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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

TIPC.O. 882

5 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-

COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO

SIB,

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No. 67.

SIR J. POPE HENNESSY, K.C.M.G., to the RIGHT HON. EDWARD

STANHOPE, M.P. (Received March 7, 1887.)

Mauritius, January 18, 1887.

WHEN you informed me in your despatch of last year that you had com- missioned Sir Hercules Robinson to investigate my administration, I simply acknow. ledged the receipt of your despatch, reserving to myself the right of commenting hereafter, if it should be necessary, on the appointment.

2. You gave me no time to remonstrate, if any grounds of objection existed. Sir Hercules Robinson had left his own Government to investigate mine before I received your despatch.

3. To send one Governor to try another whilst the latter was still Her Majesty's representative, and engaged in conducting the government of a Colony was, as far as I am aware, without precedent.

4. In another despatch, I am venturing to touch on the inconvenience, on general grounds, of the course you adopted. But there were special reasons why Sir Hercules Robinson should not have been selected to try me.

5. Sir, Hercules Robinson had been Governor of Hong Kong from 1859 to 1865. I had the honour of being Governor of Hong Kong from 1877 to 1882.

6. Whilst I did full justice to my predecessor's wise policy respecting the currency of the Colony and other matters of a similar nature, it was my disagreeable duty to expose some abuses that he had introduced in 1860,-abuses that inflicted much suffering on the Chinese community, and were not creditable to British administration.

7. Every Governor is liable to have his mistakes remedied by his successors. No doubt my successors very often do good service in that respect. But unfortunately, my exposé of the conduct of Sir Hercules Robinson did not escape attention: the action of the Governor of Hong Kong in 1860 was condemned in unsparing terms in 1880 and 1881 by public men in England.

8. In 1860 the Governor of Hong Kong created an office called the Inspector of Brothels, and sanctioned a system of inforiners paid to obtain evidence against women (Public Proceedings of the Police Magistrate Court of Hong Kong for 1860-61, -62, -63, 61, -65, &c. appended to the Commissioners' Report of 1879, pages 44 to 65). About the same period that the system of paid informers was introduced, the Governor ordered or allowed the brothel fees to be mixed up in the general revenue and expenditure of Hong Kong.

9. Respecting the latter point, Sir Harcourt Johnstone asked a question in the House of Commons in 1878. My despatch, in reply, was laid before Parliament, in which the following report from Mr. C. C. Smith, the Registrar-General, was quoted :- "From the year 1859 until the present time the revenue and expenditure (in connexion with houses of ill-fame), have been included in the annual estimates of the Colony which have from time to time in due course received legislative sanction. Under what circumstances this arrangement was commenced I have no knowledge, but I recollect having made some inquiry about it in the time of Sir Hercules Robinson, when I took charge of this office, and was informed that after consideration it had been so ordered by the Governor."

10. It was stated in Parliament that I had reversed the order given by my predecessor, and that the general revenue would no longer be tainted by such fees. It was also stated that I had put a stop to the system of informers and to other abuses.

11. A despatch of mine was also laid before Parliament in which I said that the brothel laws had created and intensified slavery in Hong Kong, and the following extract from an official report, dated 2nd November 1886, was quoted by me:→→→

There is another matter connected with the brothels, licensed and unlicensed, in Hong Kong, which almost daily assumes a graver aspect. I refer to what is no less than the trafficking in human flesh between the brothel keepers and the vagabonds of the Colony."

Such was the official report made the year succeeding Sir Hercules Robinson's six years of administration.

12. In a document (Parliamentary Papers, 1881, (C. 3093), page 32) signed by the late Samuel Morley, M.P., the following remarks were made on the disclosures in question:-

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Participating in the disgrace which attaches to every British subject for national association with such shameful disclosures, this Committee nevertheless derives

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satisfaction from the fact that Her Majesty possesses public servants who, impelled by a sense of right and justice, have not shrunk from exposing the organised iniquity disclosed by the Report, which some would have been tempted to conceal because of its intrinsic loathsomeness.

"This Committee further ventures to anticipate that by reason of the action taken by his Excellency, the Colonial revenues may in future be spared the pollution of direct participation in the 'wages of iniquity' derived from the most immoral and revolting of all trades."

For facility of reference I enclose a copy of this document from the Parliamentary Papers of 1881.

13. In the same Parliamentary Paper a despatch of mine was published in which I said "the system of informers cannot be too emphatically condemned.

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The

employment of inspectors of brothels has been a frequent source of abuse and corruption, and is thoroughly demoralising."

14. The system I thus ventured to condemn as being corrupt and demoralising was established (Letter of Colonial Secretary of Hong Kong dated 4th April 1860. Published in Commissioners' Report) by Sir Hercules Robinson. What the late Samuel Morley, M.P., had described as the pollution of the Colonial revenues by the wages of iniquity was also the work of Sir Hercules Robinson.

15. The Earl of Kimberley, in his reply of the 26th of July 1881, said (Papers laid before Parliament, August 11th (C. 3083), page 52);

"The system of informers paid to obtain evidence by personal intercourse with women, which was introduced in 1860 simultaneously with the appointment of inspectors (p. 10 of Report), was a revolting abuse, which you most properly put a stop to as far back as the month of October 1877."

16. That a Governor who had exposed what the Secretary of State called "a revolting abuse" should subsequently be put on his trial and judged by the identical Governor who was responsible for the abuse was hardly fair to either party.

17. But the opposite policy of Sir Hercules Robinson and myself on this subject was not confined to Hong Kong. The Ceylon Ordinance No. 17 of 1867, ia

"The Contagious Diseases Ordinance." It was introduced under the Government of Sir Hercules Robinson and passed, as the official report states "in accordance with the instructions of Her Majesty's Government."

18. On my arrival in Mauritius I found a similar Ordinance in the list of legislative work that I was expected to complete. It had been introduced by the Government, and referred to the Law Committee. My predecessor described it as a law similar to that in force in Ceylon and Hong Kong." "Having ascertained that its only supporters were a few of the English officials, and that the Mauritian gentlemen in the Legislative Council viewed it with abhorrence, at once put my veto on its progress.

19. Now that Mr. Stansfeld has induced the House of Commons to condemn the principle of this legislation, I can understand the friends of Sir Hercules Robinson saying that the system he introduced in Hong Kong in 1860 and the subsequent legislation in Ceylon were really due to his desire to comply with what he thought were the wishes of the authorities in Downing Street.

20. But, if I may presume to say so, such a statement would only indicate another reason why he was not precisely the class of official who should have been sent to sit in judgment upon me, unless indeed there were occult instructions to be carried out.

21. There were two other matters in which I had to mitigate or correct the policy enforced in Hong Kong by Sir Hercules Robinson.

22. The Pass system, by which the Chinese of Hong Kong suffered much inconvenience, and even oppression, had been vigorously applied during his adminis tration. I was accused of favouring the Natives, because I modified this system, rendered it less harsh to the Chinese, and checked the police corruption that for many years had been connected with it.

23. That I had put a stop in Mauritius to a similar system, as affecting the Indian hawkers, was one of the charges against me. Mr. Antelme and some of the English officials have always supported the Pass system, and they disapproved of my policy on the subject.

24. But, even if I had not seen the evils of the Pass system in Hong Kong, and the police oppression suffered by the Indian hawkers in Mauritius, what had become notorious in the neighbouring Cape Colony would have made me doubt its wisdom. In the transactions of the Aborigines Protection Society for 1884, page 162, it is onid, referring to the Cape Colony, The Pass Act has proved a grievous cause of

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"oppression to the educated portion of the Native community." The last Blue Book

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