🚀 go-pugleaf

circumstances from which he must have known that the
    child had been kidnaped. But although the facts were known at the
    Police Court, and this man remained exceeding ten days afterward
    in the Colony, no charge was ever made against him. After passing
    sentences at this time, I made some observations on the '_patria
    potestas_' [power of the father] theory. Dr. Eitel having painted
    this condition in China in what I thought too favorable colors,
    I quoted from Doolittle's 'Social Life in China,' unquestioned
    testimony as to what _patria potestas_ was in China before the
    controversy now raised, and from Mr. Parker, Her Britannic
    Majesty's Consul at Canton, as to its present state in China.
    After these quotations, I simply asked, Can greater tyranny, more
    unchecked caprice, be described or even conceived as inexcusable
    over wife, concubine, child, or purchased or inherited
    slave?'--the quotations I made being up to this time undisputed
    ... what I said was necessary to introduce the expression of my
    conviction ... that none of the elements of the system of _patria
    potestas_ exist in Hong Kong, including of course adoption. It is
    to this conviction that I point as the moral ground for enforcing
    English law against kidnaping and buying and selling human beings.
    The gravamen of all my complaints is, that the pauper kidnapers
    and sellers are punished, while the rich buyers go free. No case
    can come on for trial in this Court except upon an information