Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers

CHAPTER 7.

OTH­ER DERELICT OF­FI­CIALS.

The Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al was not the on­ly of­fi­cial at Hong Kong who did not be­lieve in the ex­ter­mi­na­tion of slav­ery, as we shall pro­ceed to show, al­though the Gov­er­nor had strong sym­pa­thy from the Chief Jus­tice.

On May 30th, 1879, Sir John Smale, Chief Jus­tice of the Colony of Hong Kong, wrote a let­ter for the in­for­ma­tion of the Gov­er­nor, Sir John Pope Hen­nessy, to the ef­fect that he had sen­tenced, on the pre­vi­ous day, two poor wom­en to im­pris­on­ment with hard la­bor, for de­tain­ing a boy 13 years old. The wom­en sold the lit­tle boy to a drug­gist for $17.50. The rel­atives traced their lost boy, came from Can­ton and claimed him, but the drug­gist re­fused to give him up, pro­duc­ing a bill of sale, and the boy was not giv­en up un­til they ap­peared in the po­lice court. The Chief Jus­tice adds:

“I am sat­is­fied from the ev­idence that the great crim­inal is this drug­gist, and that it is an op­pro­bri­um to the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice to pun­ish these poor wom­en as I have done, and al­low the drug­gist to es­cape. I there­fore ask His Ex­cel­len­cy to di­rect that pro­ceed­ings be forth­with tak­en against the man, and that the case be con­duct­ed at the mag­is­tra­cy by the Crown So­lic­itor, so that he may be com­mit­ted for tri­al be­fore the Supreme Court.”

He then speaks of a case of a wom­an whom he sen­tenced on May 6th, 1879, to two years' im­pris­on­ment with hard la­bor for steal­ing a fe­male child. He adds:

“The wom­an was mere­ly a mid­dle wom­an, and re­ceived a small sum, but it came out in the ev­idence that Le­ung A-​Luk had bought the child for $53, and was ac­tu­al­ly con­fin­ing her in a room where the child was dis­cov­ered. She was the great crim­inal. It is an op­pro­bri­um to jus­tice to pun­ish this poor wom­an, and to al­low Le­ung A-​Luk to go un­pun­ished. I am aware that, ac­cord­ing to prece­dents here and at home, it is with­in the province of the pre­sid­ing judge to di­rect pros­ecu­tions such as these to be in­sti­tut­ed, but I think it more con­ve­nient to ask His Ex­cel­len­cy, as the head of the Ex­ec­utive (whose province it es­pe­cial­ly is to orig­inate crim­inal pro­ceed­ings) to di­rect pros­ecu­tion. To let these chief of­fend­ers go un­pros­ecut­ed, and to pun­ish such mis­er­able crea­tures, ex­pos­es the court to the con­tempt of the com­mu­ni­ty, and tends to de­stroy all re­spect for the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice in the Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ty.”

Ac­cord­ing­ly the Gov­er­nor for­ward­ed this re­quest on the part of the Chief Jus­tice to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, say­ing: “It is clear from the ev­idence and from doc­uments pub­lished by the Con­ta­gious Dis­eases Com­mis­sion that prac­tices of this kind have pre­vailed unchecked, or al­most unchecked, for many years past in this Colony.” The Gov­er­nor then re­ferred to a case in point that he had sub­mit­ted to the for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, but he “did not seem dis­posed to en­force the rights of the fa­ther, on the ground that he had sold the child.” The Gov­er­nor con­cludes: “I did not agree with his view of the law.”

