CO129-222 - Acting Governor Cameron Governor Sir Bowen - 1885 [7-10] — Page 324

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England, represents only a small section, say, 300, of the community, strongly interested in the matter on personal and commercial grounds, whereas the soldiers and sailors on the Station exceed 3,000, and proper provision for their safety is an imperative duty of the Government. 4. Another circumstance which weighed power- fully with the Executive Council was the necessity of safeguarding the health of the large native population, who are too apathetic to take proper precautionary measures themselves, and who, from the ignorance of their own doctors, would be perfectly helpless on the outbreak of an epidemic.

5. The Council had also to bear in mind that Quarantine Regulations are strictly enforced in the neighbouring countries, especially at Saigon, Macao, and Manila; and that, if no Quarantine were enforced here, vessels from this Colony, on arrival at those places, would be subjected to severe restrictions. Not long ago, one of the principal firms in Hongkong urged this Govern- ment to impose restrictions on vessels arriving here from one of the Ports of China, in order that the Quarantine period at Manila might he reduced in the case of vessels arriving there from Hongkong.

6. Before finally deciding whether the English system of detention and examination or a modi- fied system of quarantine should be adopted, the Executive Council also examined the Colonial Surgeon and the Health Officer of the Port, so as to obtain their views on the question. These Officers, though unfavourable to Quaran- tine in England, admitted that we were not in possession of the means of carrying out efficiently here a system of detention and examination, as opposed to the enforcement of a modified Quaran-

tine.

7. Having due regard, however, to the terms of Lord DERBY's Despatch, No. 30, of the 13th February, 1885, and to the representations of the Chamber of Commerce dated the 10th April, 1885, the Council, while of opinion that the arguments in favour of Quarantine under the peculiar circumstances of this Colony were largely preponderant, resolved to make the restrictions on shipping as light as ordinary prudence would permit. A perusal of the Regulations made under the Provisions of Section 1 of Ordinance 9 of 1883, and published in the Gazette on the 27th June, 1885, (copies enclosed), will show that this was done. The Regulations then issued have hitherto imposed no hardship of any kind on shipping, native or foreign; as yet no single ship has been detained or put into Quarantine. In the event of a ship arriving from Nagasaki in Japan, the only Port at which epidemic Cholera is now known to be raging, the five days' detention which the Regulations require seems & com- paratively small matter, when weighed against the measure of public safety, which those Regula- tions are calculated to secure. The Regulations are only to be enforced in the event of any of the ports with which Hongkong is in frequent com- munication being infected. These are, chiefly