20
21
60
2L
8. (a.) It will be recollected that a main element of the religion of the Chinese is the worship of ancestors. Consequently, the adoption of male children is founded on the religious necessity of securing representatives to perform the Sacred Rites of the Family or clan (gens), the Sacra gentilicia of the Romans. "These Sacra" (to quote the words of Sir HENRY MAINE) "were the Roman form of an Institution which shows itself wherever society has not wholly shaken itself free from its primitive clothing. They are the sacrifices and ceremonies by which the brotherhood of the family is commemorated, the pledge and the witness of its perpetuity. Whatever be their nature,—whether it be true or not that in all cases they are the worship of some mythical ancestor,—they are everywhere employed to attest the sacredness of the family relation; and therefore, they acquire prominent significance and importance, whenever the continuous existence of the Family is endangered by change in the persons of its chief. Accordingly, we hear most about them in connexion with demises of domestic sovereignty." Again: "The Family is the type of an archaic society in all the modifications which it was capable of assuming; but the Family here spoken of is not exactly the family as understood by a modern. In order to reach the ancient conception, we must give to our modern ideas an important extension, and an important limitation. We must look on the family as constantly enlarged by the absorption of strangers within its circle, and we must try to regard the fiction of adoption as so closely simulating the reality of kinship that neither law nor opinion makes the slightest difference between a real and an adoptive connexion. On the other hand, the persons theoretically amalgamated into a family by their common descent, are practically held together by common obedience to their highest living ascendant, the father, grandfather, or great-grandfather. The patriarchal authority of the chieftain is as necessary an ingredient in the notion of the family group, as the fact, (or assumed fact) of its having sprung from his loins. And hence we must understand that if there be any persons who, however truly included in the brotherhood by virtue of their blood-relationship, have nevertheless, de facto withdrawn themselves from the Empire of its ruler, they are always in the beginnings of law, considered as lost to the family. It is this patriarchal aggregate, the modern Family, this cut down on one side, and extended on the other, which meet us on the threshold of primitive jurisprudence.”
9. It will be recollected that the archaic laws and customs thus described by the high authority of HENRY MAINE, are still as much the rule of social life and feeling in China, as they were, twenty-five centuries ago, both in China and at Rome.
10. The adoption of female children as daughters stands on a different footing from the adoption of male children as sons. But on this point, I would refer to the full explanations given by Mr. Justice RUSSELL, especially with respect to the grave abuses often arising from female adoption; and which the Government and Legislature of Hongkong have already done much, and will endeavour to do more, to detect, to prevent, and to punish.
11. (b.) With regard to Domestic Service among the Chinese at Hongkong, I will again refer to Mr. RUSSELL'S statements of facts and arguments which can hardly be abbreviated without impairing at once their force, their perspicuity, and their practical usefulness.
12. It will be seen that Mr. RUSSELL recapitulates his statements and conclusions in the following terms :----
1. It is shown that child adoption in China and among the Chinese in Hongkong is always accompanied by the payment of money and a "deed of gift" or bill of sale when the adopted are strangers-in-blood; and that even money passes in the case of relatives if the parents of the adopted child are poor or not nearly related to the adopting parents.
2. It is shown that male children are not bought and sold as servants in Hongkong nor in the Canton province, but that female children are disposed of for money by their parents according to Chinese usage and custom, and that the Chinese authorities recognise such sales as binding if executed with due formalities, whilst Hongkong treats all such transactions as null and void, giving no rights and conferring no title.
3. It is shown that the abuses arising from the Chinese system of passing money in the case of adoption and domestic service are :—
1° Kidnapping to some extent.
9. Brothel bondage; and that female children who are voluntarily parted with by their parents for daughters and servants may be sold as prostitutes by disreputable persons.
Enclosure 2.
4. It is shown that claims set up by Chinese to ownership on the ground of purchase have been promptly set aside in Hongkong and the claimants punished for any assault or offence committed against the person claimed—and that no opportunity has been lost of proclaiming the freedom of the subject.
5. It has been shown that the laws have been amended from time to time to the utmost limit to protect women and girls and children against forced or fraudulent emigration or sales for purposes of prostitution, (see Ordinance 2 of 1875, annexed).
6. It has been shown that the supervision of brothels, the instructing the registered women as to their rights, and the system of photographing registered prostitutes and women and children who intend to emigrate, have done much good and that there has been an enormous reduction in the kidnapping cases and selling women for prostitution since the introduction of those measures, convictions being 29 persons in 1882 as against 68 in a former year, and only 4 up to the present date.
7. It has been shown that there are fatal objections to the registration of children purchased for adoption or domestic service, and it is suggested that the Registrar General and a Chinese Committee should investigate cases of a suspicious nature with power to call upon "pocket-mothers" to give security for their bona fides towards "pocket-daughters"; also that the Registrar General should be able to apply to a Judge in Chambers for a writ of Habeas Corpus with the view of taking away from improper custodians a purchased child. It is also suggested that stone tablets stating the law of freedom on English soil should be erected in places of public resort.