The last case was re­ferred back to the Act­ing Po­lice Mag­is­trate to know why the wom­an, Le­ung A-​Luk, was al­lowed to go un­pros­ecut­ed. The Po­lice Mag­is­trate replied: “It ap­peared to me that 4th de­fen­dant (Le­ung A-​Luk) be­ing a well-​to-​do wom­an, and hav­ing no chil­dren of her own, had pur­chased the girl with a view to adopt­ing her.” He adds: “When Act­ing Su­per­in­ten­dent of Po­lice last year, I wished to pros­ecute a man for de­tain­ing a child ... but as it was shown that the boy had been sold by his fa­ther some months pre­vi­ous­ly, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al con­sid­ered the pur­chas­er was _in lo­co par­en­tis_, [in the place of a par­ent] and could not be pur­chased.”

On the two cas­es to which the at­ten­tion of the Gov­er­nor had been brought, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al re­port­ed:

“With the great­est re­spect for the Chief Jus­tice, I doubt the pol­icy of pros­ecut­ing the wom­an he refers to, hav­ing re­gard to the fact that the mag­is­trate had dis­charged her for want of tes­ti­mo­ny, and look­ing to his fur­ther re­port. The mag­is­trate should al­ways be sup­port­ed if pos­si­ble; and if he dis­charged the wom­an, and put her at the bar as a wit­ness, and she was used again at the Supreme Court, it might look like a breach of good faith to treat her now as a crim­inal.... As to the drug­gist's case, I think that the on­ly thing that can be said is that it would look to be a breach of faith to pro­ceed against him now.”

When the case was re­ferred to the Crown So­lic­itor, he said:

“As to the drug­gist the par­ties had now left the Colony, and there were no wit­ness­es against him. The pur­chase by Chi­nese of young or­phans, and in­deed of oth­ers whose par­ents are too poor to keep them, is a so­cial cus­tom amongst the na­tives, and is of con­stant oc­cur­rence in Hong Kong. These 'pock­et-​chil­dren,' as they are usu­al­ly termed, are of­ten treat­ed with great af­fec­tion, and are far bet­ter off than they were pre­vi­ous to their be­ing so bought.”

It was the 30th of May when the Chief Jus­tice called the Gov­er­nor's at­ten­tion to these cas­es. It was Ju­ly be­fore the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Crown So­lic­itor seem to have paid any at­ten­tion to the cas­es. It was no won­der, then, that some of the wit­ness­es could not be found. Mean­while the Gov­er­nor had left the Colony for a trip to Japan, and W.H. Marsh was act­ing in his place. On Ju­ly 16th, he re­turned an­swer to the Chief Jus­tice that he had now re­ceived a re­port on the cas­es from the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the com­mit­ting mag­is­trate and the Crown So­lic­itor, and

“I re­gret to in­form you that ... I do not see my way to di­rect­ing the pros­ecu­tions of the two per­sons in­di­cat­ed by you; first ... be­cause I do not agree with you in look­ing up­on them as the prin­ci­pal crim­inals; and, sec­ond­ly, be­cause I think that af­ter the ev­idence of these per­sons has been tak­en both be­fore the com­mit­ting mag­is­trate and the Supreme Court with­out any warn­ing hav­ing been giv­en them that their ev­idence might be used against them, it would ap­pear like a breach of faith to treat them now as crim­inals.” “Should the pros­ecu­tion of these per­sons re­sult in their ac­quit­tal, which seems to me not im­prob­able, I fear that the good ef­fect pro­duced by the se­vere rep­ri­mand, which I un­der­stand that your Hon­or ad­min­is­tered pub­licly to all the par­ties con­cerned in these two cas­es, might be to a great ex­tent neu­tral­ized.” (!)

