Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers

CHAPTER 9.

THE CHI­NESE PE­TI­TION AND PROTEST.

We get ad­di­tion­al and valu­able light on so­cial con­di­tions at Hong Kong, through state­ments drawn up by promi­nent Chi­nese men and laid be­fore the Gov­er­nor. As a rep­re­sen­ta­tion from the Chi­nese stand­point it has pe­cu­liar val­ue at all points ex­cept­ing where self-​in­ter­est might af­ford a mo­tive for col­or­ing the truth.

The oc­ca­sion of these state­ments was as fol­lows: On Novem­ber 9, 1878, a month be­fore the re­port of the Com­mis­sion was pub­lished, cer­tain Chi­nese mer­chants had pe­ti­tioned the Gov­er­nor to be al­lowed to form them­selves in­to a so­ci­ety for sup­press­ing kid­nap­ing and traf­fick­ing in hu­man be­ings. This pe­ti­tion states that the worst kid­napers are “go-​be­tweens and old wom­en who have hous­es for the de­ten­tion of kid­naped peo­ple.” They de­clare that these

“in­vei­gle vir­tu­ous wom­en or girls to come to Hong Kong, at first de­ceiv­ing them by the promise of find­ing them em­ploy­ment (as do­mes­tic ser­vants), and then pro­ceed­ing to com­pel them by force to be­come pros­ti­tutes, or ex­port­ing them to a for­eign port, or dis­tribute them by sale over the dif­fer­ent ports of Chi­na, boys be­ing sold to be­come adopt­ed chil­dren, girls be­ing sold to be trained for pros­ti­tu­tion.” “Your pe­ti­tion­ers are of opin­ion that such wicked peo­ple are to be found be­long­ing to any of the [neigh­bor­ing] dis­tricts, but in our dis­trict of Tung Kun such cas­es of kid­nap­ing are com­par­ative­ly fre­quent, and all the mer­chants of Hong Kong, with­out ex­cep­tion, are ex­press­ing their an­noy­ance.”

Ac­com­pa­ny­ing the pe­ti­tion was a state­ment of the sit­ua­tion:

“Hong Kong is the em­po­ri­um and thor­ough­fare of all the neigh­bor­ing ports. There­fore these kid­napers fre­quent Hong Kong much, it be­ing a place where it is easy to buy and to sell, and where ef­fec­tive means are at hand to make good a speedy es­cape. Now, the laws of Hong Kong be­ing based on the prin­ci­ple of the lib­er­ty of the per­son, the kid­napers take ad­van­tage of this to fur­ther their own plans. Thus they use with their vic­tims hon­eyed speech­es, and give them tri­fling prof­its, or they use threats and stern words, all in or­der to in­duce them to say they are will­ing to do so and so. Even if they are con­front­ed with wit­ness­es it is dif­fi­cult to show up their wicked game.... Kid­nap­ing is a crime to be found ev­er­where, but there is no place where it is more rife than at Hong Kong.... Now it is pro­posed to pub­lish ev­ery­where of­fers of re­ward to track such kid­napers and have them ar­rest­ed.... The crimes of kid­nap­ing are in­creas­ing from day to day.”

This pro­pos­al on the part of Chi­nese mer­chants to form such a so­ci­ety was cor­dial­ly ac­cept­ed by of­fi­cials, and the Gov­er­nor re­quest­ed that two po­lice mag­is­trates, whom he named, the Cap­tain Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice and Dr. Ei­tel, should draw up a scheme to check kid­nap­ing, in con­cert with the Chi­nese pe­ti­tion­ers. This com­mit­tee met, and de­cid­ed that the ob­jects of the “Chi­nese So­ci­ety for the Pro­tec­tion of Wom­en and Chil­dren” should he as fol­lows:

1. The de­tec­tion and sup­pres­sion of kid­napers and kid­nap­ing. 2. The restora­tion to their homes of wom­en and chil­dren de­coyed or kid­naped for pros­ti­tu­tion, em­igra­tion, or slav­ery. 3. The main­te­nance of wom­en and chil­dren pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion and restora­tion to their homes. 4. Un­der­tak­ing to mar­ry or set out in life wom­en and chil­dren who could not safe­ly be re­turned home.

