CO129-473 - Individuals - 1921 — Page 168

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administration made him powerful enough to be considered dangerous, and he was assasinated by order of the Peking Government a year or so later. He introduced a mmber of enlightened reforma, many of them far in advance of the times: and was strong enough to impose his will on the people while he lived in everything but the question of mui tsai. In that matter, at the height of his power, he forbade sales, decreed a system of registration set up an expensive system of homes, and gave inquisi- torial authority to his man;- and nothing happened, except that he was almost openly laughed at. And the tendency in many matters since the Revolution, to settle back again int the old Chinese groove, makes any auch

movement" now even less likely to succeed.

:

That the system has and must have its abuses

cannot be denied. That the manber of cases in which it

ia abused is very large is also true: but there are no

data for making a proportionate estimate beyond such

generalities as that the custom is practically universal

and the system accepted. The abuses, however, are

actively recognised as abuses by all the better Chinese;

and with them it is only a question of the extent to

which they can be checked; and granted that the system

itself must be allowed as yet to continue, this problem

of checking the abuses becomes the immediate matter in

hand.

In a matter of this nature, it is not possible

There is a very

to dissociate Hong Kong from China.

large daily passenger traffic with the Colony by River

steamer,