Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers

"Remember them that are in bonds as bound with them."

[Illustration: A Chinatown Slave Market and Den of Vice. (Built and owned by Americans.)]

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF MISS MARGARET CULBERTSON MILITANT SAINT AND SAINTED WARRIOR

WHO AT PERIL OF LIFE FOUGHT A GOOD FIGHT FOR THE RESCUE OF THE SLAVE GIRLS OF CALIFORNIA

-AND TO-

MISS LAKE, MISS CAMERON AND MISS DAVIS WHO BY PATHS MADE SOMEWHAT LESS DIFFICULT BY HER ACCOMPLISHMENT, HAVE NOT CEASED TO WAGE A HOLY WAR FOR THE DELIVERANCE OF THE CAPTIVES.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

"Heathen slaves and Christian rulers." No injustice is done to Christians in the title given this book. The word "Christian" is capable of use in two senses, individual and political. We apply the words "Hindoo" and "Mahommedan" in these two senses also. A man who has been born and brought up in the environment of the Hindoo or Mahommedan religions, and who has not avowed some other form of faith, but has yielded at least an outward allegiance to these forms, we declare to be a man of one or the other faith. Moreover, we judge of his religion by the fruits of it in his moral character. Just so, every European or American who has not openly disavowed the Christian religion for some other faith is called a "Christian." Furthermore, such men, when they mingle with those of other religions, as in the Orient, call themselves "Christians," in distinction from those of other faith about them. They claim the word "Christian" as by right theirs in this political sense, and it is in this sense that we employ the word "Christian" in the title of this book. The word is used thus when reckoning the world's population according to religions.

As we treat the Hindoo or Mohammedan so he treats us. Our Christianity is judged, and must ever be, in the Orient, by the moral character of the men who are called Christian; and the distinguishing vices of such men are regarded as characteristic of their religion. Official representatives of a Christian nation have gone to Hong Kong and to Singapore, and there, because of their social vices, elaborated a system, first of all of brothel slavery; and domestic slavery has sheltered itself under its wing, as it were; and lastly, at Singapore coolie labor is managed by the same set of officials. What these officials have done has been accepted by the Oriental people about them as done by the Christian civilization. It cannot be said that the evils mentioned above have been the outgrowth of Oriental conditions and customs, principally. It has been rather the misfortune of the Orient that there were brought to their borders by Western civilization elements calculated to induce their criminal classes to ally themselves with these aggressive and stronger "Christians" to destroy safeguards which had been heretofore sufficient, for the most part, to conserve Chinese social morality.

Christian people, even as far back as Sir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong, and up to the present time, both at Hong Kong and Singapore, have acquiesced in the false teaching that vice cannot be put under check in the Orient, where, it is claimed, passion mounts higher than in the Occident, and that morality is, to a certain extent, a matter of climate; and in the presence of large numbers of unmarried soldiers and sailors it is simply "impracticable" to attempt repressive measures in dealing with social vice. These Christians have listened to counsels of despair,-the arguments of gross materialists,-and have shut their eyes to the plainly written THOU SHALT NOT of the finger of God in His Book.

Had there been the same staunch standing true to principle in these Oriental countries as in Great Britain the state of immorality described in the pages of this book could never have developed to the extent it did. But Christians yielded before what they considered at least unavoidable, and, not abiding living protests, must take their share of blame for the state of matters. A higher moral public opinion could have been created which would have made the existence of actual slavery an impossibility, with the amount of legislation that existed with which to put it down. There were a guilty silence and a guilty ignorance on the part of the better elements of Christian society at Singapore and Hong Kong, which could be played upon by treacherous, corrupt officials by the flimsy device of calling the ravishing of native women "protection," and the most brazen forms of slavery "servitude." To this extent the individual Christians of these colonies are in many cases guilty of compromise with slavery; and to this extent the title of this book applies to them.

The vices of European and American men in the Orient have not been the development of climate but of opportunity. It is not so easy in Christian lands to stock immoral houses with slaves, for the reason that the slaves are not present with which to do it. Women have freedom and cannot be openly bought and sold even in marriage; women have self-reliance and self-respect in a Christian country; they have a clean, decent religion; women who worship the true God have His protecting arm to defend themselves, and through them other women who do not personally worship God share in the benefits. If free, independent women of God were as scarce in America as in Hong Kong the same moral conditions would prevail here, without regard to climate, for, if women could be bought and sold and reduced by force to prostitution, there are libertines enough, and they have propensities strong enough to enter at once upon the business, even in America. That which has elevated women above this slave condition is the development of a self-respect and dignity born of the Christian faith. But let us take warning. If the women of America have not the decent self-respect to refuse to tolerate the Oriental slave-prostitute in this country, the balance will be lost, libertines will have their own way through the introduction into our social fabric of their slaves, and Christian womanhood will fall before it. "Ye have not proclaimed liberty every one to his fellow, therefore I proclaim liberty to you, saith the Lord, to the sword, and the famine, and the pestilence."

Having yielded before counsels of despair, those who should have stood shoulder to shoulder with statesmen like Sir John Pope Hennessy and Sir John Smale in their efforts to exterminate slavery, rather, by their indifference and ignorance, greatly added to the obstacles put in their way by unworthy officials.

