🚀 go-pugleaf

defended on the ground of its necessity in
    detecting unlicensed houses, but which your Lordship [Lord
    Kimberley, Secretary of State for the Colonies] has now justly
    stigmatized as a revolting abuse. On another point the Attorney
    General also seems not to appreciate fully what he must have heard
    Sir John Smale saying from the Bench in the Supreme Court. It
    would be a mistake to think that the Chief Justice had not before
    he left the Colony, realized the public opinion of the Chinese
    community on the subject of kidnaping. In sentencing a prisoner
    for kidnaping, on the 10th of March, 1881, Sir John Smale said he
    was bound to declare from the Bench that, to the credit of the
    Chinese, a right public opinion had been growing up, and on the
    25th of March, 1881, (the last occasion when Sir John Smale spoke
    in the Supreme Court of Hong Kong), he said, in a case in
    which the kidnapers had been convicted--This case presents two
    satisfactory facts first, that a Chinese boat woman handed one of
    these prisoners to the police, and that afterward an agent of the
    Chinese Society to suppress this class of crime caused the arrest
    and conviction of these prisoners. These facts are indicative of
    the public mind tending to treat kidnaping as a crime against
    society, calling for active suppression. On the same occasion, in