🚀 go-pugleaf

Attorney General and
the Crown Solicitor seem to have paid any attention to the cases. It
was no wonder, then, that some of the witnesses could not be found.
Meanwhile the Governor had left the Colony for a trip to Japan, and
W.H. Marsh was acting in his place. On July 16th, he returned answer
to the Chief Justice that he had now received a report on the cases
from the Attorney General, the committing magistrate and the Crown
Solicitor, and

    "I regret to inform you that ... I do not see my way to directing
    the prosecutions of the two persons indicated by you; first ...
    because I do not agree with you in looking upon them as the
    principal criminals; and, secondly, because I think that after
    the evidence of these persons has been taken both before the
    committing magistrate and the Supreme Court without any warning
    having been given them that their evidence might be used against
    them, it would appear like a breach of faith to treat them now as
    criminals." "Should the prosecution of these persons result in
    their acquittal, which seems to me not improbable, I fear that the
    good effect produced by the severe reprimand, which I understand
    that your Honor administered publicly to all the parties concerned
    in these two cases, might be to a great extent neutralized." (!)

On September 29th, 1879, the Chief Justice sentenced more criminals
for trafficking in children. A Japanese girl, Sui Ahing, eleven years
old, was brought to the Colony by a Chinaman who had bought the child
in Japan of its parents. Needing money to go on to his native place,
this Chinaman borrowed $50 of a native resident at Hong Kong, and
left the child as security for the debt. The wife of the man in whose
custody the child was left beat the child severely and she ran out of
the house. She was found wandering on the street late at night,
and the finder took her and sold her to another Chinese party, who
threatened to