The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-11-03
EkSMISH MORALITY IN CHIYA.

ENSAISB MORALITY IN CHIYA.
Chinese Gambling Houses FarIned Ont.
A curious moral obliquity in the admiuis-
tration of the local English Government at
Hons. Kong Is revealed in recent memorial
presented to the Duke Of Buclingh ham by the
Indian Committee of the British Association
for the Promotion of Social Science.
This memorial is long and minute, bat the
main facts presented are these:-
at appears from the papers presented in
March last, by the Queens command, that
the local authorities in Heligoland had, at
different times in the years 1855, 1857, ami
1858, granted or confirmed to two common
gambling. house keepers in succession (uatives
OF Frankfort and CasseD, in consideration of
the yearly payment of eight thousand thalers
to-and subject to tie approval Other
Majesty's Government, the privilege of the
gambling establishment, or exclusive right to
the games Of hazard in the said sidi island
of Helgoland, till January l, 1871;
that those concessions are still in full
operation; that the local authorities in the
other colony, that of Hong Kong, had, so
recently as the summer Of 1866, taken upon
themselves to pass an Ordinance by which
all existing laws in restraint of public gaming
there were to be deemed repealed, and they
themselves enabled from time to time to
frame and pass such rules, regulations, and
conditions as might be deemed expedient for
the better limitation and control of gaming in
that colony that those provisions have been
acted on ever since, and with such effect that
there are now existing at Hong Kong, under
the royal license, twelve public gaming houses,
managed by gambling firm, out of the pro-
fits whereof sum OF nearly two hundred
thousand dollars yearly is received by the
local authorities"
The memorial goes on to represent that
''with respect to Hong Kong the Gaming
20 hotya h.at, riaI iy,ko e.
by the local authorities after her Majesty's
Imperial Government had clearly expressed
their disapproval of it, and their determine
tion not to accept revenue raised by such
means; insomuch that since the summer OF
1866, when the first ordinance was passed,
the farm had been created by the local
authorities, put up by them to sale, and
granted to the highest bidder; the yearly
consideration money received in advance from
the farmer and, as already mentioned, twelve
licensed gambling houses were set up by him,
and brought into active speratiOn amongst the
mixed community of less than one hundred
and eighteen thousand inhabitants of both
sexes aud of all ages, by whom that little aud
upproductive island is already over peopled,
and where gambling was previously known
only as crime both by Chinese and by Bri-
tish laws"
Finally, the memorial makes the following
statements, which are cOrroborated by docu-
ments accompanying the petition ITSELF
"G.) That neither the Chinese laws and
usages, ner the local ordinances against gam
bling, have ever been fairly put into execu-
tiop, nor revised with that intention; and that,
on the contrary, one most excellent ordinance
(No. 6 of 1850 for improving within Hong
Kong the Chinese law Of the tithing, and hun
dred, and the frank-pledge, which in China
have always been found quite sufficient for the
entire suppression of the practice, was never
put in force at all from the time of it's enact
ment until that of its repeal. (2) That in
some respects the first ordinance relating to
gambling was SO ill-planned as to make it diff
cult for any prosecutor to obtain conviction.
(3) That the present governor has reported
that when he came to the colony two years ago
the local police were the least effective and
most corrupt body of police whom he had ever
seen. (4) That their pay being very scanty,
and the nominal part of the informer in the
mulct levied on gamblers not being allowed to
police informers at Hong Kong, they were the
more open to the bribes which the gambling
houses offered"
The petition concludes with the usual prayer
for the reform of these abuses.
In the course of this document, moreover
occurs the following paragraph, which reveals
the fact that the gambling licenses are not the
only nor even the worst features of the Brit
ish Government in China. The petitioners
say that "they cannot conclude these last
observations without deploring that the
Queens sanction was ever given to the two
precedents which appear to be relied on in
favor of the Gambling Farm, that is to say,
the Brothels Lincense act of 1857, and the
Opium Shops Farm of 1858, measures to
which the objections are so patent as to need
no exposition here. And they are panied to
see that the great spread during the year 1867
of the debauchery, or, as it is called, the
trade of the Opium Farm is even made
subject of graduation in the Regstrar-Gene-
RAILS report for that year already cited"
John Bull would appear to have one moral
code for home government, and another, not
nearly SO moral, for the benefit of his foreign