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many applicants as they can accommodate, and public opinion is now strong enough in these Schools to frown out any open supporters of immorality. A second change, which has taken place with reference to this class of people, consists in the fact that Chinese girls are not now as formerly the only class furnishing concubines for foreigners, but are in fact now sinking into a minority as Japanese girls are crowding them out of favour. As regards the Eurasian girls, the offspring of these illicit connections, a most important change has of late taken place, in that these girls, who formerly used to become concubines in turn, are now commonly brought up respectably and married to Chinese husbands who themselves have received an English education in the local Boys' Schools. I am therefore convinced that there is not the slightest danger of the experience of Bishop SMITH's Committee of 1865 being repeated in the case of the proposed Government Girls' School. I have re- marked above that the girls whom I expect to attend the proposed School are, practically speaking, the sisters of the boys now attending the Government Central School, and I am certain that now-a-days hardly any of the boys of that School have sisters who are, or ever will be, the kept mistresses of foreigners.

5. Another plausible objection which has been raised against offering an English education to girls, the vast majority of whom are Chinese who never hear English spoken within their respective house-holds, is that such a foreign education is in their case uncalled for and useless. They do not want it,' I am told, ‘and

if they get it, they are no better off for it.'

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That the English education which I desire the Government to offer to the public is urgently called for and will be eminently useful in the case of European, Indian and other non-Chinese and non-Catholic girls, who at present have practi- cally no School to go to, is, I believe, generally admitted but with the significant observation that the number of such girls is comparatively small. I admit that their number is small, but I plead that the smallness of the number is no reason why the Government, which makes such liberal provision for the equally small number of boys of the same classes, and provides the girls of Chinese aliens with a gratuitous Chinese education, should make no provision whatever to put an English education within the reach of the daughters of loyal English and Indian subjects of Her Majesty.

Now as to the allegation that in the case of the vast majority of Chinese girls in the Colony an English education is not wanted nor called for by the girls them- selves or their parents, I might demur to the statement and assert that a certain, though indeed limited, number of these people do call for an English education, and that the demand for it, though small at present, is sure to be called forth in steadily increasing force by the supply, but I prefer to let this argument be worked out by the future educational history of the Colony, and admit that, generally speaking, Chinese girls, their mothers, and in many cases their fathers also, do not call for English female education. But what else would you expect? In the case of education, the consumer never is the proper judge of the article he requires to be supplied with. The public opinion of a semi-civilized people cannot be accepted, in the matter of education, as the standard of what ought to be done. If the Chinese were left to themselves, their girls would, generally speaking, be left with- out education altogether, until such education becomes an effective means of earning a livelihood, and I freely admit that at present an English education does not put the same facilities for earning money in the way of a Chinese girl as it does for a Chinese boy. The money value of female education is at present next to nil. Well then, are we to force English education upon unwilling Chinese girls, or is there, apart from force, any prospect of their going in for it willingly? I do not propose the use of any force or compulsion whatever, but on the contrary I propose to admit to English tuition only those Chinese girls who have been attending an ordinary Chinese School for at least two or three years and who are willing to pay for their English tuition a reasonable proportion of the expenses involved. the grounds for my firm expectation that this can be done are these. The Chinese, like the natives of India, are perfectly ready to respond, with zeal and readiness, to an external impulse involving a radical change in their habits, provided only that they are assured of its beneficial tendency. This has been the universal experience of educationists in India and is amply testified to, in these very words, by the Report of the Indian Education Commission of 1883 (see, for instance, Chap. X, § 601). But we have had experience in Hongkong of a signal case in point. The idea of giving girls a school education, as a necessary part of their training for life, is entirely foreign to Chinese habits of thought, and was considered a mon-

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