13. It will be perceived that any infringements by contract or sale of the personal liberty secured by English jurisprudence and custom however in harmony with Chinese jurisprudence and custom, such infringements may be, are null and void in the eye of the law in the English Colony of Hongkong, while any attempts to enforce such contracts or sales would be liable to severe and deterrent punishment by the English Courts. The persistent efforts of the Colonial Government and Legislature during a series of years to protect the personal liberty of every sex and class of the Chinese denizens of this island, cannot be regarded as otherwise than praiseworthy, and, to a large extent, successful. From my personal knowledge I can bear witness that the Executive Government and the Judicial Bench are now of one mind on this subject.
14. With regard to Mr. RUSSELL'S practical suggestions for further exertions in the same direction, they meet with the hearty concurrence of the present Registrar General and Protector of the Chinese, (Mr. STEWART). They have also been approved by myself and by the Executive Council; and I propose to take the necessary measures for carrying them into execution, subject to Your Lordship's sanction.
15. In conclusion, I would repeat the remarks made in a previous despatch to the effect that the English in Hongkong are in an utterly different position from that held by the English in India. In the latter country, we succeeded to the rule of great nations and countries which had already long before our arrival, attained to a high degree of civilized organization, and whose laws and institutions we were bound to respect and maintain, so far as they were not repugnant to humanity and to the imperial policy of England. But the island of Hongkong on the contrary, when annexed to the British Empire in 1843, was merely a barren rock, uninhabited save by a handful of fishermen and pirates. The Chinese Merchants and others who have since voluntarily sought the protection of the English flag are not, with few exceptions, native born, or naturalized British subjects, nor permanent residents in this dependency. The Chinese, like the English and other Europeans, come here for a time, to make money, hoping to return ultimately to their native homes. They must be taught, as I recently, with all courtesy, informed an influential deputation of the Chinese community, that if they deliberately choose, for their own purposes, to dwell on British territory, they must, while entitled to the protection of the English laws, learn to obey those laws.
I have, &c.,
The Right Honourable
THE EARL OF DERBY,
&c., &c.,
&c.
(Signed)
G. F. BOWEN.
20
21
60
2L
8. (a.) It will be recollected that a main element of the religion of the Chinese is the worship of ancestors. Consequently, the adoption of male children is founded on the religious necessity of securing representations to perform the Sacred Rites of the Family or clan (gens), the Sacra gentilicia of the Romans. "These Sacra" (to quote the words of Sir HENRY MAINE)" were the Roman form of an Institution which shows itself wherever society has not wholly shaken itself free from its primitive clothing. They are the sacrifices and ceremonies by which the brother- hood of the family is commemorated, the pledge and the witness of its perpetuity. Whatever be their nature,-whether it be true or not that in all cases they are the worship of some mythical ancestor,-they are everywhere employed to attest the sacredness of the fainily relation; and therefore, they acquire prominent significance and importance, whenever the continuous existence of the Family is endangered by change in the persons of its chief. Accordingly, we hear most about them in connexion with demises of domestic sovereignty." Again: "The Family is the type of an archaic society in all the modifications which it was capable of assuming; but the Family here spoken of is not exactly the family as understood by a modern. In order to reach the ancient conception, we must give to our modern ideas an important extension, and an important limitation. We must look on the family as constantly enlarged by the absorption of strangers within its circle, and we must try to regard the fiction of adoption as so closely simulating the reality of kinship that neither law nor opinion makes the slightest difference between a real and an adoptive connexion. On the other hand, the persons theoretically amalgamated into a family by their common descent, are practically held together by common obedience to their highest living ascendant, the father, grandfather, or great-grand- father. The patriarchal authority of the chieftain is as necessary an ingredient in the notion of the family group, as the fact, (or assumed fact) of its having sprungs from his loins. And hence we must understand that if there be any persons who, however truly included in the brotherhood by virtue of their blood-relationship, have nevertheless, de facto withdrawn themselves from the Empire of its ruler, they are always in the beginnings of law, considered as lost to the family. It is this patriarchal aggregate, the modern Family, this cut down on one side, and extended on the other, which meet us on the threshold of primitive jurisprudence.”
9. It will be recollected that the archaic laws and customs thus described by the high authority of HENRY MAINE, are still as much the rule of social life and feeling in China, as they were, twenty-five centuries ago, both in China and at Rome.
10. The adoption of female children as daughters stands on a different footing from the adoption of male children as sons. But on this point, I would refer to the full explanations given by Mr. Justice RUSSELL, especially with respect to the grave abuses often arising from female adoption; and which the Government and Legislature of Hongkong have already done much, and will endeavour to do inore, to detect, to prevent, and to punish.
