"If accidentally wounding, they shall suffer 100 blows and
perpetual banishment to the distance of 3,000 li (1,000 miles).
"Slaves who are guilty of striking their master's relations in the
first degree ... shall be strangled.... All slaves who strike so
as to wound such persons shall ... be beheaded."
The "painful execution" which is the penalty of killing a master,
means execution by slicing the criminal into 10,000 cuts. Foreigners
who have witnessed it say it is too horrible to recite.
It is under such slave laws as these that the young girl is trained
as a brothel slave before she is brought to California. After such
tuition, it seems hardly credible that girls do, in San Francisco,
dare to escape from their masters, and flee to the missions for
protection. Governor C.C. Smith, who was for years the Registrar
General of Hong Kong, previous to being knighted and sent to Singapore
as Governor of the Straits Settlements, replied to the Secretary of
State for the Colonies, in reference to the freedom of prostitutes,
"out of an experience of over a quarter of a century":
"There are no restrictive regulations on the part of the
Government which go to prevent or interfere with the entire
freedom of the inmates of brothels, and they can go abroad alone.
This statement will not, I hope, deceive you into believing that
as a consequence they are really free agents ... such is actually
not the case. A child who strikes its parent is liable to a death
sentence. The girls in brothels are in the position of daughters
to the keepers, and ... call them mother. There is no sense of
freedom, as we understand the term, possible in such a state of
affairs. The women are fearful of the unknown; of what should
happen to them if they
In 1903, the Minister of the Interior of France, the country where
these Acts originated, nominated an extra-Parliamentary Commission to
go thoroughly into these questions. This Commission held its numerous
sittings in 1905, and in the end by almost a two-thirds' majority
condemned the existing system of regulation in France, and furthermore
rejected the alternative proposal of notification with compulsory
treatment, by sixteen votes to one. In reporting on the Conferences
held in Brussels, the _Independence Belge_ said, in a leading article:
"Regulation is visibly decaying, and the fact is the more striking
because the country that instituted it (France) is at present the one
that meets it with the most ardent hostility."
CHAPTER 4.
MORE POWER DEMANDED AND OBTAINED.
In 1866 the Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Richard Graves MacDonnell,
determined upon the repeal of Ordinance 12, 1857, in order to
inaugurate "a more vigorous policy of coercion," (says the
Commission's report): "The key note of the new regime was struck by
the Governor's first minute on the subject, dated 20th October, 1866,
in which he wrote he was 'anxious early to introduce to the Council an
amended Brothel Ordinance, conferring _necessarily_ almost despotic
powers on the Registrar General." ... Be it said to the honor of
Attorney General (now Sir Julian) Pauncefote, that in the face of this
he urges the most weighty objections to the policy of "subjecting
persons to fine and imprisonment without the safeguards which surround
the administration of justice in a public a
136. A mere trifle consoles us, for a mere trifle distresses us.
137. Without examining every particular pursuit, it is enough to comprehend
them under diversion.
138. Men naturally slaters and of all callings, save in their own rooms.
139. Diversion.--When I have occasionally set myself to consider the
different distractions of men, the pains and perils to which they expose
themselves at court or in war, whence arise so many quarrels, passions, bold
and often bad ventures, etc., I have discovered that all the unhappiness of
men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own
chamber. A man who has enough to live on, if he knew how to stay with
pleasure at home, would not leave it to go to sea or to besiege a town. A
commission in the army would not be bought so dearly, but that it is found
insufferable not to budge from the town; and men only seek conversation and
entering games, because they cannot remain with pleasure at home.
But, on further consideration, when, after finding the cause of all our
ills, I have sought to discover the reason of it, I have found that there is
one very real reason, namely, the natural poverty of our feeble and mortal
condition, so miserable that nothing can comfort us when we think of it
closely.
Whatever condition we picture to ourselves, if we muster all the good things
which it is possible to possess, royalty is the finest position in the
world. Yet, when we imagine a king attended with every pleasure he can feel,
if he be without diversion and be left to consider and reflect on what he
is, this feeble happiness will not sustain him; he will necessarily fall
into forebodings of dangers, of revolutions wh
Hezekiah, Sennacherib.
Jeremiah. Hananiah, the false prophet, dies in seven months.
II Macc. 3. The temple, ready for pillage, miraculously succoured.--II Macc.
15.
I Kings 17. The widow to Elijah, who had restored her son, "By this I know
that thy words are true."
I Kings 18. Elijah with the prophets of Baal.
In the dispute concerning the true God and the truth of religion, there has
never happened any miracle on the side of error, and not of truth.
828. Opposition.--Abel, Cain; Moses, the Magicians; Elijah, the false
prophets: Jeremiah, Hananiah; Micaiah, the false prophets; Jesus Christ, the
Pharisees; Saint Paul, Bar-jesus; the Apostles, the Exorcists; Christians,
unbelievers; Catholics, heretics; Elijah, Enoch, Antichrist.
829. Jesus Christ says that the Scriptures testify of Him. But He does not
point out in what respect.
Even the prophecies could not prove Jesus Christ during His life; and so men
would not have been culpable for not believing in Him before His death had
the miracles not sufficed without doctrine. Now those who did not believe in
Him, when He was still alive, were sinners, as He said himself, and without
excuse. Therefore they must have had proof beyond doubt, which they
resisted. Now, they had not the prophecies, but only the miracles. Therefore
the latter suffice, when the doctri