At a sub­se­quent meet­ing of these gen­tle­men, Mr. Fran­cis, Act­ing Po­lice Mag­is­trate, asked the Chi­nese mer­chants present, “If there was of late any spe­cial _modus operan­di_ ob­served in the pro­ceed­ings of kid­napers dif­fer­ing from what had been ob­served and known for­mer­ly?” To this the Chi­nese gen­tle­men present replied that “there was in­deed a marked dif­fer­ence ob­serv­able in the pro­ceed­ings of kid­napers of late, be­cause they had be­come ac­quaint­ed with the loop­holes British law leaves open, al­so with the prin­ci­ple of per­son­al free­dom jeal­ous­ly guard­ed by British law, and that through this knowl­edge their pro­ceed­ings had not on­ly be­come less tan­gi­ble for the po­lice to deal with, but the kid­napers had been em­bold­ened to give them­selves a def­inite or­ga­ni­za­tion, fol­low­ing a reg­ular sys­tem adapt­ed to the pe­cu­liar­ities of British and Chi­nese law, and us­ing reg­ular re­sorts and de­pots in the sub­urbs of Hong Kong.” In sup­port of this, Mr. Fung Ming-​shan laid on the ta­ble two doc­uments writ­ten in Chi­nese. One of these con­tained a list of 38 dif­fer­ent hous­es in the neigh­bor­hood of Sai-​ying-​pim and Tai-​ping-​shan used by pro­fes­sion­al kid­napers, whose names are giv­en, but whose res­idence could not be as­cer­tained. The oth­er doc­ument con­sists of a list of 41 pro­fes­sion­al kid­napers whose per­son­alia have been sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly as­cer­tained.

The for­eign Mag­is­trates present then point­ed out to the Chi­nese mem­bers of the meet­ing that one great dif­fi­cul­ty the Gov­ern­ment fre­quent­ly met in deal­ing with such cas­es was the ques­tion, what to do with wom­en or chil­dren found to have been un­law­ful­ly sold or kid­naped; how to re­store them to their law­ful guardians in the in­te­ri­or of Chi­na; how to pro­vide for them in case such wom­en or chil­dren had ac­tu­al­ly been sold by their very guardians, who, if the wom­an or child in ques­tion were re­stored to them, would but seek an­oth­er pur­chas­er; how to deal with per­sons ab­so­lute­ly friend­less, etc. The Chi­nese mem­bers of the meet­ing replied that they were pre­pared to un­der­take this du­ty. They would em­ploy trust­wor­thy de­tec­tives to as­cer­tain the fam­ily re­la­tions of any kid­naped per­son, who would see to such per­sons be­ing re­stored to their fam­ilies up­on guar­an­tee be­ing giv­en for prop­er treat­ment; and in cas­es where restora­tion was im­pos­si­ble or not ad­vis­able, they would take charge of such kid­naped per­sons, main­tain them, and even­tu­al­ly see them re­spectably mar­ried. It was then de­cid­ed that the Mag­is­trates present should draw up a suc­cinct state­ment of the pro­vi­sions of the British law for­bid­ding the sale of per­sons and guar­an­tee­ing the lib­er­ty of the sub­ject, which should be trans­lat­ed in­to Chi­nese, and cir­cu­lat­ed freely in the neigh­bor­ing dis­tricts.