The story we have to relate cannot in any fairness be used as an arraignment of British Christianity excepting as we have already indicated as to local conditions. The record that British Christian philanthropists have made, under the leadership of the now sainted Mrs. Josephine Butler, in their world-wide influence for purity, needs no eulogy from our pen. It is known to the world. May Americans strive with equal energy against conditions far more hopeful of amendment, and we will be content to leave the issue with God.

It was our purpose when we undertook the task of writing a sketch which would enable Americans to understand the social conditions that are being introduced into our midst from the Orient, merely to make a concise, brief statement of social conditions in Hong Kong out of which these have grown, drawing our information from State Documents of the British Government that we have had for some time in our possession, and of which we have made a close study, as well as from our own observations of the conditions themselves as they exist at Hong Kong and Singapore. But almost at once we abandoned that attempt as unwise because likely to prove injurious rather than helpful to the object we have in view. The facts that we have to relate form one of the blackest chapters in the history of human slavery, and slavery brought up to the present time. Our statements if standing merely on our own word would be met at once with incredulity and challenged, and before we could defend them by producing the proof, a prejudice would be created that might prove disastrous to our hopes of arousing our country to the point of exterminating this horrible Oriental brothel slavery by means of which even American men are enriching themselves on the Pacific Coast.

Therefore we have felt obliged to produce our proof at once and at first, and after that, if needed, we can write a more simple, concise account, in less official and less cumbersome form, more suitable for the general public to read,-not that the case could be stated in purer or cleaner language than that used in the quotations from official statements and letters, but the language might be more suited to public taste. But worth cannot be sacrificed to taste, and, as we have said, we feel compelled to publish the matter in its present form first of all.

We send it forth, therefore, with the earnest prayer that, while the book itself may have a limited circulation, yet, through the providence of God, it may arouse some one to attempt that which seems beyond our powers and opportunity,-some one who will feel the call of God; who has the training and the ability; some one who has the spirit of devotion and self-denial; some one of keen moral perceptions and lofty faith in the ultimate triumph of justice, who will lead a crusade that will never halt until Oriental slavery is banished from our land, and it can no more be said, "The name of God is blasphemed among the heathen because of you."

The documents from which we have quoted so extensively in this book are the following:

"Correspondence Relating to the Working of the Contagious Diseases Ordinances of the Colony of Hongkong." August 1881. C.-3093.

"Copy of Report of the Commissioners Appointed by His Excellency, John Pope Hennessy ... to inquire Into the Working of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance, 1867." March 11, 1880. H.C. 118.

"Correspondence Respecting the Alleged Existence of Chinese Slavery in Hongkong." March, 1882. C.-3185.

"Return of all the British Colonies and Dependencies in Which by

Ordinance or Otherwise Any System Involving the Principles of the Late

Contagious Diseases Acts, 1866 and 1869, is in force, with Copies of

Such Ordinances or Other Regulations." June, 1886. H.C. 247.

"Copies of Correspondence or Extracts Therefrom Relating to the Repeal of Contagious Diseases Ordinances and Regulations in the Crown Colonies." September, 1887. H.C. 347

Same as above, in continuation, March, 1889. H.C. 59.

Same as above, in continuation, June, 1890. H.C. 242.

"Copy of Correspondence which has taken place since that comprised in the Paper presented to the House of Commons in 1890 (H.C. 242)," etc., June 4, 1894. H. C. 147.

"Copy of Correspondence Relative to Proposed Introduction of Contagious Diseases Regulations in Perak or Other Protected Malay States." June 4, 1894. H.C. 146.

May 1907

CONTENTS

Frontispiece

Dedication

Preface

Time was when so-called Christian civilization seemed able to send its vices abroad and keep its virtues at home. When men went by long sea voyages to the far East in sailing vessels, in the interests of conquest or commerce, and fell victims to their environments and weak wills, far removed from the restraints of religious influences, and from the possibility of exposure and disgrace in wrongdoing, they lived with the prospect before them, not always unfulfilled, of returning to home and to virtue to die.

That day has passed forever. With the invention of steam as a locomotive power of great velocity, with the introduction of the cable, and later, the wireless telegraphy; with the mastery of these natural forces and their introduction in every part of the world, we see the old world being drawn nearer and nearer to us by ten thousand invisible cords of commercial interests, until shortly, probably within the lifetime of you and me, the once worn out and almost stranded wreck will be found quickened with new life and moored alongside us. The Orient is already feeling the thrill of renewed life. It is responding to the touch of the youth and vigor of the West and becoming rejuvenated; it is drawing closer and closer in its eagerness for the warmth of new interests. The West is no longer alone in seeking a union; the East is coming to the West. And that part of the East which first responds to the West is the old acquaintance; the one that knows most about us, our ways and our resources; the element with which the long sea-voyager mingled in the days when it seemed more difficult for man to be virtuous, because separated so far from family and friends and living in intense loneliness. The element which now draws closest to us is that portion of the Orient with which the adventurer warred and sinned long ago, and which bears the deep scars of sin and battle.

