CO129-333 - Governor Nathan - 1906 [1-4] — Page 119

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by people of the black or yellow races, of wandering

Europeans who come not to settle but, at any rate in the

majority of cases, to lead an irregular life supported by

charity and not infrequently ending in crime, cannot but

have a bad effect on the estimation in which all Europeans

are held in those Colonies. The result is particularly

pernicious in a place where the bulk of the population

are Chinese who regard the best Europeans as belonging to

a lower civilization than their own and at the same time

are easily made the victims of imposture by the worst.

3.

The object aimed at in Hongkong

is to exclude such wandering Europeans without imposing

unnecessary or undue restrictions and liabilities upon.

interests as important as those of the shipping trade.

4.

That this object cannot be ob-

-tained by legislation on the lines of the American system

or of the Aliens Act of 1905 has already been explained to

the Board of Trade and is apparently generally recognised

if not entirely realized by them.

5.

If effect were given to their

suggestion to provide suitable machinery by which Masters

would be enabled without much difficulty to prove that a

vagrant was at the time of landing in possession of the

means