Al­though the ac­tion on the part of the Chi­nese mer­chants in form­ing them­selves in­to an or­ga­ni­za­tion to put down kid­nap­ing was re­ceived with much ap­pre­ci­ation by the Gov­er­nor and Sec­re­tary of State at Lon­don, as well as by many of the of­fi­cials at Hon' Kong, there were those who from the first doubt­ed whether the mo­tives of the Chi­nese in thus unit­ing were whol­ly dis­in­ter­est­ed on the part of the ma­jor­ity. Such were con­firmed in their doubts by the ac­tion of these same Chi­nese as soon as Sir John Smale set to work in earnest to ex­ter­mi­nate slav­ery, and de­clared in his court a year lat­er than the for­ma­tion of this Chi­nese So­ci­ety:

“I was giv­en to un­der­stand that buy­ing chil­dren by re­spectable Chi­na­men as ser­vants was ac­cord­ing to Chi­nese cus­toms, and that to at­tempt to put it down would be to arouse the prej­udices of the Chi­nese.... Hu­man­ity is of no par­ty, and per­son­al lib­er­ty is to be held the right of ev­ery hu­man be­ing un­der British law.... What­ev­er the law of Chi­na may be, the law of Eng­land must pre­vail here. If Chi­na­men are will­ing to sub­mit to the law, they may re­main, but on con­di­tion of obey­ing the law, whether it ac­cords with their no­tions of right or wrong or not; and if re­main­ing they act con­trary to the law, they must take the con­se­quences.”

Sir John Smale's ut­ter­ance cre­at­ed in­tense feel­ing among these Chi­nese mer­chants, who at once called up­on the Gov­er­nor to rep­re­sent their views and to protest. The Gov­er­nor in­formed them that “slav­ery in any form could not be al­lowed in the Colony.” They protest­ed that their sys­tem of adop­tion and of ob­tain­ing girls for do­mes­tic pur­pos­es was not slav­ery; “and they re­ferred to the more im­moral prac­tice of buy­ing girls for the Hong Kong broth­els, which, they al­leged, Gov­ern­ment de­part­ments had con­nived at, though it was a prac­tice most hate­ful to the re­spectable Chi­nese.” The Gov­er­nor then asked them for their views in writ­ing, and they sent them to him in the form of a memo­ri­al, con­tain­ing the fol­low­ing words:

“Your pe­ti­tion­ers are in­formed that his Lord­ship, the Chief Jus­tice, af­ter the tri­al of a case of pur­chas­ing free per­sons for pros­ti­tu­tion, said, in the course of his judg­ment, that buy­ing and sell­ing of girls for do­mes­tic servi­tude was an in­dictable of­fense;--which put all na­tive res­idents of Hong Kong in a state of ex­treme ter­ror; all great mer­chants and wealthy res­idents in the first in­stance be­ing afraid lest they might in­cur the risk of be­ing found guilty of a statu­to­ry of­fence, whilst the poor and low class peo­ple, in the sec­ond in­stance, feared be­ing de­prived of a means to pre­serve their lives (by sell­ing chil­dren to be do­mes­tic ser­vants).”

These pe­ti­tion­ers claimed:

That the buy­ing of boys for “adop­tion” and of girls for do­mes­tic servi­tude, “wide­ly dif­fers from the above-​men­tioned wicked prac­tices” of kid­nap­ing and buy­ing and sell­ing of girls in­to broth­els.

That the do­mes­tic slaves “are al­lowed to take their ease and have no hard work to per­form,” and when they grow up, “they have to be giv­en in mar­riage.”

That all for­mer Gov­er­nors had let them alone in the ex­er­cise of their “so­cial cus­toms.”

That Gov­er­nor El­liott had promised them free­dom in the ex­er­cise of their na­tive cus­toms.

That in­fan­ti­cide “would be ex­treme­ly in­creased if it were en­tire­ly for­bid­den to dis­pose of chil­dren by buy­ing and sell­ing;” par­ents de­prived of the means of keep­ing off star­va­tion by sell­ing their chil­dren would “drift in­to thief­dom and brig­andage.”