As the old hulk is moored alongside, in order that the man of Western enterprise may cross with greater facility the gangplank and develop latent resources on the other side, the Easterner hurries across from his side to ours with no less eagerness, to pick up gold in a land where it seems so abundant to him. Almost unnoticed, the Orient is telescoping its way into the very heart of the Occident, and with fearful portent and peril, particularly to the Western woman.

This is not what is desired, but it will be inevitable. Exclusion laws must finally give way before the pressure. Already the Orient is knocking vigorously at the door of the Occident, and unless admission is granted soon, measures of retaliation will be operated to force an entrance. How to administer them the Orient already knows, for has not the door to his domicile been already forced open by the Western trader? The Orient is fast arming for the conflict.

The men of the days of sailing vessels, who went to the far East and made sport of and trampled upon the virtue of the women of a weaker nation, have not all died in peace, leaving their vices far off and gathering virtues about them to crown their old age with venerableness. Some have lived to see that whatsoever man soweth that shall he also reap. They have lived to see the tide setting in in the other direction, and the human wreckage of past vices swept by the current of immigration close to their own domicile. Their own children are in danger of being engulfed in the polluting flood of Oriental life in our midst. After many days vices come home. Man sowed the wind; the whirlwind must be reaped. The Oriental slave trader and the Oriental slave promise to become a terrible menace and scourge to our twentieth century civilization. Herein lies great peril to American womanhood. Whether we wish it to be so or not,-whether we perceive from the first that it is so or not, there is a solidarity of womanhood that men and women must reckon with. The man who wrongs another's daughter perceives afterwards that he wronged his own daughter thereby. We cannot, without sin against humanity, ask the scoffer's question, "Am I my sister's keeper?"-not even concerning the poorest and meanest foreign woman, for the reason that she is our sister. The conditions that surround the Hong Kong slave girl in California are bound in time to have their influence upon the social, legal and moral status of all California women, and later of all American womanhood.

In considering the life history of the Chinese woman living in our Chinatowns in America, therefore, we are studying matters of vital importance to us. And in order to a clear understanding of the matter, we must go back to the beginning of the slave-trade which has brought these women to the West.

Four points on the south coast of China are of especial interest to us, being the sources of supply of this slave-trade. These are Macao, Canton, Kowloon and Hong Kong, and the women coming to the West from this region all pass through Hong Kong, remaining there a longer or shorter time, the latter place being the emporium and thoroughfare of all the surrounding ports.

The south coast of China is split by a Y-shaped gap, at about its middle, where the Canton river bursts the confines of its banks and plunges into the sea. The lips of this mouth of the river are everted like those of an aboriginal African, and like a pendant from the eastern lip hangs the Island of Hong Kong, separated from the mainland by water only one-fourth of a mile wide. From the opposite or western lip hangs another pendant, a small island upon which is situated the Portuguese city of Macao. The mainland adjoining Hong Kong is the peninsula of Kowloon, ceded to the British with the island of Hong Kong. Well up in the mouth of the river on its western bank, some eighty miles from Hong Kong, is the city of Canton.

Let us imagine for a moment that the on-coming civilization of our country pushed the American Indians not westward but southward toward the Gulf of Mexico and along the banks of the Mississippi, and compressed them on every side until at last they were obliged to take to boats in the mouth of the Mississippi and live there perpetually, seldom stepping foot on land.

Now we are the better able to understand exactly what took place with an aboriginal tribe in China. These aborigines were, centuries ago, pushed southward by an on-coming civilization until at last, by imperial decree, they were forbidden to live anywhere except on boats in the mouth of the Canton river, floating up and down that stream, and sailing about Hong Kong and Macao in the more open sea.

They must have been always a hardy people, for the river population about Canton numbers today nearly 200,000 souls. In 1730, the severity of the laws regulating their lives was relaxed somewhat by imperial decree, and since then some of them have dwelt in villages along the river bank. But to the present day these people, known as the Tanka Tribe, or the "saltwater" people, by the natives, may not inter-marry with other Chinese, nor are they ever allowed to attain to official honors.

Living always on boats near the river's mouth, these were the first Chinese to come in contact with foreign sailing vessels which approached China in the earliest days. They sold their wares to the foreigners; they piloted their boats into port; they did the laundry work for the ships. In many ways they showed friendliness to the foreigners while as yet the landsman viewed the new-comers with suspicion. Their women were grossly corrupted by contact with the foreign voyagers and sailors.

Hong Kong was a long way off at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Great Britain began to send Government-manufactured opium from India to China, and when China prohibited the trade the drug was smuggled in. When Chinese officials at last rose up to check this invasion by foreign trade, wars followed in which China was worsted, and the island of Hong Kong, together with the Kowloon peninsula, became a British possession as war indemnity. Hong Kong is a "mere dot in the ocean less than twenty-seven miles in circumference," and when Great Britain took possession its inhabitants were limited to "a few fishermen and cottagers."

The Tankas helped the British in many ways in waging these wars, and when peace was established went to live with them on the island. This action on the part of these "river people" is significant as showing as much or more attachment to the foreigner than to the other classes of Chinese. There seems always to be less conscience in wronging an alien people than in injuring a people to whom one is closely attached, and this sense of estrangement from other Chinese may account to some extent for the facility with which this aboriginal people engaged, a little later, in the trade in women and girls brought from the mainland to meet the demands of profligate foreigners.

