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In the opinion of the speaker, carrying a lamp was no check to crime. The measures for securing a peaceful community lay elsewhere. He asked: "How can a lamp prevent robbery? Cannot a thief carry a lamp? Is it because one case of robbery with violence has occurred in the course of a few years that the lamp law has been enforced?" He clearly felt the law did not achieve its purpose.
Curtailment of crime could not be expected from carrying lamps and passes. This was the responsibility of the police. Ho A-mei said bluntly: "I think the police are more to blame, because they failed to arrest those who committed the robbery. (Applause). The police do not give us sufficient protection; that is why we have our own district watchmen, in Wing Lok Street for instance, and yet we have to pay for the police as well.”
The speaker then launched out to describe the way the regulation had affected business since a policy of rigid enforcement had been inaugurated: "Considerably fewer people visit the eating houses at night and, of course, as the business decreases so the supply of sharks' fins, etc, by the Nam Pak Hongs decreases; in fact, there is a general deadlock in every branch of trade." The enforcement not only curbed social activities, it also had adversely affected business.
He suggests that if no action on the matter was forthcoming from the Hongkong Government, then the matter must be put directly to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, “and we must ask that in future all ordinances passed in the Colony shall have a general effect and that they shall not aim at the Chinese alone.”
The meeting had been called to rally support for Mr. Ho Tung's petition against the regulations. No reply to the petition had been received, and Ho A-mei said that he had heard “that it was suggested to the Government that the movement was only an agitation on the part of a few members of the community, and that the petition was signed only at their request.”
This the speaker denied. “But, I say, Gentlemen, you did not sign the petition simply at the request of Mr. Ho Tung; you signed it in the public streets knowing what the contents were.”
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In the opinion of the speaker, carrying a lamp was no check to crime. The measures for securing a peaceful community lay else- where. He asked: "How can a lamp prevent robbery? Cannot a thief carry a lamp? Is it because one case of robbery with violence has occurred in the course of a few years that the lamp law has been enforced?" He clearly felt the law did not achieve its purpose.
Curtailment of crime could not be expected from carrying lamps and passes. This was the responsibility of the police. Ho A- mei said bluntly: "I think the police are more to blame, because they failed to arrest those who committed the robbery. (Applause). The police do not give us sufficient protection; that is why we have our own district watchmen, in Wing Lok Street for instance, and yet we have to pay for the police as well.”
The speaker then launched out to describe the way the regula- tion had affected business since a policy of rigid enforcement had been inaugurated: "Considerably fewer people visit the eating houses at night and, of course, as the business decreases so the supply of sharks' fins, etc, by the Nam Pak Hongs decreases; in fact, there is a general deadlock in every branch of trade." The enforcement not only curbed social activities, it also had adversely affected business.
He suggests that if no action on the matter was forthcoming from the Hongkong Government, then the matter must be put directly to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, “and we must ask that in future all ordinances passed in the Colony shall have a general effect and that they shall not aim at the Chinese alone.”
The meeting had been called to rally support for Mr. Ho Tung's petition against the regulations. No reply to the petition had been received, and Ho A-mei said that he had heard “that it was sug- gested to the Government that the movement was only an agita- tion on the part of a few members of the community, and that the petition was signed only at their request.”
This the speaker denied. “But, I say, Gentlemen, you did not sign the petition simply at the request of Mr. Ho Tung; you signed it in the public streets knowing what the contents were.”
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