ve point seems to have been that
an enforcement of the anti-slavery laws would have interfered in many
instances with the illicit relations of the foreigner, exposing him
to ignominy and sending the mother of his children to prison. It was
sufficient for the "protected" woman to say, when the officer of the
law rapped at her door, "This is not a brothel, but the private
family residence of Mr. So-and-So," naming some foreigner,--perhaps
a high-placed official,--and the officer's search would proceed no
further.

It was claimed that this slavery, and also domestic slavery, which
sprang up so suddenly after the settlement of Hong Kong by the
British, was the outgrowth of Chinese customs, and could not be
suppressed but with the greatest difficulty, and their suppression
was an unwarrantable interference with Chinese customs, Sir Charles
Elliott having given promise from the first that such customs should
not be interfered with. But, as we have shown, that promise was only
made, "pending Her Majesty's pleasure," which had been very plainly
and pointedly expressed later as opposed to slavery.

As to the matter of "custom," Sir John Smale, Chief Justice of
Hong Kong, said, in 1879, in the Supreme Court, on the occasion of
sentencing prisoners for slave trading and kidnaping:

"Can Chinese slavery, as it _de facto_ exists in Hong Kong, be
considered a Chinese custom which can be brought within the intent
and meaning of either of the proclamations of 1841 so as to be
sanctioned by the proclamations? I assert that it cannot.... A
custom is 'such a usage as by common consent and uniform practice
has become a law.' In 1841 there could have been no custom of
slavery in Hong Kong as now set up, for, save a few fishermen and
cottagers, the island was uninhabited; and between 1841 and 1844,
the date of the Ordinance expressly prohibiting slavery, there was
no time for such a custom to have grown up; and slavery 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