Sir Charles Elliott, Governor of Hong Kong, wishing to attract Chinese immigration to the island, issued, on February 1st and 2nd, 1841, two proclamations in the name of the Queen, to the effect that there would be no interference with the free exercise on the part of the Chinese of their religious rites, ceremonies and social customs, "pending Her Majesty's pleasure."

Following the custom of all Oriental people, to whom marriage is a trade in the persons of women, when the Tankas saw that the foreigners had come to that distant part almost universally without wife or family, they offered to sell them women and girls, and the British seem to have purchased them at first, but afterwards they modified the practice to merely paying a monthly stipend. All slavery throughout British possessions had been prohibited only a few years before the settlement of Hong Kong, in 1833, when 20,000,000 pounds had been distributed by England as a boon to slave-holders.

Hong Kong's first Legislative Council was held in 1844, and its first ordinance was an anti-slavery measure in the form of an attempt to define the law relating to slavery. It was a long process in those days for the Colony to get the Queen's approval of its legislative measures, so that a year had elapsed before a dispatch was returned from the Home Government disallowing the Ordinance as superfluous, slavery being already forbidden, and slave-dealing indictable by law. On the same day, January 24th, 1845, the following proclamation was made: "Whereas, the Acts of the British Parliament for the abolition of the slave trade, and for the abolition of slavery, extend by their own proper force and authority to Hong Kong: This is to apprise all persons of the same, and to give notice that these Acts will be enforced by all Her Majesty's officers, civil and military, within this Colony."

The "foreigners," by which name, according to a custom which prevails to this day in the East, we shall call persons of British, European or American birth,-called a native mistress a "protected woman," and her "protector" set her up in an establishment by herself, apart from his abode, and here children were born to the foreigner, some to be educated in missionary schools and elsewhere by their illegitimate fathers and afterwards become useful men and women, but probably the majority, more neglected, to become useless and profligate,-if girls, mistresses to foreigners, or, as the large number of half-castes in the immoral houses at Hong Kong at the present time demonstrates, to fall to the lowest depths of degradation.

These "protected women," enriched beyond anything they had even known before the foreigner came to that part of the world, with the usual thrift of the Chinese temperament, sought for a way to invest their earnings, and quite naturally, could think of nothing so profitable as securing women and girls to meet the demands of the foreigners. Marriage having always been, to the Oriental mind, scarcely anything beyond the mere trade in the persons of women, it was but a step from that attitude of mind to the selling of girls to the foreigner, and the rearing of them for that object. The "protected women," being of the Tanka tribe, were well situated for this purpose, for they had many relations of kindred and friendship all up and down the Canton river, and the business of the preparation of slave girls for the foreigners and for foreign markets (as the trade expanded) gradually extended backwards up the Canton river, until many of its boats were almost given over to it. "Flower-boats" were probably never unknown to this river, but, besides their use as brothels, they became stocked with little girls under training for vice, under the incitement of an ever-growing slave trade. These little girls were bought, stolen or enticed from the mainland by these river people, to swell the number of their own children destined to the infamous slave trade. Chinese law forbids this kind of slavery, but, as we have seen, the Tanka people were sort of outlaws, the river life facilitated such a business, and Hong Kong was near at hand.

In later years Dr. Eitel, Chinese interpreter to the Governor, stated:

"Almost every so-called 'protected woman,' i.e. kept mistress of foreigners here, belongs to the Tanka tribe, looked down upon and kept at a distance by all the other Chinese classes. It is among these Tanka women, and especially under the protection of these 'protected' Tanka women, that private prostitution and the sale of girls for concubinage flourishes, being looked upon as a legitimate profession. Consequently, almost every 'protected woman' keeps a nursery of purchased children or a few servant girls who are being reared with a view to their eventual disposal, according to their personal qualifications, either among foreigners here as kept women, or among Chinese residents as their concubines, or to be sold for export to Singapore, San Francisco, or Australia. Those 'protected women,' moreover, generally act as 'protectors' each to a few other Tanka women who live by sly prostitution."

When once a man enters the service of Satan he is generally pressed along into it to lengths he did not at first intend to go. So it proved in the case of many foreigners at Hong Kong. The foreigner extended his "protection" to a native mistress. That "protected woman" extended his name as "protector" over the inmates of her secret brothel; and into that house protected largely from official interference, purchased and kidnaped girls were introduced and reared for the trade in women. The sensitive point seems to have been that an enforcement of the anti-slavery laws would have interfered in many instances with the illicit relations of the foreigner, exposing him to ignominy and sending the mother of his children to prison. It was sufficient for the "protected" woman to say, when the officer of the law rapped at her door, "This is not a brothel, but the private family residence of Mr. So-and-So," naming some foreigner,-perhaps a high-placed official,-and the officer's search would proceed no further.

It was claimed that this slavery, and also domestic slavery, which sprang up so suddenly after the settlement of Hong Kong by the British, was the outgrowth of Chinese customs, and could not be suppressed but with the greatest difficulty, and their suppression was an unwarrantable interference with Chinese customs, Sir Charles Elliott having given promise from the first that such customs should not be interfered with. But, as we have shown, that promise was only made, "pending Her Majesty's pleasure," which had been very plainly and pointedly expressed later as opposed to slavery.

