eard and moustache, he takes marked money in his waistcoat
pocket, and proceeds to the back lanes of the Colony, knocks at
various doors, and, at length, gains admission to a house. He
addresses the woman who opens the door and tells her he wants a
Chinese girl. There is an argument as to the price, and he agrees
to give four dollars. He is shown up to the room, and gives her
the money. What I am now telling you is the gentleman's own
evidence. He records how he flung up the window and put out his
head and whistled. The police whom he had in attendance in the
street, broke open the door and arrested the girl. She is brought
up the next day to be tried for the offence; but, before whom?
Before the Acting Registrar General--before the same gentleman
who had the beard and moustache the night before. He tries her
himself, and on the books of the Registrar General's office (I
have turned to them and read his own evidence recorded in his
own handwriting) there is his own conviction of the girl, of the
offence, and his sentence, that she be fined fifty dollars and
some months' imprisonment! I mention this for this reason--that
the officer who did this was appointed because he was supposed to
be a man of exceptionally high moral tone, and good conduct and
demeanour. But what would be the effect on any man having to
administer such an Ordinance? There was laid before my Legislative
Council a case of one of the European Inspectors of brothels, and
I was struck by this fact in his evidence. He says: 'I took the
marked money from the Registrar General's office, and followed a
woman, and consorted with her, and gave her the money; and the
moment I had done so, I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out
the badge of office, and pointed to the Crown, and arrested the
woman.' She was henceforth 'a Queen's woman'."

CHAPTER 6.

THE PROTECTOR'S COURT AND SLAVERY.

The justification for the passage of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance
at the beginning, as set forth in Mr. Labouchere's dispatch on the
27th of August, 1856, to Sir John Bowring was, that the "women" "held
in practical slavery" "through no choice of their own," "have an
urgent claim on the _active protection_ of Government." It has been
claimed again and again by officials at Hong Kong and Singapore that
protection is in large part the object and aim of th