Fol­low­ing the pe­ti­tion was an elab­orate state­ment on the sub­ject, full of sub­tle ar­gu­ments, mis­state­ments and per­ver­sions, to­geth­er, of course, with some well-​put state­ments, form­ing ten propo­si­tions in fa­vor of do­mes­tic slav­ery. Their first claim is not ex­act­ly true, as even Dr. Ei­tel, who de­fend­ed do­mes­tic servi­tude, was bound to de­clare, name­ly, That Chi­nese law does not for­bid adop­tion and do­mes­tic servi­tude. We have al­ready quot­ed Sir John Smale's state­ment of the Chi­nese law, which re­strict­ed the adop­tion of boys to the tak­ing of one with the same sur­name as the fam­ily. And as to the buy­ing of girls for do­mes­tic servi­tude, though large­ly _prac­ticed_ in Chi­na, yet these Chi­nese mer­chants could hard­ly have been ig­no­rant of the fact that it was an _il­le­gal­ity_ be­fore the Chi­nese law. “The rea­son of this,” says the Chi­nese protest, “is the ex­ces­sive in­crease of pop­ula­tion, and the wide ex­tent of pover­ty and dis­tress.” But there was nei­ther over-​pop­ula­tion nor dis­tress at Hong Kong which should ne­ces­si­tate the in­tro­duc­tion of the prac­tice in­to that Colony. “If all those prac­tices were for­bid­den, poor and dis­tressed peo­ple would have no means left to save their lives, but would be com­pelled to sit down and wait for death.” In oth­er words, these men would claim that their mo­tives were whol­ly, or large­ly benev­olent in pur­chas­ing the chil­dren of the poor! And what bet­ter could the poor do for a liv­ing than to beget chil­dren and sell them in­to slav­ery to the rich!

“Whilst all those prac­tices, there­fore, may be classed to­geth­er as buy­ing and sell­ing (of free per­sons), it is yet req­ui­site to dis­tin­guish care­ful­ly the good or wicked pur­pos­es which each class of prac­tice serve, and ac­cord­ing­ly ap­ply dis­crim­inate­ly ei­ther pun­ish­ment or non-​pun­ish­ment.” But an­ti-​slav­ery leg­is­la­tion has nev­er done this, and nev­er will. The ques­tion is not to any large ex­tent the com­fort or mis­ery of the chat­tel, but the for­bid­ding that one hu­man be­ing should be al­lowed to deal with an­oth­er _as a chat­tel_ at all.

This at­ti­tude of the Chi­nese mer­chants who al­lied them­selves with the British of­fi­cials for the Pro­tec­tion of Wom­en and Chil­dren gave no omen of good from the very first. Yet from that day to the present these men have had a large share in the gov­ern­ment of the na­tive wom­en of Hong Kong and Sin­ga­pore, ren­der­ing it very dif­fi­cult ev­er to el­evate the stan­dard of wom­an­hood, or to ed­ucate Chi­nese wom­en in prin­ci­ples that should be the com­mon in­her­itance of all who live in a so called free coun­try.

The state­ment con­tin­ues:

“Since the last few years many Chi­nese have brought their prop­er­ty, wives and fam­ilies to the place, sup­pos­ing they would be able to live here in peace, and to re­joice in their prop­er­ty. ...Chi­nese res­idents of Hong Kong have, there­fore, been in the habit of fol­low­ing all na­tive cus­toms which were not a con­tra­ven­tion of Chi­nese statute law [but it seems _this sort_ of buy­ing and sell­ing of hu­man be­ings is con­trary to Chi­nese law. This is a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion]. It is said that the whole in­crease and pros­per­ity of the Colony from its first foun­da­tion to the present day is all based on the strength of that in­vi­ta­tion which Sir Charles El­liott gave to in­tend­ing set­tlers, and that this present in­ten­tion of ap­ply­ing, all of a sud­den, the re­pres­sive force of the law to both the prac­tice of buy­ing or sell­ing boys or girls for pur­pos­es of adop­tion or for do­mes­tic servi­tude is not on­ly a vi­ola­tion of the rule of Sir Charles El­liott, but more­over will, it is to be feared, not fail to trou­ble the peo­ple.”

