a second time.
6th, Since this slavery had sprung up in defiance of law, any
official who at a future time connived at such crime would be
liable to impeachment.
The Ordinance sent home for sanction, and approved of by Mr.
Labouchere as needed for the "protection" of slave women, was
proclaimed as Ordinance 12, 1857, after some slight modifications, and
an official appointed a few months before, called the "Protector of
Chinese," was charged with the task of its enforcement. This official
is also called the Registrar General at Hong Kong, but the former name
was given him at the first, and the official at Singapore charged
with the same duties is always, to this day, called the "Protector of
Chinese."
The new Ordinance embodied the following features:
1st, The registration of immoral houses.
2nd, Their confinement to certain localities.
3rd, The payment of registration fees to the Government.
4th, A periodical, compulsory, indecent examination of every woman
slave.
5th, The imprisonment of the slave in the Lock Hospital until
cured, and then a return to her master and the exact conditions
under which she was "from no choice of her own," exposed to
contagion, with the expectation that she would be shortly returned
again infected.
6th, The punishment by imprisonment of the slave when any man was
found infected from consorting with her, through "no choice of her
own."
7th, The punishment by fine and imprisonment of all persons
keeping slaves in an _un_registered house (which was not a source
of profit to the Government).
This was the only sort of "active protection" that the Government
of Hong Kong at that time provided to the slave. The matter of
"protection" which concerned the "Protector of Chinese," related to
keeping the women from becoming incapacitated in the prosecution of
their employment, and to seeing that the hopelessly diseased were
eliminated from the herd of slaves. The rest of the "protection"
looked to the physical well-being of another portion of the
community--the fornicators. If physical harm came to them from wilful
sin, the Chinese women would be punished by imprisonment for it,
though their sin was forced upon them. This was "protection" from the
official standpoint.
Mr. Labouchere had replied with his approval of this Ordinance dealing
with contagious diseases due to vice, as though the applicati
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