CO129-142 - Public Offices & Others - 1869 — Page 23

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The Dispatch letter above referredt.

and

addi

18.

ŝi and comparatively safe conditions, a vent S funder worst conditions would have been the at inaction, it is very probable that, as ence Association, he might have subscrib for subscribing a remonstrance of the kind Peter to the Secretary of State.

COLONIAL SECRETARY'S OFFICE, HONG Kone, Oct. 20, 1868. SIA, 1. The attention of his Excellency Sir Richard Graves Mac- Donnell has beeb -géently called to a memorial addressed by the Stand- ing Committee of the Social Science Association to his Grace the Secrecessarily and for the sake of money it encourages a vice which might tary of Sta for the Colonies praying that an immediate stop should he put to the system adopted here of permitting gambling in certain houses licensed by Government and subject to police surveillance.

2. In parag

5 of that memorial the following passage occurs :-- "Since the surser of 1866, when the first Ordinance was passed, the farma had been created by the local authorities, put up by them to sale, and granted to the highest bidder.”

3. That assertion is not merely incorrect, but is even totally opposed to all the details fully given in a series of despatches which must have been at the time before the committee, because they allude to and quote from them. The Governor, therefore, is persuaded that the committee will at once ensure to this contradiction as wide a publicity an to the original misstatement.

possible nuder anih circumstances that, like th committed by might have regarded the policy pursued at Heligolandy Bader, and here, as identical. Gambling, he might have rellected, is permitted at all those places, a revenue results therefrom in each. Such a policy is indispensable at Baden and Heligoland, where unne-

otherwise die out or at least decline. Therefore he might perhaps have argued it is equally indefeusible at Hong Kong. Nevertheless, no one here would pretend that there is the remotest chance of the vice of gambling being diminished by the suppression of the licensed houses, as would be the case at Baden. It would simply become indefinitely require no police interference, however little, there would inevitably be more extended than now. If it were not legalised so completely as to police corruption and consequent insecurity to the community. Un- less, therefore, it be contended that similar consequences would follow the abolition of the monopoly at Heligoland there is no parallel be tween the two cases.

Government in such a matter, are here allowed to cater the licensed 14. Again, only natives, who are practically beyond the reach of 4. It is true that the mischief caused by circulating an incorrect houses, and unless it be shown that Europeans are similarly excluded version of actual facts, especially when so framed as to support the at Heligoland, and that gaming is only permitted there to an over- argument of those who use such a weapon, seldom admits of any arle-whelming majority of Orientals, or strangers coming and going in quate reparation. No acknowledgment of such wrongful proceeding, numbers exceeding 600,000 every year, and that is only allowed "ba- particularly, as must be the case here, when not extracted till months cause they cannot otherwise be efficiently reached by the police no subsequently, and, perhaps after close of the discussion affected parallel is established between that place and Hong Kong. thereby, can undo the mischief which it may have cansed. Neverthe- 15. Finally, to completo such parallel, it would be further necessary less, the right of the party misrepresented to require even that inade-elves as here from the first to keep down any revenue accruing from to show that the authorities at Heligoland had been exerting them- quate reparation is indisputable.

5. In the present case it must be concoded that this Government has been most completely misrepresented on the very point as to which it was easiest and most unfair to excite popular prejudice. To speak of this Government as selling the licences in question to the "highest hidder," is to imply that it was animated by a sordid motive of greed.

6. Such a statement is a very extraordinary misrepresentation of facts recorded in documents to which the committee refer and had access. All Sir Richard Graves MacDonnell's despatches in connection with the subject to the end of last April were before the committee, having been presented to the House of Lords last June.

7. It would be idle to repeat here the various details given in those despatches as to the anxiety of this Government to deal with a great palli evil without reference to the question of revenue. The com- aittee can refer to them, if they wish, but I am instructed to beg their special attention to paragraph & in Sir Richard Graves MacDonnell'a iespatch (No. 439) of the 30th of last January as follows:---

Your Grace, however, is sufficiently aware that this Government Jas "ot been swayed by any desire of gain. On the contrary, I have never written a despatch in which I have not regretted that a policy justified by necessity should be encumbered with any pecuniary gain, Fe the latter affords to opponents of that policy an opportunity to imo myself and my council motives the reverse of those by which we are animated. If mere addition of revenue had been our object, I should not have accepted 252,000 dols. as the annual licence fee instead of upwards of 360,000 dols., which was actually offered, nor would I have gradually reduced the original 260,000 dola. to 204,000 dols, at which it stands during the present month.*

8. The above plain statement completely disproves the assertion of the gmmittee that, since 1866, the licences "had been put up to sale and granted to the highest bidder," and I am now further instructed to add that not merely had 360,000 dola. been declined, but that by consecutive reductions the licence fees had been lowered till a few weeks back they reached only 156,000 dols.

