Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers | Page 2

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.
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