As to the matter of "custom," Sir John Smale, Chief Justice of Hong Kong, said, in 1879, in the Supreme Court, on the occasion of sentencing prisoners for slave trading and kidnaping:

"Can Chinese slavery, as it de facto exists in Hong Kong, be considered a Chinese custom which can be brought within the intent and meaning of either of the proclamations of 1841 so as to be sanctioned by the proclamations? I assert that it cannot.... A custom is 'such a usage as by common consent and uniform practice has become a law.' In 1841 there could have been no custom of slavery in Hong Kong as now set up, for, save a few fishermen and cottagers, the island was uninhabited; and between 1841 and 1844, the date of the Ordinance expressly prohibiting slavery, there was no time for such a custom to have grown up; and slavery in every form having been by express law prohibited by the Royal proclamation of the Queen in 1845, no custom contrary to that law could, after that date, grow up, because the thing was by express law illegal. I go further, and I find that the penal law of China, whilst it facilitates the adoption of children into a family to keep up its succession, prohibits by section 78 the receiving into his house by any one of a person of a different surname, declaring him guilty of 'confounding family distinctions,' and punishing him with 60 blows; the father of the son who shall 'give away' ... his son is to be subject to the same punishment. Again, section 79 enacts that whosoever shall receive and detain the strayed or lost child of a respectable person, and, instead of taking it before the magistrate, sell such child as a slave, shall be punished by 100 blows and three years' banishment. Whosoever shall sell such child for marriage or adoption into any family as son or grandson shall be punished with 90 blows and banishment for two years and a half. Whosoever shall dispose of a strayed or lost slave shall suffer the punishment provided by the law reduced one degree. If any person shall receive or detain a fugitive child, and, instead of taking it before the magistrate, sell such child for a slave, he shall be punished by 90 blows and banishment for two years and a half. Whosoever shall sell any such fugitive child for marriage or adoption shall suffer the punishment of 80 blows and two years' banishment.... Whosoever shall detain for his own use as a slave, wife, or child, any such lost, strayed or fugitive child or slave, shall be equally liable to be punished as above mentioned, but if only guilty of detaining the same for a short time the punishment shall not exceed 80 blows. When the purchaser or the negotiator of the purchase shall be aware of the unlawfulness of the transaction he shall suffer punishment one degree less than that inflicted on the seller, and the amount of the pecuniary consideration shall he forfeited to Government, but when he or they are foun have been unacquainted therewith they shall not be liable to punishment, and the money shall be restored to the party from whom it had been received." The Chief Justice continues: "After reading these extracts from the Penal Code of China-an old Code revised from time to time ... I cannot see how it can be maintained that any form of slavery was ever tolerated by law in Hong Kong, as it de facto exists here, or how the words of the two proclamations of 1841 could be said to bear the color of tolerating slavery under the British flag in Hong Kong. It is clear to me that the Queen's proclamation of 1845, which I have already quoted at full, declares slavery absolutely illegal here."

The truth, then, seems to be that a great demand had arisen for Chinese women at Hong Kong, the most direct cause being the irregular conduct of foreigners-officials, private individuals, soldiers and sailors-who gathered there at the time of the opium wars, and settled there in large numbers when Hong Kong became a British possession. This demand was responded to from the native side, for it was said: "When the colony of Hong Kong was first established in 1842, it was forthwith invaded by brothel keepers and prostitutes from the adjoining districts of the mainland of China, who brought with them the national Chinese system of prostitution, and have ever since labored to carry it into effect in all its details."[A] The demand that brought this supply was further added to from two sources, first, Chinese residents attracted to Hong Kong had made money there rapidly, and had fallen into profligate and luxurious manners of life, and second, Chinese going abroad to Australia, Singapore and San Francisco, created a demand for immoral women in these foreign lands which called for supplies from Hong Kong, and at Singapore the demand came also from the class of foreigners who resided there.

[Footnote A: Hong Kong was occupied by the British in 1841, but not ceded until 1842.]

The system of management of prostitution was originally Chinese, and differs much from anything known under Western civilization, in that the women are never what we speak of as "fallen women," because not the victims of seduction nor of base propensities that have led to the choice of such a life. They are either slaves trained for or sold into shame, or women temporarily held for debt by a sort of mortgage. To this Chinese system of prostitution, however, there was soon applied at Hong Kong a Government system of regulation or license under surveillance. This modified the system, intensified the slavery, and was the cause of reducing many women from the respectable ranks of Chinese life at once and arbitrarily to the lowest depths of degradation, as we shall explain and demonstrate in subsequent chapters.

The native woman, rented for a monthly stipend from her owners was called "protected" at Hong Kong. What charm this word "protection," and the title "Protector" has held for certain persons, as applied to the male sex! "Man, the natural protector of woman." Forsooth, to protect her from what? Rattlesnakes, buffalo, lions, wildcats no more overrun the country, and why is this relation of "protector" still claimed? Why, to protect woman from rudeness, and insult and sometimes even worse. But from whence comes that danger of rudeness and insult or worse from which man is to protect woman? From man, of course. Man is, then, woman's natural protector to protect her from man, her natural protector. He is to set himself the task of defending her from his injury of her, and he is charmed with the avocation. He will protect her as Abraham protected Sarah when he took her into Egypt. "Do so-and-so," said Abraham to Sarah, "that it may be well with me,-for thy sake." The history of the Chinese slave woman as she came in contact with the foreigner at Hong Kong and at Singapore proceeds all along a pathway labelled "protection," down to the last ditch of human degradation. "Well with me," was the motive in the mind of the "protector." "For thy sake," the argument for the thing as put before the woman and before the world.

