684490-1880-Deportation-of-Chinese-Criminals-from-Hongkong-to-Australia- — Page 2

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THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 31ST JULY, 1880.

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GOVERNMENT HOUSE, HONGKONG, 18th May, 1880.

581

In paragraph 5 of your Despatch, you express a doubt as to whether I can be right in saying that one of the deported Chinese criminals were shipped off from Hongkong by the Police Authorities to the Australian Colonies, and you seem rather to think that the deported criminals were men who had returned to Hongkong for the purpose of emigration, and that under such circunstances, though they were seen by the Police Constables the latter did not interfere with them. What I reported in my despatch was, however, a correct statement of the facts.

The question of remitting one-half or two-thirds of the sentences of Chinese criminals under Conditional Pardons, by which they agreed to quit the Colony, had attracted my attention soon after I assumed this Government (April 1877), and from time to time, both in the Legislative Council and in despatches to the Secretary of State, 1 pointed out its impolicy. It seemed to me to be in- consistent with a proper administration of justice and with a strict system of prison discipline. 1 also felt that it was not quite fair to our neighbours in Australia or in the Straits Settlements. The following is a copy of a minute by Mr. DEANE, the Captain Superintendent of Police, on the subject:---

'MINUTE BY THE CAPTAIN SUPERINTENDENT OF POLICE.

* I have the honour to report that on deportation, or receipt of a Conditional Pardon, the ex-pri- oner was allowed to go where he pleased, and that if he selected Australia, Singapore, Shanghai or the Coast Ports, he was seen on board the vessel bound thereto by a Constable.

'If a man who had been deported had returned to the Colony for the purpose of emigration and had been seen by a Constable, it would have been the duty of that Constable to have arrested him, and I think he would have done so, for there was a standing reward of $5 for the arrest of any such man; I can recall no case where it has been made known to me that a deported man had been seen on board a vessel and allowed to leave unarrested, because he was emigrating.

22nd October, 1879.'

(Signed)

'W. M. DEANE,

* Captain Superintendent of Police.

"That a Chinese criminal who had served only one-half or one-t

e-third of his sentence, was, on receipt of the Governor's Conditional Pardon, allowed to select, with the exception of any part of Hongkong, the country where he desired to live, and that when he selected an Australian Colony, he was then seen safely on board a vessel bound to Australia by a policeman, was a system of rather modern growth in Hongkong. I cannot find any record of its being reported to Her Majesty's Government. It sprang up after the departure of Governor Sir HERCULES ROBINSON.

"I feel confident you will not disapprove of my having taken the responsibility of putting a stop to this system, and of having taken the responsibility also of not sanctioning, since my assumption of this Governinent, a single case of branding.

"In accordance with your instructions, I enclose a copy of Chief Justice Sir JOHN SMALE's judg- ment on the invalidity of certain Deportation Warrants; and I take the opportunity at the same time of laying before you the concluding passages in a statement I had occasion to make in the Legislative Council on the 6th of November, 1879, in which I referred to the Chief Justice's sound views on this subject, the assistance I have always received from him in dealing with deportation cases, and to the political consequences outside this Colony of transferring half punished criminals to other countries.

"On this latter point, I also enclose an extract from a report of some observations I made in Council, on the 22nd of November, on the effect of our Deportation and Conditional Pardon system pon Chinese Emigration to Australia. Though some evidence was obtained by Mr. MAY's Com- mmittee on Police and crime that as many as fifty old criminals were seen off from Hongkong to Australia by the Police in the year 1876 and early in 1877, I am incline to think that but a small proportion of the Chinese criminals liberated on Conditional Pardons were actually put on ard the Australian steamers by the Police; I believe the following statement of the Chief Justice his Report of the 19th of April, 1880, is correct, in which he says that most of these criminals returned to Hongkong and created the comparatively large criminal class that I found here:-

In 1866,' says the Chief Justice, the Executive, in order to avoid the expenses of a second gaol, ve Conditional Pardons, without reference to myself as Chief Justice, to hundreds of prisoners after aving served very short portions of their sentences, the condition being that they should leave the lony, and this practice was followed subsequently. Most of these men returned to the Colony, and that I attribute the formation of an enlarged criminal community, from which the Colony has ever since been freed.'

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