Says Mr. Francis bluntly: "The Chinese custom of adoption, whether of
boys for continuing the family and worship of ancestors, or of girls
for the ordinary purposes of domestic service, is not the foundation
of all this buying and selling of women and girls; it is only the
pretext and excuse." Mr. Francis states that the buying and selling of
boys is rare as compared with the buying and selling of girls. That
there are few Chinese families in Hong Kong.
"The better class Chinese leave their wives in China. The
transaction of purchase of these boys takes place at the home of
the fathers of them in China. Seldom is it necessary to buy a son,
as the usual custom when a wife has no son is to take another
wife, not to buy a boy for a son,--hence such buying of boys is
for servitude and for ransom, at Hong Kong." "Girls are not bought
and sold in Hong Kong for domestic servitude under Chinese custom.
They are bought and sold for the purpose of prostitution, here and
elsewhere, and instead of being apprenticed to the domesticities,
and of being brought up to be good wives and mothers, they
are bought and sold,--brought up and trained for a life of
prostitution, a life of the most abject and degrading slavery....
By the last census [this was written in 1880], there were in Hong
Kong 24,387 Chinese women to 81,025 men. Of these 24,387 women
the late Mr. May [Superintendent of Police] was of opinion that
20,000, or five-sixths, come under the denomination of prostitutes
... A Chi
The Mahometan religion has for a foundation the Koran and Mahomet. But has
this prophet, who was to be the last hope of the world, been foretold? What
sign has he that every other man has not who chooses to call himself a
prophet? What miracles does he himself say that he has done? What mysteries
has he taught, even according to his own tradition? What was the morality,
what the happiness held out by him?
The Jewish religion must be differently regarded in the tradition of the
Holy Bible and in the tradition of the people. Its morality and happiness
are absurd in the tradition of the people, but are admirable in that of the
Holy Bible. (And all religion is the same; for the Christian religion is
very different in the Holy Bible and in the casuists.) The foundation is
admirable; it is the most ancient book in the world, and the most authentic;
and whereas