Sessional_Paper_1893 — Page 868

[LV]

have been satisfactorily settled-settled to the satisfaction of the Council and the com- munity at large. I therefore propose, if the Council does not see any objection, that we defer consideration of this Bill in the meantime, and under the Standing Orders that it be referred at this stage to a special commission-consisting of the Registrar General, Dr. Ho KAI, Mr. CHATER, Mr. WHITEHEAD, and the Acting Colonial Treasurer—for con- sideration and report. After the Bill has been considered, the question-which is certainly a most important one-of how much grant, if any, should be made will come up for discussion. With reference to that point I think the Council is pledged to a certain extent to make a grant of money corresponding to the assistance given by the Society to the Government. I now propose to refer this Bill to a Special Committee.

Appendix 30.

Translation of Pó Léung Kuk Circular

Dated Kwang-sü 17th Year 4th Moon.

The co-operation and assistance of good citizens are essential to all successful Gov- ernment. And the perishing and submerged should be rescued without distinction of race or country. This is a matter of common humanity in which all should help with one heart and united strength. And in proportion to the greatness of the misery caused to human beings by kidnapping is the merit of rescuing its innocent victims.

Let us sketch briefly their practices to shew that kidnappers have the hearts of vipers and wolves.

1. Their male victims.-They entrap them by false promises of pleasure and gain into an inextricable maze. They lend them money to meet their gambling debts on interest, and straightway pursue them like lost sheep for repayment. Or they attach them to themselves by presents, so that they stick like flies to a horse's tail, till some dark night they gallop off and their victims are sold in a foreign land. Thus a present desire is gratified at the expense of robbing the family nest, and on pretence of entertain- ing strangers they are sold as pigs. Henceforth the victims are severed for ever from their own flesh and blood; and none knows whether they are living or dead.

2. Their female victims. They charm them by promises of marriage and fine clothes; but instead of a bride chamber they find a prison. They are to be ladies' maids, or nurses in rich families, or they are to travel together over the world, and flutter in unbridled pleasure like birds of the air. But, alas! the pleasure is short-lived, the faded flower is crushed in the treacherous hand, and the forlorn heart is the sport of the heartless. They go forth into the dew and the wind with their broidered hair like queens for a palace, but anon look back with the remorse of lost souls. They are the wretchedest of the wretched their condition is the bitterest of all bitterness. While our hearts are pained to the uttermost how can we fold our hands in peace?

This class of people who make a regular business of kidnapping make Hongkong their basis of operations. They haunt this Colony as crocodiles used to haunt Chao Chou or as fish haunt a stream. For this reason it was that Officials and Merchants combined