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name.
Supply: Committee HOUSE OF COMMONS [Sir J. Simon.[ "who shall have the right to change her In case of any misfortune, each party shall acquiesce in Heaven's decree. Should there be any mystery as to the origin of the girl or she may desert home with her mother, the intermediary is held responsible to search for the girl and restore her to the owner without fail. To avoid any the un- reliability of a verbal promise, this deed is made as proof."
It is then executed by the parties. That is not, to my knowledge, an isolated transaction. You will observe that it is quite modern in date, because it bears the date of 4th October, 1929. But in reading through the Hong Kong papers of the last year or two, I am in a posi- tion to inform the Committee of the sort of price that prevails when you deal with somebody for a little girl of this sort. Here is a case where the price was 141 dollars, another where it was 150 dollars, and another where it was 145 dollars, and a fourth where it was 120 dollars. There is a case in which there were three girls, one sold for 80 dollars, one for 130 dollars, and the third for 150 dollars, and the child parted with for 150 dollars was resold for 300 dollars. Everyone of those cases has happened, as I can show from those papers, within the last two or three years. I would ask the Com- mittee to observe how serious this is if the excuse is to be that this is a mere form of adoption. The price is paid to the so-called seller. The girl gets nothing whatever. There is an intermediary or a middleman, who, apparently, is engaged in the transaction, because I have a second photograph which, translated, says the same thing. No consent from the girl is needed or given, and all these provisions about the rights to change her name and the selling of the poor thing, as you say when selling a horse, with all faults, quite plainly show that the excuse that it is nothing more than an original system of adoption is a very poor excuse indeed.
Mr. SANDHAM: Has it only hap pened during the last two or three years?
Sir J. SIMON: I am afraid that is not BO. It has gone on for a long time. It has been known for a very long time that cases of this sort have been happening, and I wish to make it plain to the Com- mittee that the Colonial Office, not only in the past, but more particularly in the present, have made
unquestionably
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Colonial Office. strenuous efforts to improve the matter. The last purpose to which I wish this Debate to be put is merely to hold up officials, who are doing their best, to attack, but I do think that if the real facts were realised by Members in the House of Commons and members of the public in the country, we should do much to strengthen the hands of the autho- rities who, I am sure, would wish to deal with the matter effectively.
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The hon. Gentleman opposite asked if these cases had only happened recently. Not at all. Hong Kong has been a British colony since 1841. It did not happen to be a British colony at the time Wilberforce was alive, but it has been a British colony since 1841. And let it be recognised by everybody how difficult it is when you are dealing with a British Crown Colony very close to China, with a population nine-tenths of which Chinese, how very difficult it is to eradi. cate a system which, unquestionably, is based on a very ancient and deep-seated Chinese custom. A number of efforts have been made to do it. In 1923, there was passed an ordinance, a law in Hong Kong called the Female Domestic Servant Ordinance. It was supposed to prohibit any transfer of a mui-tsai to another
per- son henceforth, and therefore it was hoped that in time the thing would die out as the children grew up and passed away from the service.
The Colonial Office has made consider- able efforts at different times in the last eight or nine years to bring the system to an end, or, at any rate, to mitigate its worst results. I find it quite impossible -and this is the first point I wish to sub- mit to the hon. Gentleman the Under- Secretary to accept the view which was put forward six weeks ago with autho- rity, that we are dealing here with a mere system of adoption, or, indeed, that what has yet been accomplished is really adequate. Nearly every mail from Hong Kong brings me additional material, and only yesterday there reached my hands a paper from Hong Kong, the "Weekly Press," of 2nd April, which I have here, and which contains a report of a case before the magistrate in the central police court on the previous Tuesday. It is the case of the sale of a child for 63 dollars. The case had come to light because it was alleged she had been ill-treated by her mistress. All this shows that we really are faced with a system, no doubt very
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Colonial Office.
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11 MAY 1931
into his service any girl, whether mui- tsai or not, under the age of 10 years, and that no transfer of existing mui-tsai from one employer to another was to be permitted.
Supply: Committee- deep-seated and difficult to eradicate, which cannot possibly be excused by describing it as a system of adoption. In this particular case, the court fined the woman 150 dollars, or six weeks in default. The child was an unregistered mui-tsai, and the magistrate said the father did not deserve to have the child back, and should consider himself lucky that he was not charged with aiding and abetting. I cannot find in the report what was done with the child.
Mr. LOVAT-FRASER: What is the value of the Hong Kong dollar?
Sir J. SIMON: It is about two shill- ings. I submit, therefore, that it is clearly established by the contents of the Hong Kong papers and these documents which record transactions of sales, that in spite of the efforts made and I am very glad to acknowledge them this horrible system still exists. An hon. Member has inquired how far it is novel. It is very far from being novel. A former Chief Justice in Hong Kong, a very distinguished man in the law, 50 years ago denounced the system as in- volving slavery. When the late Lord Kimberley was Colonial Secretary, he wrote a dispatch which, as far as I am able to trace, did not produce at that time, nor has it since, any very effective results. Public opinion, naturally enough, gets attracted by other things. and there has not been a Debate on this subject in the House of Commons until now for a very long time past. Ten years ago a very determined effort was made to arouse public opinion on this matter by the courageous action of a naval officer and his wife who were out there.
In 1922, when the right hon. Gentle- man the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) was Colonial Secretary, he wrote a despatch, which has been pub- lished in the White Paper, declaring he was not at all satisfied that it was pos- sible to justify this system to Parlia- ment, and giving instructions to the Governor there that he expected the system to be abolished within a year. That is why the Female Domestic Service Ordinance was passed, which appeared. on the face of it, to be a very effective document. It declared that no person should thereafter take into his employ ment any mui-tsai; no person should take
The instances I have quoted will, I think, satisfy the Committee that most unhappily the situation, as left after 1923, did not clear up the trouble. It is greatly to the credit of those who are now in charge of the Colonial Office that they determined to take more vigorous action. The Ordinance of 1923 contained a third part which made it possible for regulations to be made for the registra- tion of mui-tsai, for keeping the register up-to-date and for securing remuneration for the little girls are not paid-and for inspection and control. That was the point at which the present Colonial Secretary and the Colonial Office took the matter up. The Colonial Secretary wrote a despatch in August, 1929, ad- dressed to the Governor, in which he called attention to the failure of pre- vious attempts to put an end to the system. I will read two short sentences from Lord Passfield:
"It now appears that after six years from the passing of the Ordinance, the most that can be said is that there is no reason to believe that the number of mui-tsai in the colony has increased." Later on he says:
"After making all allowances for the difficulties in bringing the system to an end, which are described at length in your despatches, it is my duty to inform you that public opinion in this country and in the House of Commons will not accept such a result with equanimity, and that I feel myself quite unable to defend a policy of laissez faire in this serious matter."
I am sure we must all heartily support the view taken by the Colonial Secre- tary. He, therefore, directed that this third part of the Ordinance should be brought into force forthwith.
It is par- ticularly important-not as a matter of criticism or reproach, but of ascertaining the facts and, if we can, of strengthen- ing the Government's hand-to ascertain how far Lord Passfield's directions have, in fact, been complied with. Let the Committee observe that this is a Crown Colony. It is a spot of earth for which we in this House, and Ministers on that bench are directly responsible. It is not a case, such as you may have in various parts of the world, where you hand over all responsibility to others.
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