manner of life' consistent with a part of
the Chinese social system, it is absolutely the reverse in those
Hong Kong brothels where Chinese women have to meet foreigners
only. Such brothels are unknown in the social system of China. The
Chinese girls who are registered by the Government for the use of
Europeans and Americans, detest the life they are compelled
to lead. They have a dread and abhorrence of foreigners, and
especially of the foreign soldiers and sailors. _Such girls are
the real slaves in Hong Kong._"
We underscore the last sentence as a most painful fact in the history
of the dealings of the British officials with the native women of
China, set forth on the authority of the Governor of Hong Kong, who,
with the help of Sir John Smale, the Chief Justice, waged such a
fearless warfare against slavery under the British flag, with such
unworthy misrepresentation and opposition on the part of the other
officials equally responsible with them in preserving the good name of
their country, and in defending rather than trampling upon its laws.
Governor Hennessy continues
"To drive Chinese girls into such brothels [i.e., those for the
use of foreigners] was the object of the system of informers which
Mr. C. C. Smith for so many years conducted in this Colony,
and which in his evidence before the Commission on the 3rd of
December, 1877, he defended on the ground of its necessity in
detecting unlicensed houses, but which your Lordship [Lord
Kimberley, Secretary of State for the Colonies] has now justly
stigmatized as a revolting abuse. On another point the Attorney
General also seems not to appreciate fully what he must have heard
Sir John Smale saying from the Bench in the Supreme Court. It
would be a mistake to think that the Chief Justice had not before
he left the Colony, realized the public opinion of the Chinese
community on the subject of kidn