🚀 go-pugleaf

still more, into what has become of these women and
    their children of the past, I believe that it will be found that
    in the great majority of cases the women have sunk into misery,
    and that of the children the girls that have survived have been
    sold to the profession of their mothers, and that, if boys, they
    have been lost sight of or have sunk into the condition of the
    mean whites of the late slave-holding states of America. The more
    I penetrate below the polished surface of our civilization the
    more convinced am I that the broad undercurrent of life here is
    more like that in the Southern States of America, when slavery
    was dominant, than it resembles the all-pervading civilization of
    England." "My suggestion that the mild intervention of the law
    should be invoked was ignored. It was also met by the assertion
    that custom had so sanctioned the evils in this Colony as that
    they are above the reach of the law, and that by custom the
    slavery was mild."

[Footnote A: Rather, it would seem in later years, by renting them for
a monthly stipend.]

The Governor, in a letter to the Colonial Secretary at London about
this time, informs the Colonial Secretary of his own failure also to
induce the Attorney General to prosecute cases to which His Excellency
had called his attention, and furthermore he explains that other
of his principal executive officers held to the same views as the
Attorney General.




CHAPTER 9.

THE CHINESE PETITION AND PROTEST.


We get additional and valuable light on social conditions at Hong
Kong, through statements drawn up by prominent Chinese men and laid
before the Governor. As a representation from the Chinese standpoint
it has peculiar value at all points exceptin