clare,
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, the