🚀 go-pugleaf

for in what I then said beyond punishing
    kidnapers was to bring within the cognizance of the law those
    who bought from such kidnapers,--the receivers of such stolen
    'chattels,'--leaving such buyers to set up and prove a
    justification if they could."

    "On the 31st of March, 1880, prisoners in four cases of
    kidnaping,--one most harrowing,--were sentenced. I there lamented,
    and I am sure every right-minded man will concur with me, that
    it was the fact that the very poor were punished and the rich
    escaped. In that case it clearly appeared that one Leong Ming
    Aseng, apparently a respectable tradesman, at all events a man of
    means, had given $60 for a young girl aged 13 years, to one of the
    kidnapers, and he took her away beyond the reach of her distracted
    mother under 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