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THE BRIBERY SCANDAL.
(12th August.)
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
The Government despatches on the sensa- tional gambling scandal in the colony are being forwarded by to-day's mail* for the consideration of the Secretary of State for the Colonics. From the public point of view the position of affairs at the present moment is somewhat singular. The finding of the tell-tale book or list in the gambling house keeper's establishment in East Street has led, as everybody now knows, to the suspension of four European police officers for gross neglect of duty, the conviction and imprisonment of one Police Inspector, the banishment of practically the whole of the Chinese detective force, the dismissal of a Sanitary Inspector, and the retirement from the public service on a reduced pen- sion of the first clerk in the Registrar- General's Department. In addition other police officers are suspected of having accepted bribes, but as yet the suspected officers have not been taken off duty. The public, of course, are naturally eager to be informed of the reason why, for practically similar offences, different methods of pro- cedure have been adopted. We will first take the cases of Mr. OSMUND, the first clerk in the Registrar-General's Depart- ment, and Sanitary Inspector HORE. Both were accused of, to use the ordinary but not in their case strictly legal term, accepting bribes, and both - were called before the Executive Council to explain their conduct. The Executive Council decided that neither of the accused
his ense 18 Considered by itself. He and every other Inspector or Sergeant or Constable who has accepted bribes has most disgracefully dragged through the mire the good name of the Hongkong Police Force and has made the position of every honest man in the Force a most unenviable one to hold. The terrible stigma which has been cast upon the Force will leave its traces for years to come. The sentence on WITCHELL was therefore amply merited.
measure anticipated by an order telegraphed home the other day for a batch of police to be sent to Hongkong, so that in a short time we may see the force, which is sadly attenuated at present, fully manned. Let us hope it will be fully honest.
[August 18, 1897.
gambling houses and we would recommend to our Portuguese contemporary that it should advocate the application to its own colony of the principle it advocates for Hongkong.
But although the licensing and regulation of gambling would be the best nieans of dealing with the evil we fear there is no prospect of the home Goernment being in- duced to, take that view What then is to be done? It may be urged that the present law would be effective if honestly adminis tered, as is shown by the fact that it was in fact effective for a short time after it came into operation. But how is honest ad- ministration to be secured? While the memory of the recent scandal and the punishment that has in some cases followed the acceptance of bribes remains fresh purity may continue and gambling may for the time being be stamped out, but it will not be long before the agents of corruption are again at work and there will be the same risk as before of some members of the public service succumbing to the temptation of doubling or trebling their pay by winking at illegality. The risk of detection is small, The corruption in the Police Force which has just been brought to light has existed no doubt ever since the Force was established ; its existence has been suspected more or less all along, but this is the first time that it has been found possible to obtain tangible proof, and that only by what may be termed a mere accident, namely, a quarrel amongst the members and employes of a gambling establishment. Men who are open to accept bribes may with some reason proceed on the assumption that a similar accident is not likely to happen again and that in the absence of direct information from those engaged in the distribution of bribes there will be no legal proof of their wrongdoing.
