Re: flood coming to alt.tv.muppets
Peter Pearson
a monthly stipend.]
The Governor, in a letter to the Colonial Secretary at London about
this time, informs the Colonial Secretary of his own failure also to
induce the Attorney General to prosecute cases to which His Excellency
had called his attention, and furthermore he explains that other
of his principal executive officers held to the same views as the
Attorney General.
CHAPTER 9.
THE CHINESE PETITION AND PROTEST.
We get additional and valuable light on social conditions at Hong
Kong, through statements drawn up by prominent Chinese men and laid
before the Governor. As a representation from the Chinese standpoint
it has peculiar value at all points excepting where self-interest
might afford a motive for coloring the truth.
The occasion of these statements was as follows: On November 9, 1878,
a month before the report of the Commission was published, certain
Chinese merchants had petitioned the Governor to be allowed to form
themselves into a society for suppressing kidnaping and trafficking
in human beings. This petition states that the worst kidnapers are
"go-betweens and old women who have houses for the detention of
kidnaped people." They declare that these
"inveigle virtuous women or girls to come to Hong Kong, at first
deceiving them by the promise of finding them employment (as
domestic servants), and then proceeding to compel them by force
to become prostitutes, or exporting them to a foreign port, or
distribute them by sale over the different ports of China, boys
being sold to become adopted children, girls being sold to be
trained for prostitution." "Your petitioners are of opinion
that such wicked people are to be found belonging to any of the
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largely from Canton, let us first describe the conditions we found
there. Our Journal of February 14th, 1894, reads as follows:
"We went in company with a missionary and a native, both of
whom could talk both English and Chinese, and visited some
'flower-boats' on the river. Many of these boats are quite
pretentious, with their rich wood-carving, fine furniture,
and gaudy display of tinsel. There were whole streets of
them,--floating houses moored together; we walked along the length
of the street on one side, stepping from the bow of one boat to
the next, the bows of the boats constituting front verandahs. We
called at almost every place, but a description of one will do for
all. First, as we entered, was a couch for opium smoking; just
beyond this a reception room, very gaudy, with dozens of hanging
lamps, and at one end a shrine for the gods, and offerings before
it. In a room back of the reception room, and also upstairs,
there were girls in large numbers. A hard-featured old woman came
forward from the back room, who, our interpreter said, was as good
a specimen as we could possibly have seen of an old brothel-keeper
of Canton, one who had been in the business for many years of
buying or otherwise obtaining babies and girls, and training them
for prostitution. The girls came crowding to the door of the back
room, and looked in upon us with eager curiosity. Our interpreter
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escape and get into a better state. Those who before were secure and
senseless, are made sensible how much they were in the way to ruin, in
their former courses. Some are more suddenly seized with convictions-it
may be, by the news of others' conversion, or some thing they hear in
public, or in private conference-their consciences are smitten, as if
their hearts were pierced through with a dart. Others are awakened more
gradually, they begin at first to be something more thoughtful and
considerate, so as to come to a conclusion in their minds, that it is
their best and wisest way to delay no longer, but to improve the present
opportunity. They have accordingly set themselves seriously to meditate
on those things that have the most awakening tendency, on purpose to
obtain convictions; and so their awakenings have increased, till a sense
of their misery, by God's Holy Spirit setting in therewith, has had fast
hold of them. Others who before had been somewhat religious, and
concerned for their salvation, have been awakened in a new manner; and
made sensible
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or tempt him, and domineer over him, either subduing him by their strength,
or fascinating him by their charms, a tyranny more awful and more imperious.
"Such is the state in which men now are. There remains to them some feeble
instinct of the happiness of their former state; and they are plunged in the
evils of their blindness and their lust, which have become their second
nature. "From this principle which I disclose to you, you can recognize the
cause of those contradictions which have astonished all men and have divided
them into parties holding so different views. Observe, now, all the feelings
of greatness and glory which the experience of so many woes cannot stifle,
and see if the cause of them must not be in another nature.
For Port-Royal to-morrow (Prosopopaea).--"It is in vain, O men, that you
seek within yourselves the remedy for your ills. All your light can only
reach the knowledge that not in yourselves will you find truth or good. The
philosophers have promised you that, and you have been unable to do it. They
neither know what is your true good, nor what is your true state. How could
they have given remedies for your ills, when they did not even know them?
Your chief maladies are pride, which takes you away from God, and lust,
which binds you to earth; and they have done nothing else but cherish one or
other of these diseases. If they gave you God as an end, it was only to
administer to your pride; they made you think that you are by nature like
Him and conformed to Him. And those who saw the absurdity of this claim put
you on another precipice, by making you understand that your nature was like
that of the brutes, and led you to seek your good in the lusts which are
shared by the animals. This is not the way to cure you of your
unrighteousness, which these wise men nev