11. (b.) With regard to Domestic Service among the Chinese at Hongkong, I will again refer to Mr. RUSSELL'S statements of facts and arguments which can hardly be abbreviated without impairing at once their force, their perspecuity, and their practical usefulness.
12. It will be seen that Mr. RUSSELL recapitulates his statements and conclu- sions in the following terms :----
1. It is shewn that child adoption in China and among the Chinese in Hongkong is always accompanied by the payment of money and a
"deed of gift" or bill of sale when the adopted are strangers-in-blood; and that even money passes in the case of relatives if the parents of the adopted child are poor or not nearly related to the adopting parents.
2o. It is shewn that male children are not bought and sold as servants in Hongkong nor in the Canton province, but that female children are disposed of for money by their parents according to Chinese usage and custom, and that the Chinese authorities recognise such sales as binding if executed with due formalities, whilst Hongkong treats all such transactions as null and void, giving no rights and conferring no title.
3. It is shewn that the abuses arising from the Chinese system of passing in the case of adoption and domestic service are :---
1° Kidnapping to some extent.
money
9. Brotbel bondage; and that female children who are voluntarily parted with by their parents for daughters and servants may be sold as prostitutes by disreputable persons.
Enclosure 2.
4. It is shewn that claims set up by Chinese to ownership on the ground
of purchase have been promptly set aside in Hongkong and the claimants punished for any assault or offence committed against the person claimed- and that no opportunity has been lost of proclaiming the freedom of the subject.
5o It has been shewn that the laws have been amended from time to time to the utmost limit to protect women and girls and children against forced or fraudulent emigration or sales for purposes of prostitution, (see Ordinance 2 of 1875, annexed).
6 It has been shewn that the supervision of brothels, the instructing the registered women as to their rights, and the system of photographing re- gistered prostitutes and women and children who intend to emigrate, have done much good and that there has been an enormous reduction in the kid- napping cases and selling women for prostitution since the introduction of those measures,
convictions being 29 persons in 1882 as against 68 in a former year, and only 4 up to the present date.
7. It has been shewn that there are fatal objections to the registration of children purchased for adoption or domestic service, and it is suggested that the Registrar General and a Chinese Committee should investigate cases of a suspicious nature with power to call upon "pocket-mothers" to give security for their bond fides towards " pocket-daughters"; also that the Registrar General should be able to apply to a Judge in Chambers for a writ of Habeas Corpus with the view of taking away from improper custodians a purchased child. It is also suggested that stone tablets stating the law of freedom on English soil should be erected in places of public resort.
13. It will be perceived that any infringements by contract or sale of the personal liberty secured by English jurisprudence and custom however in harmony with Chinese jurisprudence and custom, such infringements may be, are null and void in the eye of the law in the English Colony of Hongkong, while any attempts to enforce such contracts or sales would be liable to severe and deterrent punish- ment by the English Courts. Then persistent efforts of the Colonial Government and Legislature during a series of years to protect the personal liberty of every sex and class of the Chinese denizes of this island, cannot be regarded as otherwise than praiseworthy, and, to a large extent, successful. From my personal know- ledge I can bear witness that the Executive Government and the Judicial Bench are now of one mind on this subject.
14. With regard to Mr. RUSSELL'S practical suggestions for further exertions in the same direction, they meet with the hearty concurrence of the present Registrar General and Protector of the Chinese, (Mr. STEWART). They have also been approved by myself and by the Executive Council; and I propose to take the necessary measures for carrying them into execution, subject to Your Lordship's sanction.
15. In conclusion, I would repeat the remarks made in a previous despatch to the effect that the English in Hongkong are in an utterly different position from that held by the English in India. In the latter country, we succeeded to the rule of great nations and countries which had already long before our arrival, attained to a high degree of civilized organization, and whose laws and institutions we were bound to respect and maintain, so far as they were not repugnant to humanity and to the imperial policy of England. But the island of Hongkong on the contrary, when annexed to the British Empire in 1843, was merely a barren rock, unin- habited save by a handful of fishermen and pirates. The Chinese Merchants and others who have since voluntarily sought the protection of the English flag are not, with few exceptions, native born, or naturalized British subjects, nor permanent residents in this dependency. The Chinese like the English and other Europeans, come here for a time, to make money, hoping to return ultimately to their native homes. They must be taught as I recently, with all courtesy, informed an in- fluential deputation of the Chinese community, that if they deliberately choose for their own purposes, to dwell on British territory, they must, while entitled to the protection of the English laws, learn to obey those laws.
I have, &c.,
The Right Honourable
THE EARL OF DERBY,
&c., fe.,
fc.
(Signed)
G. F. BOWEN.
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.