CO129-473 - Individuals - 1921 — Page 229

CO129 Colonial Office Hong Kong Records 理藩院香港檔案 All

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they will undoubtedly do their best to make it successful: but they will have nothing to do with

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registration and the risks of trying to act against their

active advice are that they may cease their actual co-operation and leave the Government to employ just the ordinary official methods,

Social workers in the Colony perhaps make too little allowance for the necessity for sympathy and

co-operation. Non-Xtians are apt to be throw

together as "heathens" and no custom with the slightest

"heathen" taint can be tolerated. The Chinese

recognise the attitude of mind, and allow for it:

they are broadminded enough to give Xtian effort full

opportunity and even to subscribe funds for it. But

they have their own civilization and customs and ask for

the same treatment in respect of mattera where their

conscience is free; and the muitsai question is one of

these, for the mere statement that the sale of a human

being is immoral does not in the circumstances carry any conviction to them. To cruelty they object

whether the human being has been bought or not: but

standards of cruelty vary, and it may even be doubted

whether there is more real ill treatment of children in

Hong Kong than there is in the Bast end of London. The question of child labour las on the Peak Road) is a separate ože. The children in these cases are probably natural children, for whom the parents have no place but at their side and they would hardly ow mui\tsai: they would more probably be sellers Mui sai are de a rule domestî servants. I understand

Commission

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