🚀 go-pugleaf

wants, though in reality
    their mistresses and their absolute owners."

The document scarcely needs comment. It illustrates the fact that one
may have most ideal laws, but laws never operate automatically, and in
the absence of any desire to "let the oppressed go free," but rather
an eager desire to hold them in subjection to the base propensities of
profligate men, as all the State documents representing the situation
tend to show, there is small proof that the "Women and Girls'
Protective Ordinance of 1889" has had any appreciable effect in
altering the slave conditions at Hong Kong. The same old notorious
inspector, John Lee, who, Governor Hennessy thought, ought to have
been prosecuted for manslaughter, after he hounded those native women
to their death, was Chief Inspector of Brothels at Hong Kong in 1894,
when we made investigations in that Colony, and personally interviewed
many of these slave girls, and heard their stories.

The most recent official documents relating to the matter have been
commented upon in _The Shield_ (organ of the British Committee of the
International Purity Federation), in its issue dated London, June,
1906, as follows:

    "One of the most important parliamentary papers of recent years on
    our question has just been issued in response to questions put in
    the House of Commons by Mr. Henry J. Wilson, M.P., on March 8th
    last. The title is, 'Further Correspondence relating to Measures
    Adopted for Checking the Spread of Venereal Disease' (Cd. 2903),
    and relates to enactments in the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong,
    and Gibraltar, during the period in which the Rt. Hon. Joseph
    Chamberlain was at the head of the Colonial office.

    "The correspondence in question further reveals the existence and
    extent of a 'Yellow Slave Trade' in the East of large dimensions.
    The girls in question are stated to be 'bought when young,' and
    'believe themselves bound body and soul to the brothel