We do not know whether the Govern- ment intends to amend the law or to make another attempt to administer it as it stands, GAMBLING: ITS SUPPRESSION OR but in either case it would be advisable to
We will now take the case of the sus- pended and also the suspected police officers. It may be taken for granted that as they have not been charged at the Police Court the attempt to obtain direct evidence against any one of them has failed and that the Secretary of State for the Colonies will be asked by His Excellency the Governor to dismiss the whole lot from the Police Force. But so far the men concerned have not had an opportunity of making any defence. They may all be guilty, but is there not a chance that all or some of them may be innocent? A man charged with the worst crime known to our laws is allowed to make his defence, but in the case of these police officers the despatches go home to-day giving the one side of the story, and that side is the Government's. Such procedure as that is scarcely in accord with the principles of English law and justice, and we trust the Government will, in fairness to the officers concerned, at once call upon them to make their defende, which of course should be forwarded without delay to Mr. CHAMBERLAIN. We believe the nature of Mr. CHAMBERLAIN's reply con- had exculpated himself. HORE was discerning the suspended officers has been in a missed and OsMUND was called upon to resign on a reduced pension. It is generally understood that the reason why the Executive Council dealt so leniently with Mr. OSMUND was because they took into consideration his thirty-eight years' service and also the fact of his having a large family. It seems to us that the premises on which this decision is supposed to have been based are wholly false. The acceptance of illicit payments-whether they can be legally called bribes or not is of no con- sequence-is an offence which admits of no clemency on the ground of previous long service and good conduct, and we must therefore assume that the Council found an actual difference in the gravity of the offence in the two cases of HORE and OSMUND. If long service were to count ex-Inspector Wir CHELL might also claim the benefit of it. He had served about twenty years in the police service in England and Hongkong, had borne an excellent character, and has a wife and five or six children. He was proceeded against in the criminal courts, not because his offence was worse than the acceptance of illegal gratifications by officers in other departments of the public service, but because he, as a police officer, came within the criminal law. If he is to bear the brunt of all this alléged rottenness in the public service and be the only man to suffer imprisonment when there are many others equally guilty it is not really surprising to hear that sympathy for him has been expressed in various quarters. Of course it does not follow that one wrong- doer against whom there is sufficient evidence for conviction should be allowed to escape because evidence cannot be ob- tained against others, but in the present case it does seem what is commonly termed "hard on WITCHELL if he is to be the only luck man proceeded against criminally. We have, however, no sympathy for WITCHELL when
:)
→ We are informed that the despatches did not go home by the mail in question.
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Referring to the Hongkong gambling scandal and to the suggestion made in this columns that a limited number of gambling houses should be licensed, the Echo Macaense, while agreeing that it would be better to legalise gambling than to make further abortive attempts to suppress it, goes on to urge that in case this policy should be adopted restrictions should be imposed in the licencee to the effect that none but Chinese should be allowed to use the houses. This suggestion our contem- porary makes in the interest of the Portu- guese community, and it mentions that while the Macao Government licenses gambling members of the public service are prohibited under pain of suspension and dismssal to frequent the gambling houses. By this means," our contemporary says, the Chi- nese would not be under the necessity of corrupting the police in order to satisfy "their love of gaming, and at the same time "the vice would not extend to the non- "Chinese population to ruin their families." Under the licensing system that existed for a short time during Sir RICHARD MAC- DONNELL'S administration this principle was observed in the latter part of the term, Europeans being forbidden access to the gambling houses. If the system were re- introduced no doubt the same restriction would be imposed. At Macao it is only members of the public service that are for- bidden to frequent the houses, and that only by a service regulation, not by statutory law. It would be a good thing if Europeans generally were excluded from the Macao
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make as sparing a use as possible of the pernicious class known as informers. Per- haps the services of such men cannot be dispensed with altogether by the criminal investigation department, but it seems mistake to employ them in connection with such a matter as gambling, as the evil there- by created is even greater than the evil it is desired to suppress. We employ on the one hand a large and expensive Police Force for the preservation of law and order and on the other hand we have a number of informers who accept pay indifferently from both parties, from the Government for giving information of crime and from the criminal for suppressing such information. While employed in connection with the suppression of crime they are in fact crime promoters and the agents employed for the corruption of the police.
THE LIGHT DUES COMMISSION.
The retirement of Mr. HERBERT SMITH and Mr. THURBURN from the Light Dues Commission is much to be regretted, but is not to be wondered at, the circumstances being as detailed in Mr. SMITH's letter published in another column. The sur- prising feature in the matter is the desire of the officials to limit the meaning of the term "harbour receipts." At the beginning of the discussion, and when it was a question of what should be included in the term "harbor and lighthouse expenditure," an attempt was made to hold the shipping responsible for a proportion of the military contribution and various other matters having no direct connection with ship-
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