CO129-478 - Public Offices & Others - 1922 — Page 267

(4)

264

1

of the Chinese community and cause unrest.

We beg respectfully to urge that the recent formation of

& Society in Hong Kong, by Chinese and British merchants, to

advocate the abolition of the Mui Tsai system, la significant

of the existence of a growing public opinion in the Colony

adverse to the custom, and points to the probability that a

far more drastic treatment of the question by the Goverment

than that hitherto proposed, would not be attended by the risko which the Secretary of State fears, and would re-assure public opinion in this country, which is gravely disturbed at the maintenance of a practice alien to British tradition and go

fruitful of abuses, in a British Colony.

Our Committee has been interested to find that this

question formed the subject of an official Blue Book as long ago as 1882, when correspondence took place between the Governor of Hong Kong and the then Secretary of State for the Colonies,

as to the conditions of kidnapping children for purposes of

prostitution and domestic servitude in the Colony, as well as for export, which Cir John Smale, the Chief Justice, held to involve slavery according to the law of England, and to he ex- pressly contrary to Acts of the British Parliament for the

abolition of slavery.

I

The practice of buying and selling children for adoption or for domestic service was referred to in one of the Governor's Despatches as being less criminal but more extensive branch of the so-called slavery question". The Chief Justice gave it as his clear opinion that slavery, however mild and however much consented to by the slave himself, or his parents, or for however limited a period, is contrary to, ana prohibited by, the common law of England, and that every form of it was expressly prohibited by the Royal Proclamation of 1845.