Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers | Page 7

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