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8. (a.) It will be recollected that a main element of the religion of the Chinese is the worship of ancestors. Consequently, the adoption of male children is founded on the religious necessity of securing representations to perform the Sacred Rites of the Family or clan (gens), the Sacra gentilicia of the Romans. "These Sacra ' (to quote the words of Sir HENRY MAINE)" were the Roman form of an Institution which shows itself wherever society has not wholly shaken itself free from its primitive clothing. They are the sacrifices and ceremonies by which the brother- hood of the family is commemorated, the pledge and the witness of its perpetuity. Whatever be their nature, whether it be true or not that in all cases they are the worship of some mythical ancestor, they are everywhere employed to attest the sacredness of the family relation; and therefore, they acquire prominent significance and importance, whenever the continuous existence of the Family is endangered by a change in the persons of its chief. Accordingly, we hear most about them in connexion with demises of domestic sovereignty. Again: "The Family is the type of an archaic society in all the modifications which it was capable of assuming; but the Family here spoken of is not exactly the family as understood by a modern. In order to reach the ancient conception, we must give to our modern ideas an important extension, and an important limitation. We must look on the family as constantly enlarged by the absorption of strangers within its circle, and we must try to regard the fiction of adoption as so closely simulating the reality of kinship that neither law nor opinion makes the slightest difference between a real and an adoptive connexion. On the other hand, the persons theoretically amalgamated into a family by their common descent, are practically held together by common obedience to their highest living ascendant, the father, grandfather, or great-grand- father. The patriarchal authority of the chieftain is as necessary an ingredient in the notion of the family group, as the fact, (or assumed fact) of its having sprungs from his loins. And hence we must understand that if there be any persons who, however truly included in the brotherhood by virtue of their blood-relationship, have nevertheless, de facto withdrawn themselves from the Empire of its ruler, they are always in the beginnings of law, considered as lost to the family. It is this patriarchal aggregate, the modern Family, this cut down on one side, and extended on the other, which meet us on the threshold of primitive jurisprudence."

9. It will be recollected that the archaic laws and customs thus described by the high authority of HENRY MAINE, are still as much the rule of social life and feeling in China, as they were, twenty-five centuries ago, both in China and at Rome.

10. The adoption of female children as daughters stands on a different footing from the adoption of male children as sons. But on this point, I would refer to the full explanations given by Mr. Justice RUSSELL, especially with respect to the grave abuses often arising from female adoption; and which the Government and Legislature of Hongkong have already done much, and will endeavour to do more, to detect, to prevent, and to punish.

11. (b.) With regard to Domestic Service among the Chinese at Hongkong, I will again refer to Mr. RUSSELL'S statements of facts and arguments which can hardly be abbreviated without impairing at once their force, their perspecuity, and their practical usefulness.

12. It will be seen that Mr. RUSSELL recapitulates his statements and conclu- sions in the following terms:—

"

1o It is shewn that child adoption in China and among the Chinese in Hongkong is always accompanied by the payment of money and a "deed of gift or bill of sale when the adopted are strangers-in-blood; and that even money passes in the case of relatives if the parents of the adopted child are poor or not nearly related to the adopting parents.

2o. It is shewn that male children are not bought and sold as servants in Hongkong nor in the Canton province, but that female children are disposed of for money by their parents according to Chinese usage and custom, and that the Chinese authorities recognise such sales as binding if executed with due formalities, whilst Hongkong treats all such transactions as null and void, giving no rights and conferring no title.

3. It is shewn that the abuses arising from the Chinese system of money passing in the case of adoption and domestic service are:--

1° Kidnapping to some extent..

2o Brothel bondage; and that female children who are voluntarily parted with by their parents for daughters and servants may be sold as prostitutes by disreputable persons.