On Septem­ber 29th, 1879, the Chief Jus­tice sen­tenced more crim­inals for traf­fick­ing in chil­dren. A Japanese girl, Sui Ahing, eleven years old, was brought to the Colony by a Chi­na­man who had bought the child in Japan of its par­ents. Need­ing mon­ey to go on to his na­tive place, this Chi­na­man bor­rowed $50 of a na­tive res­ident at Hong Kong, and left the child as se­cu­ri­ty for the debt. The wife of the man in whose cus­tody the child was left beat the child severe­ly and she ran out of the house. She was found wan­der­ing on the street late at night, and the find­er took her and sold her to an­oth­er Chi­nese par­ty, who threat­ened to send her to Sin­ga­pore as a pros­ti­tute. It was plain the last pur­chas­er in­tend­ed ei­ther to send her to Sin­ga­pore or keep her at Hong Kong for vile pur­pos­es. This case il­lus­trates well the fre­quen­cy with which chil­dren are sold and re-​sold in that coun­try. The par­ties to the last trans­ac­tion, the find­er of the child and the pur­chas­er of the child from the find­er, were both found guilty, one of sell­ing, the oth­er of buy­ing a child for the pur­pos­es of pros­ti­tu­tion. His Lord­ship, the Chief Jus­tice, said:

“I will call up­on the pris­on­ers at an­oth­er time. This is a case of far larg­er pro­por­tions than the guilt or in­no­cence of the two pris­on­ers at the bar. I take shame to my­self that the ap­palling ex­tent of kid­nap­ing, buy­ing and sell­ing slaves for what I may call or­di­nary servile pur­pos­es, and the buy­ing and sell­ing young fe­males for worse than or­di­nary slav­ery, has not pre­sent­ed it­self be­fore to me in the light it ought. It seems to me that it has been rec­og­nized and ac­cept­ed as an or­di­nary out-​turn of Chi­nese habits, and thus that un­til spe­cial at­ten­tion has been ex­cit­ed it has es­caped pub­lic no­tice. But re­cent­ly the abom­ina­tion has forced it­self on my no­tice. In some cas­es con­vic­tions have been had; in two no­table in­stances, al­though I called for pros­ecu­tion, the crim­inals es­caped. They were Chi­nese in re­spectable po­si­tions, and 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. The prac­tice is on the in­crease. It is in this port, and in this Colony es­pe­cial­ly, that the so-​called Chi­nese cus­tom pre­vails. Un­der the En­glish flag, slav­ery, it has been said, does not, can­not ev­er be. Un­der that flag it does ex­ist in this Colony, and is, I be­lieve, at this mo­ment more open­ly prac­ticed than at any for­mer pe­ri­od of its his­to­ry. Cyprus has been un­der our rule for about a year, and al­ready, both in the House of Com­mons and in the House of Lords, ques­tions have been asked, and the Mem­bers of the present Min­istry have as­sured the coun­try that slav­ery in ev­ery form shall be speed­ily put down there. Hu­man­ity is of no par­ty, and per­son­al lib­er­ty is held to be the right of ev­ery hu­man be­ing un­der En­glish law, by, I be­lieve, ev­ery man of note in Eng­land. My re­cent pleas­ant per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence in Eng­land as­sures me of that. But here in Hong Kong, I be­lieve that do­mes­tic slav­ery ex­ists in fact to a great ex­tent. 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.... I shall deal with these peo­ple when I shall have more ful­ly con­sid­ered the case.”

Dur­ing the pro­ceed­ings of the tri­al of these two pris­on­ers, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al had de­clared his in­ten­tion not to call the for­mer own­ers of the child, Wai Alan, the wom­an who beat the child, or Pao Chee Wan, her hus­band. The Chief Jus­tice now said:

“I now di­rect you, Mr. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, to pros­ecute these two peo­ple, Pao Chee Wan and Wai Alan.” At­tor­ney Gen­er­al:--“My Lord, I in­ti­mat­ed be­fore that this mat­ter was un­der con­sid­er­ation; I do not think I am at lib­er­ty to say un­der whose con­sid­er­ation.” His Lord­ship:--“I di­rect the pros­ecu­tion, and will take the re­spon­si­bil­ity. It is the course in Eng­land and I will pur­sue it here.” The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al:--“You have pub­licly di­rect­ed it; and I will re­port it to the prop­er quar­ter.” His Lord­ship:--“The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al at home is con­stant­ly or­dered by the Court to pros­ecute. On my re­spon­si­bil­ity alone I do this.” The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al:--“May I ask your Lord­ship to say on what charge?” His Lord­ship:--“Un­der Sec­tions 50 and 51 of No. 4 of 1865, and al­so for as­sault.” The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al con­tin­ued to raise ob­jec­tions, when the Chief Jus­tice said: “I have said as much as I choose to say, and I will not be put to ques­tion by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al. If you have any dif­fi­cul­ty, come to the Court in Cham­bers.”

