🚀 go-pugleaf

of adoption or for domestic servitude is not
    only a violation of the rule of Sir Charles Elliott, but moreover
    will, it is to be feared, not fail to trouble the people."

They speak of infanticide as an evil that

    "must be classed with evils almost unavoidable. Now if the buying
    of adoptive children and of servant girls is to be uniformly
    abolished, it is to be feared that henceforth the practice of
    infanticide will extremely increase beyond what it ever was. The
    heinousness of the violation of the great Creator's benevolence,
    which constitutes infanticide, is beyond comparison with the
    indulgence granted to the system of buying and selling children to
    prolong their existence."

As though these benevolent persons only bought slaves for this one
laudable purpose, to preserve their lives! "As regards the buyers,
they look upon themselves as affording relief to distressed people,
and consider the matter as an act akin to charity," etc.

A flood of light is let in upon the matter of the reluctance of
British officials to move in the putting down of domestic slavery and
the buying and selling of boys among the natives, in the following
well-deserved thrust at the weak point in the armor of the British
officials:

    "The office of the Registrar-General was charged with the
    superintendence of prostitutes and the licensing of brothels
    and similar affairs. But _from 80 to 90 per cent of all these
    prostitutes in Hong Kong were brought into these brothels by
    purchase, as is well known to everybody_. If buying and selling is
    a matter of a criminal character, the proper thing would be, first
    of all, to abolish this evil (brothel slavery). But how comes
    it that since the first establishment of the Colony down to the
    present day the same old practice prevails in these licensed
    brothels, and has never been forbidden or abolished?"

This was a center shot, and calculated to weaken the hands of at
least