In 1849 a man whose name is known the world over as a writer of Christian hymns, went to Canton as British Consul and Superintendent of trade. After a few years he returned to England, and in 1854 was knighted and sent out to govern the new colony of Hong Kong.

It is he who wrote that beautiful hymn, among others, "Watchman, tell us of the night." He also wrote, "In the Cross of Christ I Glory." One is tempted to ask, in which Cross?-the kind made of gilded tin which holds itself aloft in pride on the top of the church steeple, or the Cross proclaimed in the challenge of the great Cross-bearer, "Whosoever doth not bear his Cross, and come after Me, cannot be my disciple"? The Cross is the emblem of self-sacrifice for the salvation of the world. Oh, that men really gloried in such self-sacrifice, and held it forth as the worthiest principle of life! Did Sir John Bowring hold aloft such a Cross as this, and, with his Master, recommend it to the world as the means of its elevation and emancipation from the blight of sin? We shall not judge him individually. His example should be a warning to the fact that even the most religious men can too often hold very different views of life according to whether they are embodied in religious sentiments or in one's politics. But nowhere are right moral conceptions more needed (not in hymn-book nor in church), as in the enactments by which one's fellow-beings are governed. Other religious men not so conspicuous as Sir John Bowring, but of more enlightened days than his, have died and left on earth a testimony to strangely divergent views and principles, according to whether they were crystallized in religious sentiments, or in the laws of the land, and according to whether they legislated for men or for women.

On May 2nd, 1856, Sir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong, wrote to the Secretary of State for the Colonies at London submitting a draft of an Ordinance which was desired at Hong Kong because of certain conditions prevailing at Hong Kong which were described in the enclosures in his despatch. Mr. Labouchere, the Secretary of State for the Colonies at the time, replied to the Governor's representations in the following language: "The Colonial Government has not, I think, attached sufficient weight to the very grave fact that in a British Colony large numbers of women should be held in practical slavery for the purposes of prostitution, and allowed in some cases to perish miserably of disease in the prosecution of their employment, and for the gain of those to whom they suppose themselves to belong. A class of persons who by no choice of their own are subjected to such treatment have an urgent claim on the active protection of Government."

Hong Kong, the British colony, had existed but fourteen years when this was written. Only a handful of fishermen and cottagers were on the island before the British occupation. Its Chinese population had come from a country where, as we have seen, laws against the buying and selling, detaining and kidnaping human beings were not unfamiliar. Only eleven years had elapsed since the Queen's proclamation against slavery in that colony had been published to its inhabitants, and yet, during that time, slavery had so advanced at Hong Kong, against both Chinese and British law, as to receive this recognition and acknowledgment on the part of the Secretary of State at London:

1st, That it is a "grave fact that" at Hong Kong "large numbers of women" are "held in practical slavery."

2nd, That this slavery is "for the gain of those to whom they

suppose themselves to belong."

3rd, That it is so cruel that "in some cases" they "perish

miserably ... in the prosecution of their employment."

4th, That it is "by no choice of their own" that they prosecute

their employment, and "are subjected to such treatment."

5th, That they have "an urgent claim upon the active protection of

Government."

6th, That the service to which these slaves are doomed, through "no choice of their own," is the most degraded to which a slave could possibly be reduced, i.e., "prostitution."

When Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin," she sounded the note of doom for slavery in the United States. After that, slavery became intolerable. Many have remarked on the fact that the book should have so stirred the conscience of the Christian world, when there are depicted in it so many even engaging features and admirable persons, woven into the story of wrong. Her pen did not seem to make slavery appear always and altogether black. But there was the fate of "Uncle Tom," and the picture of "Cassie," captive of "Legree." It was not what slavery always was, but what it might be-the terrible possibilities, that aroused the conscience of Christendom, and made the perpetuation of African slavery an impossibility to Americans. The master might choose to use his power over the slave for the indulgence of his own basest propensities.

Almost at the same time of these stirring events connected with slavery in the United States, Mr. Labouchere penned the above words, admitting that slavery at Hong Kong had descended to that lowest level. Infamy instead of industry was the lot of these, engaged in the "prosecution of their employment," through "no choice of their own."

Can we anticipate what legal measures would be asked for at Hong Kong, and granted in London in order to relieve this horrible condition. It seems at once obvious that the following would be some of them at least:

1st, A clear announcement that this slavery was prohibited by the Queen's Anti-Slavery Proclamation of 1845, and would not be permitted.

2nd, Women who "supposed themselves to belong" to masters would be at once told that they were free agents and belonged to no one.

3rd, The master who dared claim the ownership of a former slave would be prosecuted and suitably punished.

4th, Any slave perishing miserably from disease would not only be healed at public expense, but placed where there was no further risk of contagion.

