Sessional_Paper_1893 — Page 841

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Appendix 20.

SIR,

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, HONGKONG, 3rd August, 1892.

In reply to your letter of 2nd instant, inviting me to attend at 3 P.M. on 5th instant, a meeting of the Committee appointed to inquire into certain points connected with the Pó Léung Kuk, I have the honour to inform you that I shall be most happy to attend as requested, but, to save the Committee's time, I have drafted a memorandum embodying my views concerning the problems involved in this inquiry, as a basis for any questions that may be put to me to answer orally.

I beg to request you, therefore, that you will favour me by bringing the enclosed memorandum to the notice of the Committee, and if possible, before the meeting is held.

I have the honour to be,

Sir,

Your obedient Servant,

The Honourable J. H. STEWART LOCKHART,

Chairman, Committee of Pó Léung Kuk Inquiry.

E. J. EITEL.

MEMORANDUM

in re Pó LEUNG KUK.

(1.) I have no personal or direct knowledge of the working of the Pó Leung Kuk

since 1882.

(2.) But I have some indirect knowledge of the results of the Pó Leung Kuk's work in a certain direction. Before the Pó Léung Kuk was established, kidnapping (of girls especially) was so common and a matter of such everyday occurrence, that--

(a) in the local schools it was a common thing to see girls dressed in boys'

clothes.

(b) at the street corners, offers of reward posted up concerning lost girls were

a daily sight.

Since the establishment of the Pó Léung Kuk these symptoms of the rampancy of kidnapping have gradually disappeared and are now a rare sight.

(3.) Although post hoc is not always propter hoc, I am morally certain that the decrease which has taken place in the public dread of kidnapping and the increased sense of security is due to the effective working of the Pó Léung Kuk.

(4.) Kidnapping is one of several congenital diseases of the Chinese social organism. It cannot be extirpated. It can only be reduced to a certain minimum. These remarks apply not only to the people of China, but also to the Chinese population of Hongkong. Indeed more particularly so, because Hongkong is a centre of emigration, and kidnapping is the natural parasite that lives on every form of Chinese emigration as well as on the ordinary national practices of adoption of children (by purchase) and of the pledging, buying, and selling of children, concubines and wives.

(5.) Owing to the deep roots which the practice of kidnapping has in the peculiar domestic habits of the Chinese, and owing to the general ignorance of Europeans as to