Newsgroup: it.scienza.ambiente
Titolo: Re: OT but Important: Usenet Abuse and Impersonation by a sick  individualusing IP address 131.129.69.249

middle woman, and received a small sum,
    but it came out in the evidence that Leung A-Luk had bought the
    child for $53, and was actually confining her in a room where
    the child was discovered. She was the great criminal. It is an
    opprobrium to justice to punish this poor woman, and to allow
    Leung A-Luk to go unpunished. I am aware that, according to
    precedents here and at home, it is within the province of the
    presiding judge to direct prosecutions such as these to be
    instituted, but I think it more convenient to ask His Excellency,
    as the head of the Executive (whose province it especially is to
    originate criminal proceedings) to direct prosecution. To let
    these chief offenders go unprosecuted, and to punish such
    miserable creatures, exposes the court to the contempt of the
    community, and tends to destroy all respect for the administration
    of justice in the Chinese community."
Accordingly the Governor forwarded this request on the part of the
Chief Justice to the Attorney General, saying: "It is clear from the
evidence and from documents published by the Contagious Diseases
Commission that practices of this kind have prevailed unchecked, or
almost unchecked, for many years past in this Colony." The Governor
then referred to a case in point that he had submitted to the former
Attorney General, but he "did not seem disposed to enforce the rights
of the father, on the ground that he had sold the child." The Governor
concludes: "I did not agree with his view of the law."
The last case was referred back to 

unless their mothers complain to the Registrar," which of
course, he knew, they would never venture to do. "We know well that
even now there is a deal of traffic in young girls going on, and
that a number of inmates of brothels are really slaves.... The only
Europeans I have heard object to the Contagious Diseases Ordinance are
those who, in their well-meant zeal, would abolish prostitution, and
punish all parties engaged as criminals." Precisely! Sir John Smale
at Hong Kong had undertaken to "punish all parties engaged" in this
nefarious slave business, and his methods were declared unwise and
unpractical, simply because his methods endangered prostitution in the
form of brothel-slavery. Says Mr. Pickering in conclusion:
"I myself profess to be a Christian, and endeavor according to my
light, and as far as my nature will allow, to conform my conduct
to the standards of my religion; while holding these principles, I
certainly feel that I should not be acting in accordance with the
wishes of my Master, were I not to advocate most strongly that healing
should be extended to the poor, the helpless, and afflicted, whether
they be harlots or any other kind of sinners, who; unless the
Government assist them by forced exam

among the
Chinese." (The italics are the authors').
Ordinance 10, 1867 now came into operation, with the following
additional powers in the hands of the "Protector" of Chinese, the
Registrar General:
    1st, Not only were keepers of unregistered houses to be fined or
    sent to prison, but the women--"held in practical slavery for the
    purposes of prostitution"--when found in unregistered houses were
    also subject to fine and imprisonment.
    2nd, The Registrar-General, otherwise the "Protector" of Chinese,
    could break into any house suspected of being a brothel, and
    arrest the keeper thereof without warrant. And he could authorize
    his underlings to do the same.
    3rd, The Registrar General could exercise both judicial and
    executive powers in the prosecution of the duties of his office.
    4th, All outdoor prostitutes could be arrested without warrant,
    fined and imprisoned.
    The new law possessed one virtue over the old. It frankly, and
    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 

had let them alone in the exercise of
    their "social customs."
    That Governor Elliott had promised them freedom in the exercise of
    their native customs.
    That infanticide "would be extremely increased if it were entirely
    forbidden to dispose of children by buying and selling;" parents
    deprived of the means of keeping off starvation by selling their
    children would "drift into thiefdom and brigandage."
Following the petition was an elaborate statement on the subject,
full of subtle arguments, misstatements and perversions, together, of
course, with some well-put statements, forming ten propositions in
favor of domestic slavery. Their first claim is not exactly true, as
even Dr. Eitel, who defended domestic servitude, was bound to declare,
namely, That Chinese law does not forbid adoption and domestic
servitude. We have already quoted Sir John Smale's statement of the
Chinese law, which restricted the adoption of boys to the taking of
one with the same surname as the family. And as to the buying of girls
for domestic servitude, though largely _practiced_ in China, yet these
Chinese merchants could hardly have been ignorant of the fact that it
was an _illegality_ before the Chinese law. "The reason of this," says
the Chinese protest, "is the excessive increase of population, and
the wide extent of poverty and distress." But there was neither
over-population nor distress at Hong Kong which should necessitate the
introduction of the practice into that Colony. "If all those practices
were forbidden, poor and distressed people would have no means left
to save their lives, but would be compelled to sit down and wait for

described in the preamble of the Ordinance as making "provisions for
checking the spread of venereal diseases within this Colony." No other
object was stated.
The intention of the Government was that the Ordinance should be
worked by the aid of the whole police force; but as early as 1860 we
find the Protector, or Registrar General, D.R. Caldwell, reporting
to the Colonial Secretary that "upon the first promulgation of the
Ordinance, the Superintendent of Police manifested an indisposition
to interfere in the working of the Ordinance, from a belief that it
opened a door to corruption to the members of the force under him."
Later, Mr. May, the superintendent of police alluded to, said before
the Commission of Inquiry: "That he would not have permitted the
police to have anything to do with the control or supervision of
brothels under the Ordinance, being apart from the general objects
of police duties, and from the great probability of its leading to
corruption." Let this be told to Mr. May's lasting credit. Whereupon,
on the Registrar General's application, the office of Inspector of
Brothels was created.
We have referred several times to a certain Commission which was
appointed to inquire into the working of the Contagious Diseases
Ordinances of Hong Kong. This Commission was appointed by Governor
Hennessy on Nov

men of the days of sailing vessels, who went to the far East and
made sport of and trampled upon the virtue of the women of a weaker
nation, have not all died in peace, leaving their vices far off
and gathering virtues about them to crown their old age with
venerableness. Some have lived to see that whatsoever man soweth that
shall he also reap. They have lived to see the tide setting in in the
other direction, and the human wreckage of past vices swept by the
current of immigration close to their own domicile. Their own children
are in danger of being engulfed in the polluting flood of Oriental
life in our midst. After many days vices come home. Man sowed the
wind; the whirlwind must be reaped. The Oriental slave trader and the
Oriental slave promise to become a terrible menace and scourge to our
twentieth century civilization. Herein lies great peril to American
womanhood. Whether we wish it to be so or not,--whether we perceive
from the first that it is so or not, there is a solidarity of
womanhood that men and women must reckon with. The man who wrongs
another's daughter perceives afterwards that he wronged his own
daughter thereby. We cannot, without sin against humanity,