Newsgroup: it.scienza.ambiente
Titolo: Re: Island Babes Making and giving headlines

more honestly, employed the word "licensed," where the old law
    said "registered," brothels.
The report of the Commission says:
    "Although the new Ordinance conferred such extensive and unusual
    powers on the Registrar General and Superintendent of Police as to
    breaking into and entering houses and arresting keepers without
    warrant, no serious difficulty whatever, so far as the records
    show,--and we have paid special attention to the point,--seems to
    have been experienced under the previous enactments in bringing
    the keepers of such houses before the court.... Nor can we in
    the second place find among the foregoing records proof of the
    necessity of the transfer to the Registrar General of the judicial
    powers.... As a matter of fact, witnesses do not seem to have been
    at all squeamish in divulging repulsive details in open Court,
    nor, on the other hand, do the magistrates ever seem to have shown
    too exacting a disposition as to the nature or amount of the
    evidence they required to sustain convictions; and the astonishing
    system of detection which had grown up had met, so far as we can
    see, with neither discouragement nor remonstrance."
We pause to lift our hearts to God in prayer before venturing to lift
the curtain and disclose even a faint outline of the reign of terror
now instituted over poor, horror-stricken Chinese women of the humbl

here, and for a year Acting
    Puisne Judge ... I write on this subject from an experience in
    Hong Kong since early in 1861; Mr. Francis from a very extensive
    experience in both China proper and in this Colony since some
    years previously." He then enters into history to show that "Mr.
    Francis of necessity studied ... the whole law on the subject of
    slavery or bondage in every form here."
Mr. Francis first reviews all the legislative measures existent at
Hong Kong concerning slavery, in the clearest manner possible, leaving
no doubts in the mind of any fair-minded person that laws were not
wanting to put down slavery:
    First: Hong Kong, being a Crown Colony, "the power of the
    Sovereign in respect of legislation is absolute."
    Second: The proclamation of Sir Charles Elliott, of tolerance
    of native customs was "pending Her Majesty's pleasure," and no
    longer.
    Third: Her Majesty's pleasure was declared at Hong Kong: (a) By
    the Proclamation of 1845; (b) "By Ordinance 6 of 1845, 2 of 1846,
    and 12 of 1873, by the combined operation of which the law of
    England, common and statute, as it existed on the 5th day of
    April, 1843, became the law of Hong Kong."
    Says Mr. Francis of Ordinance 6 of 1845, "The relations of husband
    and wife, parent and child, guardian and ward, master and servant,
    whatever they may have been when Hong Kong was Chinese, became
    from the date of that Ordinance what English law made them, and
    nothing more or less."
    "But in addition to the declarations of the Common Law," declares
    Mr. Francis, the following are in full force at Hong Kong: "The
    Act of the 5th George IV. c. 113, the Act of the 3rd and 4th
    William IV. c. 73, and the Act 6th