Even that reduction was less than his Excellency had hoped to fact, for as more fully explained in his recent financial statement to the Legislative Council, an extract from which is appended hereto, ho was prepared (Par. 19) to make any reduction necessary to compensate the censees for excluding all but Chinese from the play houses--a re- form now most effectually carried out.

10. Reasons alluded to in the accompanying appendix, and more fully explained in the Governor's communications to the Secretary of State, have produced for the moment the unexpected result of an in- crease of licence fees just as the frequenters of the licensed houses were diminished.

the licences beyond the amount necessary to work the system as a strictly police measure, a motive which it is not pretended to adduce in favour of licensing gaming in Europe.

that the only argument in the memorial of the committee which seems 16. It may therefore be as well to speak frankly, and declare at once

to his Excellency deserving notice is their suggestion (par. 9) that the authorities here have not as yet so exhausted the direct means at their disposal for the suppression of gambling as to justify a departure tration of this the committee state that the Chinese laws and the local from the general principles of penal jurisprudence elsewhere. In illus ordinances against gambling had never been fairly put in execution, the tithings, hundreds, and frank pledges, which in China had always and especially that the Ordinance for improving the Chinese law of been found quite sufficient for the entire suppression of the practice, had never been put in force at all.

17. It is difficult to imagine where the committee got their informa- tion as to the entire suppression of gambling in Chinese elties by laws establishing tithings and hundreds, &c. Gambling has been now and who were guided sometimes by upright and sometimes by cor- then stopped in a particular place for a short time by high officials, rapt motives, such as that of raising the toll on an illegal luxury. This, however, has been done by extreme severity, anch as razing houses to the ground, and tortaring the landlords, measures to which, it is true, this Government has never yet restored. It is, however, totally without foundation to assert that gaming does not prevail most extensively and publicly in every city of the Empire, Although nominally the law forbids it. This subject, however, has been sufficiently alluded to in the Governor's despatch of the 30th January last (paragraphe 3, 4 and 5), which the committee had before them when advancing the above extraordinary assertion.

18. At this moment the police system inaugurated by his Excellency amongst the Chinese-au institution quite apart from that of the colony is working admirably, but the last thing which a resident here could dream of would be the handing over to any Chinese, whether in tithings, hundreds, or otherwise than as parties directly and openly interested therein like the licensees, the slightest control over their gambling brethren. The committee little know what a door they pro- posed to open to the vilest corruption and chicanery when they sug gested the controlling of gambling at Hong Kong by Chinese tithings and Frank pledges.

19. His Excellency is unable to follow the reasoning of the commit- tee in the other portions of par. 9 of their Memorial, because he can only state as the general result of the most determined efforts on the part of himself and all his subordinates that, whatever might have been the varying nature of his expectations from time to time, he has long been convinced of the impossibility of putting down gambling by any police which it is possible to procure here, or even with the best months here.

prefer legalising gambling of all descriptions in the colony, which is 20. Sooner than recur to the infamous past his Excelleney would the only alternative that he thinks practicable, but he has steadily de- clined to bear a part voluntarily in continuing the sham which the committee unwillingly recommend.

11. It is perhaps superfluous now to accumulate further evidence of the inaccuracy into which the Social Science Committee have fallen as to a matter of fact, when they represented this Government as selling the licence monopoly to "the highest bidder." The Governor, how-police in the world, if they could be procured, and were stationed six ever, wishes to record at the same time his conviction of the excellent objects of the committee and of the general body which they represent. He attributes to them nothing more than an inadvertent although an indefensible mistake. It is, however, unfortunate that it occurred in reference to the very point on which it was most important that there should be no misrepresentation; and it cannot be doubted that this will be a source of regret to the committee, especially when they learn that at the very last mocting of the Legislative Council (vide Appendix, page 8) his Excelleney distinctly refused to accept the suggestion of a leading unofficial member of that body and use the licence fees for the purpose of diminishing the local taxation of the colony.

12. The personal feelings and sympathies of his Excellency are entirely with the committee, and had he never visited China, nor been compelled by his duty to this community to deal on the spot with the unquestioned and real evile arising from the inordinate love of gam- bling of the native population here, and the absolute necessity for

The appendix alluded to consists of paragraphs 12 to 22 of the Governor's Finan- efal Statement for 1869,

owed detracts from the free and noble institutions of the colony, 21. It is easy for the latter to say that the honest policy now fol- which were one day to stand as a model to work the regenera- tion of the Chinese Empire." Do the committee seriously think that the shrewd natives of China respected this Government a whit more, either for its intelligence or its efficiency, when the laws of the colony merely rendered an irrepressible vice more dangerous and odious, whilst it brought to light the venality of the paid guardians of the law? Or do the committee recommend that public men, instead of seeking to effect the greatest amount of good and shape their policy by what is itself right and practically most beneficial, should rather aim at a style of ad captandum legislation, tinselled and varnished to catch the applause of vapid declaimers, but

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