5th, Since such slaves had "an urgent claim on the active protection of the Government," they would be treated as wards of the State until safe from like treatment a second time.

6th, Since this slavery had sprung up in defiance of law, any official who at a future time connived at such crime would be liable to impeachment.

The Ordinance sent home for sanction, and approved of by Mr. Labouchere as needed for the "protection" of slave women, was proclaimed as Ordinance 12, 1857, after some slight modifications, and an official appointed a few months before, called the "Protector of Chinese," was charged with the task of its enforcement. This official is also called the Registrar General at Hong Kong, but the former name was given him at the first, and the official at Singapore charged with the same duties is always, to this day, called the "Protector of Chinese."

The new Ordinance embodied the following features:

1st, The registration of immoral houses.

2nd, Their confinement to certain localities.

3rd, The payment of registration fees to the Government.

4th, A periodical, compulsory, indecent examination of every woman slave.

5th, The imprisonment of the slave in the Lock Hospital until cured, and then a return to her master and the exact conditions under which she was "from no choice of her own," exposed to contagion, with the expectation that she would be shortly returned again infected.

6th, The punishment by imprisonment of the slave when any man was found infected from consorting with her, through "no choice of her own."

7th, The punishment by fine and imprisonment of all persons keeping slaves in an _un_registered house (which was not a source of profit to the Government).

This was the only sort of "active protection" that the Government of Hong Kong at that time provided to the slave. The matter of "protection" which concerned the "Protector of Chinese," related to keeping the women from becoming incapacitated in the prosecution of their employment, and to seeing that the hopelessly diseased were eliminated from the herd of slaves. The rest of the "protection" looked to the physical well-being of another portion of the community-the fornicators. If physical harm came to them from wilful sin, the Chinese women would be punished by imprisonment for it, though their sin was forced upon them. This was "protection" from the official standpoint.

Mr. Labouchere had replied with his approval of this Ordinance dealing with contagious diseases due to vice, as though the application for the measure had been made in behalf of the slaves of Hong Kong. Such was not the case. The enclosures in Sir John Bowring's despatch had been a sensational description of the urgent need of vicious men for the active protection of the Government from the consequences of their vices. Later, a Commission of Inquiry into the working of this Ordinance comments upon official statements as to the satisfactory consequences of the enactment of the measure in the checking of disease. The Commission demonstrates that in many instances their statements were absolute falsehoods, as proved by statements made by the same officials elsewhere. Since these officials are proved to have been so untruthful after the passing of the Ordinance, we can put no reliance on their statements previous to its enactments, and the more so because the statistics for Hong Kong in its early days are hopelessly confused with the general statistics for all China, wherever British soldiers or sailors were to be found. Therefore they are unavailable for citation. But as to statements made after the passage of the Ordinance, we append a compilation, as set forth by Dr. Birkbeck Nevins of Liverpool, England.

SHAMELESS AND YET OFFICIALLY-SANCTIONED FALSEHOOD IN PUBLISHING OFFICIALLY UTTERLY UNTRUE STATISTICS IN FAVOUR OF THE C.D. ACTS IN THE BRITISH COLONY OF HONG KONG WITH THE SANCTION AND AUTHORITY OF THE COLONIAL GOVERNOR.

"Referring to the Colonial Surgeon's Department, we feel bound to point out that those portions of the Annual Medical Reports which refer to the subject of the Lock Hospital have, in too many instances, been altogether misleading." (Report of Commission, p. 2, parag. 2.)

"In 1862 (five years after the Act had been in force) Dr. Murray was 'completely satisfied with the incalculable benefit that had resulted to the colony from the Ordinance of 1857'"[A]

[Footnote A: An extreme form of C.D. Acts, without parallel in any other place under British rule.]

"In 1865 (after eight years' experience) he wrote, 'the good the

Ordinance does is undoubted; but the good it might do, were all

the unlicensed brothels suppressed, was incalculable.'"

"In 1867 (after ten years' experience) the public was informed that the Ordinance had been 'on trial for nearly ten years, and had done singular service.'"

Yet in this very same year-1867, April 19th-"Dr. Murray stated in an Official Report not intended for publication, but found by the Commission among other Government papers, and published,-'That venereal disease has been on the increase, in spite of all that has been done to check it, is no new discovery; it has already been brought before the notice of His Excellency.'" (Report, p. 35, pars. 4 and 5.)

What is to be thought of the character of such reports for the Public, and such an Official Report, "not intended to be published"?

This same Dr. Murray's Annual Report for the Public for 1867, was actually put in evidence before the House of Lords' Committee on venereal diseases-1868, page 135. "Venereal disease here has now become of comparatively rare occurrence." Yet the Army Report for the previous year (1866, page 115) states that "the admissions to hospital for venereal disease were 281 per 1000 men;" i.e., more than one man in four of the whole soldiery had been in hospital for this "comparatively rare" disease.

