amends ten Ordinances, some of them of exceptional severity, and all practically directed against one race only. The Ordinance gives permanent legislative authority to a policy which the Royal prerogative enabled me to enforce for some years past, in spite of some little local criticism; and henceforth it will be illegal in this Colony to brand any criminal, to have public flogging, to allow flogging in Hongkong, except for such offences as entail flogging in England, or to allow flogging on the back. The impolitic system now abolished by the Queen and the legislature of this Colony, though devised for the suppression of crime, had actually manufactured a criminal population and increased crime. This abolition has been followed by the diminution of crime, and a universal feeling throughout the Colony, to which you can all bear witness, that life and property have become more secure in Hongkong.
DECREASE OF CRIME.
I have no wish, gentlemen, to weary you with statistics, but I may perhaps quote the authentic figures which have recently been put before me with reference to the class of crimes which some years ago caused so much alarm throughout the Colony. I take the four years during which, as I have just mentioned, under the exercise of the Royal prerogative, I practically suspended those penal laws which Her Majesty has now abolished. In 1878 cases of murder numbered seven, and this number was reduced to four in 1879; in 1880 there was one case, and in 1881 two cases. Of cases of robbery with violence from the person, the number was 35 in 1878, 39 in 1879, 25 in 1880, and 19 in 1881. Cases of burglary, or larceny from dwelling houses, amounted to 113 in 1878 to 101 in 1879, to 53 in 1880, and to 60 in 1881. There were two assaults with intent to rob in 1880, and none in 1881. Taking the total of these really grave crimes, which formerly caused so much apprehension and alarm, -in 1878 they amounted to 173, in 1879 to 145, in 1880 to 81, and in 1881 to 81.