Gov­er­nor Hen­nessy, in re­port­ing the in­ci­dent to the Sec­re­tary of State at Lon­don, adds: “I sent a note to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, say­ing I thought that the pros­ecu­tion sug­gest­ed by the Chief Jus­tice should take place; but it was found that the ac­cused par­ties were not in the Colony.” Af­ter this man­ner many cas­es brought to the at­ten­tion of the of­fi­cers of the law by par­ents or guardians of chil­dren of kid­nap­ing and trad­ing in girls and chil­dren failed to se­cure the at­ten­tion they de­served. It seems to us not at all amaz­ing, when one reads this past his­to­ry, that by the time Chi­nese girls have seen and learned all that they must in the Colony of Hong Kong, when brought to this coun­try they are ut­ter­ly in­cred­ulous as to the good faith of po­lice and oth­er of­fi­cials. They must en­ter a com­plaint at the risk of their lives, and if the of­fi­cer of the law will not pros­ecute the case in spite of all its dif­fi­cul­ties (which are large­ly imag­inary on the part of luke­warm of­fi­cials), then the girl must be re­turned to the mas­ter she has in­formed against, to be in his pow­er for him to vent his wrath up­on her. A case in point oc­curred in Oak­land on­ly a few months ago, and we had a chance to in­ter­view the girl. The Cap­tain of Po­lice went through the broth­els of Oak­land's Chi­na­town, ac­com­pa­nied by some mis­sion­ary ladies, in or­der to dis­cov­er if pos­si­ble any girls who would ac­knowl­edge that they wished to come away. Ev­ery girl was ques­tioned, in the ab­sence of the keep­ers, and not one, or per­haps on­ly one, said she wished to come away. There were some one hun­dred and fifty Chi­nese slave girls in Oak­land at this time, and one might say they all had a chance to es­cape, and of their own will chose to re­main. But was that the truth? Not at all; the re­sult did not prove at all that one, and on­ly one wished to come away. It proved mere­ly that on­ly one was in­spired with suf­fi­cient con­fi­dence and courage, af­ter her long, hard ex­pe­ri­ence with for­eign­ers, to _say what she wished._ It is the uni­ver­sal tes­ti­mo­ny of all the girls who have been res­cued, so we have been told, by those who have been en­gaged in this res­cue work for many years--that ev­ery slave in Chi­na­town plans and dreams of noth­ing else but of the day when, hav­ing served long enough to buy her free­dom, she will be grant­ed it by her mas­ter or mis­tress, and then she can be hon­or­ably mar­ried. But un­less her free­dom is pur­chased for her by some lover, the cas­es are rare, in­deed, that a girl is al­lowed to earn her own free­dom, though they are kept sub­mis­sive by con­stant promis­es that the goal is just ahead of them. A few days af­ter the Oak­land pa­pers had tri­umphant­ly as­sert­ed that it had been demon­strat­ed that there was not a sin­gle slave girl in Chi­na­town--a state­ment that ev­ery­one who had any in­tel­li­gence on the sub­ject, in­clud­ing the news­pa­pers them­selves, knew to be false--a la­dy in mis­sion work re­ceived a cau­tious hint in a round-​about way that one of the girls she had seen when the rounds were made de­sired to be set at lib­er­ty. “How did you learn this?” we ea­ger­ly and quite nat­ural­ly asked the mis­sion­ary. She replied that on no ac­count could she tell a hu­man be­ing how the in­tel­li­gence was con­veyed to her, as it might cost oth­ers very dear­ly, even to the sac­ri­fice of life, if the knowl­edge leaked out. “But,” she said, “I will show you the girl and you may talk with her your­selves.” We gath­ered from the girl that she was a re­spectable wid­ow, the moth­er of two chil­dren, liv­ing with her par­ents not far from