As regards the Navy, Dr. Murray says, "the evidence of Dr. Bernard, the Deputy Inspector-General of Hospitals and Fleets, is even more satisfactory. He writes (Jan. 27), 'I am enabled to say that true syphilis is now rarely contracted by our men in Hong Kong.'" Yet the "China station," in which Hong Kong occupies so important a position, had at the time 25 per cent. more secondary (true) syphilis than any other naval station in the world, except one (the S.E. American); it had 101 of primary (true) against 68 in the North American, 31 in the S.E. American, and 22 in the Australian stations (all unprotected); and gonorrhoea was higher than in any other naval station in the world. This official misleading feature is to be found in other quarters than Dr. Murray's Reports; for in the Navy Report for 1873 (p. 282), Staff Surgeon Bennett, medical officer of the ship permanently stationed in Hong Kong, says-"Owing to the excellent working of the Contagious Diseases Acts, venereal complaints in the colony are reduced to a minimum. The few cases of syphilis are chiefly due to private prostitutes not known to the police."

In a representation made to the Secretary of State by W.H. Sloggett, Inspector of Certified Hospitals, October 7, 1879, we get an exact account of what led to the passage of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance of 1857. He says: "In 1857, owing to the very strong representations which had been made to the Governor during the previous three years, by different naval officers in command of the China Station, of the prevalence and severity of venereal disease at Hong Kong, a Colonial Ordinance for checking these diseases was passed in November of that year."

When Lord Kimberley was Secretary of State he wrote (on September 29, 1880) Governor Hennessy of Hong Kong in defence of the Ordinance of 1857,-at least as to the motive expressed by Mr. Labouchere for consenting to the passing of the Ordinance: "These humane intentions of Mr. Labouchere have been frustrated by various causes, among which must be included that the police have from the first been allowed to look upon this branch of their work as beneath their dignity, while the sanitary regulation of the brothels appears from recent correspondence to have been almost entirely disregarded." To this Governor Hennessy replied: "On the general question of the Government system of licensing brothels, your Lordship seems to think that I have not sufficiently recognized that the establishment of the system was a police measure, intended to give the Hong Kong Government some hold upon the brothels, in hope of improving the condition of the inmates, and of checking the odious species of slavery to which they are subjected. I can, however, assure your Lordship, whatever good intentions may have been entertained and expressed by Her Majesty's Government when the licensing system was established, that it has been worked for a different purpose." ... "The real purpose of the brothel legislation here has been, in the odious words so often used, the provision of clean Chinese women for the use of the British soldiers and sailors of the Royal Navy in this Colony."

The real object of the Ordinance, commended by the Secretary of State as answering to "an urgent claim" on the part of slaves "upon the active protection of the Government," the operation of which was placed in the hands of the so-called Protector of Chinese, was plainly described in the preamble of the Ordinance as making "provisions for checking the spread of venereal diseases within this Colony." No other object was stated.

The intention of the Government was that the Ordinance should be worked by the aid of the whole police force; but as early as 1860 we find the Protector, or Registrar General, D.R. Caldwell, reporting to the Colonial Secretary that "upon the first promulgation of the Ordinance, the Superintendent of Police manifested an indisposition to interfere in the working of the Ordinance, from a belief that it opened a door to corruption to the members of the force under him." Later, Mr. May, the superintendent of police alluded to, said before the Commission of Inquiry: "That he would not have permitted the police to have anything to do with the control or supervision of brothels under the Ordinance, being apart from the general objects of police duties, and from the great probability of its leading to corruption." Let this be told to Mr. May's lasting credit. Whereupon, on the Registrar General's application, the office of Inspector of Brothels was created.

We have referred several times to a certain Commission which was appointed to inquire into the working of the Contagious Diseases Ordinances of Hong Kong. This Commission was appointed by Governor Hennessy on November 12th, 1877, and was composed of William Keswick, unofficial member of the Legislative Council, Thomas Child Hallyer, Esq., "one of Her Majesty's Counsel for the Colony," and Ernest John Eitel, M.A., Ph.D., Chinese Interpreter to the Governor. We shall have frequent cause to quote from this Commission's report, and as it is the only Commission we shall quote, we shall henceforth speak of it merely as "the Commission." This report says, concerning inspectors of brothels: "These posts, although fairly lucrative, do not seem to be coveted by men of very high class." For instance, we find in a report dated December 11, 1873, by the captain superintendent of police, Mr. Dean, and the acting Registrar General, Mr. Tonnochy, that they were not prepared to recommend anyone for an appointment to a vacancy which had just occurred, owing to the reluctance of the police inspectors to accept "the office of Inspector of Brothels." Mr. Creagh says, that the post is not one "which any of our inspectors would take. They look down on the post." "They are a class very inferior to those who would be inspectors with us. I don't believe anyone wishes it, but constables, or perhaps sergeants, would take the post for the pay." Mr. Dean would also "object to its being made a part of the duty of the general police to enforce the Contagious Diseases Acts." "My inspectors and sergeants," he says, "would so strongly object to taking the office that I should be unable to get anyone on whom I could rely.... The Inspector of Police looks down on the Inspector of Brothels." Dr. Ayres tells us: "You cannot get men fitted for the work at present salaries, and you have to put tremendous powers into the hands of men like those we have."

Yet into the hands of men lower in character than the lowest of the police force was committed, in large part, the operation of Ordinance 12, 1857, recommended by Mr. Labouchere as a sort of benevolent scheme for the defense of poor Chinese slaves under the British flag, who had "an urgent claim on the protection of Government."