🚀 go-pugleaf

Acts."

    "In addition to the above-mentioned Acts of George, William and
    Victoria, there is also the Imperial Act, entitled The Slave
    Trade Act, 1873, which consolidates the laws for the suppression
    of the Slave Trade, and which is in force in Hong Kong by its own
    authority. We have also the provisions of the Local Ordinance 4 of
    1865, sections 50 and 51, and 2 of 1875."

    "Offenses against the provisions of these Ordinances, so far as
    they relate to women or children, are still very common, and
    are growing more numerous every day, and until the system of
    prostitution which prevails in this Colony, and the system of
    breeding up young girls from their infancy to supply the brothels
    of Hong Kong, Singapore, and San Francisco, _is declared to be
    slavery_, and is treated and punished as such in Hong Kong, no
    stop will ever be put to the kidnaping of women and the buying and
    selling of female children in Hong Kong. This buying and selling
    is only an effect of which the existing system of Chinese
    prostitution is the cause. Get rid of that, and there is an end of
    kidnaping."

Again the nail had been struck on the head. _Licensed brothel
slavery_, as it exists at Hong Kong, was put forward by the Chinese
merchants as something to be dealt with before British officials
could consistently lay violent hands on the more trivial offenses of
_domestic slavery and so-called "adoption.