Hong Kong on the main­land. As they were very poor, she went to Hong Kong to work at sewing to help sup­port the fam­ily. An ac­quain­tance there told her that she could earn as much as thir­ty dol­lars a month at sewing in Cal­ifor­nia, and he could se­cure her pas­sage for her at eco­nom­ical cost. She re­turned to her home and con­sult­ed her par­ents, and they thought the chance a good one, so bid­ding her lit­tle ones good bye, she re­turned to Hong Kong and paid for the tick­et, be­ing in­struct­ed that a cer­tain wom­an would meet her at the wharf at San Fran­cis­co whom she must claim as her “moth­er,” since the im­mi­gra­tion laws were so strict that she must pass her­self off as the daugh­ter of this wom­an (for this daugh­ter, who was now in Chi­na, hav­ing lived in the Unit­ed States was en­ti­tled to re­turn to her moth­er). Read­er, have you ev­er trav­eled on an­oth­er's tick­et? If so, or if you have known a pro­fess­ing Chris­tian to have done so, do not be too harsh in your judg­ment of this hea­then, and de­clare she de­served the ter­ri­ble fate that over­took her. The “moth­er” met the sewing-​wom­an, brought her to Oak­land, and im­pris­oned her in a hor­ri­ble den to earn mon­ey for her. With ut­most cau­tion our mis­sion­ary friend res­cued her. The Cap­tain of Po­lice and oth­er of­fi­cers were at hand to help the mis­sion­ary, and when the girl was tak­en, she strug­gled fran­ti­cal­ly and called for help as though be­ing kid­naped. Had the po­lice­men been there alone they would have let the cap­tors have their slave, be­liev­ing they had made a mis­take. But they had not; the mis­sion­ary knew that; the girl was on­ly think­ing ahead of the pos­si­bil­ity of the plot fail­ing and of falling back in­to the hands of her cap­tors. She must nev­er be­tray to them, un­til safe­ly out of their clutch­es, that she _wished_ to come away. She must make it ap­pear that she was dragged away against her will. And this is free Amer­ica! Do you won­der that these girls do not tell ev­ery­body who asks them that they are un­will­ing cap­tives? Doubt­less they would if our of­fi­cers of the law showed their good faith by lay­ing hold of these slave deal­ers. Noth­ing was done or at­tempt­ed to pun­ish the hor­ri­ble crea­tures who cap­tured this girl. They are go­ing on un­mo­lest­ed with their ne­far­ious busi­ness, though many of them could be eas­ily pun­ished. This part of the work--pun­ish­ing slave-​deal­ers--has nev­er been tak­en up se­ri­ous­ly here on the Pa­cif­ic Coast. And un­til these ter­ri­ble crim­inals are im­mured in prison, most cer­tain­ly these Chi­nese slave girls will not de­clare their de­sire for free­dom, for if it were grant­ed them they would not be safe--at least they have no rea­son to be­lieve they would be, though there are mis­sions where they would be pro­tect­ed. But what rea­son have they for be­liev­ing this is the case, af­ter the years of train­ing they have had in the per­fidy of all those with whom they come in con­tact! Many girls have been res­cued on this Pa­cif­ic Coast, by brave mis­sion­ary work­ers. But it is to the last­ing shame of our coun­try that such wicked crea­tures are al­lowed to ex­ist here to im­port these slaves. Im­prison the im­porters, and the slaves are res­cued. That is the short road to free­dom. But that was not the path pur­sued by of­fi­cials in gen­er­al at Hong Kong, nor is that course be­ing pur­sued in the Unit­ed States. This sewing wom­an has been re­turned to her home. Many an­oth­er wom­an has at equal per­il to her­self made her com­plaint and it has fall­en up­on the deaf ears of of­fi­cials, and the poor slave has had to set­tle with her mas­ters for her fool-​har­di­ness.