They speak of in­fan­ti­cide as an evil that

“must be classed with evils al­most un­avoid­able. Now if the buy­ing of adop­tive chil­dren and of ser­vant girls is to be uni­form­ly abol­ished, it is to be feared that hence­forth the prac­tice of in­fan­ti­cide will ex­treme­ly in­crease be­yond what it ev­er was. The heinous­ness of the vi­ola­tion of the great Cre­ator's benev­olence, which con­sti­tutes in­fan­ti­cide, is be­yond com­par­ison with the in­dul­gence grant­ed to the sys­tem of buy­ing and sell­ing chil­dren to pro­long their ex­is­tence.”

As though these benev­olent per­sons on­ly bought slaves for this one laud­able pur­pose, to pre­serve their lives! “As re­gards the buy­ers, they look up­on them­selves as af­ford­ing re­lief to dis­tressed peo­ple, and con­sid­er the mat­ter as an act akin to char­ity,” etc.

A flood of light is let in up­on the mat­ter of the re­luc­tance of British of­fi­cials to move in the putting down of do­mes­tic slav­ery and the buy­ing and sell­ing of boys among the na­tives, in the fol­low­ing well-​de­served thrust at the weak point in the ar­mor of the British of­fi­cials:

“The of­fice of the Reg­is­trar-​Gen­er­al was charged with the su­per­in­ten­dence of pros­ti­tutes and the li­cens­ing of broth­els and sim­ilar af­fairs. But _from 80 to 90 per cent of all these pros­ti­tutes in Hong Kong were brought in­to these broth­els by pur­chase, as is well known to ev­ery­body_. If buy­ing and sell­ing is a mat­ter of a crim­inal char­ac­ter, the prop­er thing would be, first of all, to abol­ish this evil (broth­el slav­ery). But how comes it that since the first es­tab­lish­ment of the Colony down to the present day the same old prac­tice pre­vails in these li­censed broth­els, and has nev­er been for­bid­den or abol­ished?”

This was a cen­ter shot, and cal­cu­lat­ed to weak­en the hands of at least the guilty of­fi­cials. What could they say? Were the of­fi­cials pre­pared, since the re­port of the Com­mis­sion a few months be­fore had made pub­lic the scan­dals con­nect­ed with the li­cens­ing and in­spec­tion of broth­els, to set about re­form­ing the abus­es by rad­ical mea­sures? Cer­tain­ly the Chief Jus­tice was. He did ev­ery­thing in his pow­er to abol­ish slav­ery _as slav­ery_, not sim­ply to abol­ish slav­ery when un­con­nect­ed with broth­els. But sub­se­quent his­to­ry seems to in­di­cate that, from this point on, the British of­fi­cials were ready to com­pro­mise with the Chi­nese mer­chants, and the tes­ti­mo­ny from this time for­ward was well-​nigh uni­ver­sal in Hong Kong cir­cles that do­mes­tic slav­ery, or “do­mes­tic servi­tude,” as Dr. Ei­tel rec­om­mend­ed that it should be called in­stead (since a weed by an­oth­er name may help the imag­ina­tion to think it a rose), was very “mild” and “harm­less,” and that the adop­tion of pur­chased boys was a “re­li­gious” du­ty, or at least, had a re­li­gious fla­vor about it, as prac­ticed by the Chi­nese. But as we have al­ready said, that adop­tion in or­der to be law­ful in Chi­na must be the adop­tion of one of the same sur­name.

On Oc­to­ber 27th, 1879, the Chief Jus­tice, at an ad­journed sit­ting of the Court for the pur­pose, sen­tenced two more of­fend­ers, one for kid­nap­ing a boy, and the oth­er for de­tain­ing a girl with in­tent to sell her. In the first case the Judge said:

“Re­ceived as you had been in­to the fa­ther's house in char­ity, you availed your­self of the op­por­tu­ni­ty to steal his child, and tried to sell the child open­ly, prob­ably hav­ing hawked him from door to door. The sen­tence of the Court on you, Tang Atim, is that you be im­pris­oned and kept to hard la­bor for two years, and that you be kept in soli­tary con­fine­ment for a pe­ri­od of one week in ev­ery two months of your im­pris­on­ment.”

