Re: Confidence

returned to me with the following opinion of the Attorney
General: 'The transaction referred to would not be recognized in
our laws as giving any rights, except perhaps as to guardianship,
but I am unable to say there is anything illegal in the matter
beyond that. I do not think it a criminal offence if it goes no
further than the adoption of a child and the payment of money to
its parents for the privilege.'"

Later, when His Excellency was calling the attention of Acting
Attorney General Russell to a somewhat similar case, he states, in
reference to this above-described case:

"Mr. Phillipo, before whom the papers were laid, did not seem
disposed to enforce the rights of the father, on the ground that
he had sold the child. I did not agree with Mr. Phillipo's view of
the law."




CHAPTER 8.

JUSTICE FROM THE SUPREME BENCH.


On October 6th, 1879, Sir John Smale, the Hon. Chief Justice for Hong
Kong, passed judgment in three cases on prisoners convicted of various
degrees of crime connected with the enticing, detaining, buying and
selling of children. Governor Hennessy, in reporting the remarks made
by the Chief Justice on that occasion to the Secretary of State for
the Colonies, pronounced it "an able and elaborate judgment on the
existence of slavery at Hong Kong."

Said Sir John Smale:

"Various causes have occasioned delay in passing sentence, of
which I will only refer to one: The gravity of the fact that these
and other cases have recently brought so prominently to the notice
of the Court that two specific classes of slavery exist in this
Colony to a very great extent, viz., so-called domestic slavery,
and slavery fo