Now we will re­turn to Hong Kong, and to past his­to­ry. We will cite just one more case to show some­thing of the re­luc­tance of of­fi­cials there to pros­ecute the traf­fick­ers in hu­man flesh. A Chi­na­man, Tsang San-​Fat, pe­ti­tioned the Colo­nial Sec­re­tary at Hong Kong in re­gard to the cus­tody of his lit­tle daugh­ter, whom, “un­der stress of pover­ty,” he had giv­en away to a man named Le­ung A-​Tsit, the Oc­to­ber pre­vi­ous, the un­der­stand­ing be­ing that the lat­ter should find her a hus­band when she grew up, and should not send her away to oth­er ports. In May the par­ents learned from A-​Sin, em­ployed by Le­ung A-​Tsit, that the lat­ter was go­ing to take away the lit­tle girl to an­oth­er place. Af­ter tax­ing the man with this, and re­ceiv­ing on­ly ex­cus­es in re­ply, the fa­ther pe­ti­tioned that Le­ung A-​Tsit should be pre­vent­ed from car­ry­ing out his de­sign. Le­ung A-​Tsit filed a counter-​pe­ti­tion, stat­ing that Tsang San-​Fat, be­ing un­able to sup­port a fam­ily, hand­ed over to him his lit­tle daugh­ter, aged six years; that the lit­tle girl was to be­come his daugh­ter and to be brought up by him, he pay­ing $23 to the par­ents. He ac­cused the fa­ther of try­ing to ex­tort mon­ey from him, and ap­pealed for “pro­tec­tion” from “im­pend­ing calami­ties.” Lat­er, fur­ther facts came out, show­ing that the fa­ther of the child had bor­rowed $5 three years be­fore from Le­ung A-​Tsit, which, with in­ter­est at ten cents per month for ev­ery dol­lar, now amount­ed to $23. The Septem­ber be­fore, his cred­itor came and de­mand­ed pay­ment, and when the fa­ther told him he had no mon­ey, and found it very dif­fi­cult to pro­vide for his fam­ily, Le­ung A-​Tsit said: “Very well, you can give me your daugh­ter in­stead, and when she is grown up I will find her a hus­band.” It was fi­nal­ly agreed that he should have the lit­tle girl for $25, viz., the $23 al­ready ow­ing, and $2 to the moth­er as “tea-​mon­ey.” The $2 were paid and he took the child away. The moth­er said: “I was very sor­ry about it and cried.” (But moth­ers have lit­tle to say as to the dis­pos­al of the chil­dren they bear in the Ori­ent). The Gov­er­nor, Sir John Pope Hen­nessy, took a deep in­ter­est in this case, when he heard of it, re­gard­ing it as “an il­le­gal trans­ac­tion,” and urged up­on the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Mr. G. Phillipo, to pros­ecute, on his be­half, the pur­chas­er of the girl, and that both the fa­ther of the child and Le­ung A-​Tsit be no­ti­fied that the fa­ther was en­ti­tled to the child by British law, and re­fer­ring the fa­ther to the po­lice mag­is­trate. The po­lice mag­is­trate re­quest­ed of the Colo­nial Sec­re­tary that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's opin­ion be ob­tained, as to what course the mag­is­trate should pur­sue. The fi­nal out­come of the case is told by Gov­er­nor Hen­nessy in a despatch to the Sec­re­tary of State for the Colonies.

“I made a minute on the pe­ti­tions, di­rect­ing them to be sent to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, as 'the par­ties ap­pear to ac­knowl­edge be­ing con­cerned in an il­le­gal trans­ac­tion.' In a few days the pa­pers were 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.”