Chan Achit, an old wom­an, con­vict­ed of hav­ing un­law­ful­ly de­tained a fe­male child of 11 years of age, with in­tent to sell her, was next placed in the dock. His Lord­ship said:

“The ev­idence in this case has shown the ex­traor­di­nary ex­tent to which, un­der cloak of Chi­na cus­tom, the in­iq­ui­ty of deal­ing in chil­dren has ex­tend­ed. From the ev­idence, I have no doubt that a vagabond clans­man to whom the fa­ther had oc­ca­sion­al­ly giv­en out of his penury had orig­inat­ed the crime in en­tic­ing the child away, and it seems to me to be clear that the pris­on­er was as well known as a 'bro­ker of mankind' as a re­ceiv­er of stolen chil­dren, to sell them on com­mis­sion, as re­ceivers of old iron and ma­rine stores could be found in this Colony to dis­pose of stolen prop­er­ty. The lit­tle girl bought and sold, aged 11 years, is a very in­tel­li­gent child, and de­scribed the ne­go­ti­ations for her sale with great clear­ness.”

The Chief Jus­tice then went on to re­peat the lit­tle girl's tes­ti­mo­ny as to these “bro­kers of mankind,” and the child's knowl­edge, from per­son­al ob­ser­va­tion of these pur­chas­es and sales, to which he adds:

“Let me here ask, Is the trade, or rather pro­fes­sion, 'bro­ker of mankind,' al­so a sa­cred Chi­na cus­tom? I will not ask the queries which would nat­ural­ly arise in case the ques­tion were an­swered in the af­fir­ma­tive. At present, how­ev­er, I must say that, cus­tom or no cus­tom, the prac­tice of this pro­fes­sion is pro­hib­it­ed by statute, and it is my du­ty to meet its ex­er­cise by pun­ish­ment.”

The pris­on­er was sen­tenced to two years' pe­nal servi­tude. The Chief Jus­tice con­clud­ed his re­marks on that oc­ca­sion by re­ply­ing to the state­ments made in the Chi­nese pe­ti­tion.

He called at­ten­tion to the Chi­nese rest­ing their claim on the tem­po­rary promise of Gov­er­nor El­liott in 1841; of the fact that they ig­nored the procla­ma­tion of the Queen in 1845. He said that in­fan­ti­cide was al­so a Chi­nese cus­tom in the same sense that slav­ery was, on the words of the pe­ti­tion:

“Amongst the Chi­nese there has hith­er­to been the cus­tom of drown­ing their daugh­ters. The Chi­nese threat­en the in­crease of this 'cus­tom' of drown­ing chil­dren if their sale is put down.... I can on­ly say that in case fa­ther, moth­er, or rel­ative were con­vict­ed of in­fan­ti­cide, Chi­nese cus­tom would be no pro­tec­tion, and, un­less I am grievous­ly mis­tak­en, the pre­sid­ing judge would have no al­ter­na­tive but to sen­tence the per­pe­tra­tor to death ... the one cus­tom is tol­er­at­ed just as the oth­er cus­tom is tol­er­at­ed, and both alike or nei­ther must be claimed as sanc­tioned by Gov­er­nor El­liott's procla­ma­tion. All reme­dies which ev­er ex­ist­ed by com­mon law or by statute in Eng­land up to 1845 against own­er­ship of hu­man be­ings, against ev­ery form of slav­ery, ex­tend by their own prop­er force and au­thor­ity to Hong Kong; and, if that were not enough, all En­glish laws ap­pli­ca­ble to Hong Kong, in­clud­ing those against own­er­ship in hu­man be­ings, were by ex­press Or­di­nances 6 of 1845, and 12 of 1873, em­bod­ied in­to the laws of Hong Kong, whilst the worst forms of slav­ery are es­pe­cial­ly pun­ished by Or­di­nance 4 of 1865, and 2 of 1875. I am bound by my most solemn obli­ga­tions to en­force all these laws. I must, there­fore, with­out fear, favour or af­fec­tion, dis­charge this du­ty to the best of my abil­ity.”