Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers. Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew
woman? From man, of course. Man is, then, woman's natural protector to protect her from man, her natural protector. He is to set himself the task of defending her from his injury of her, and he is charmed with the avocation. He will protect her as Abraham protected Sarah when he took her into Egypt. "Do so-and-so," said Abraham to Sarah, "that it may be well with me—for thy sake." The history of the Chinese slave woman as she came in contact with the foreigner at Hong Kong and at Singapore proceeds all along a pathway labelled "protection," down to the last ditch of human degradation. "Well with me," was the motive in the mind of the "protector." "For thy sake," the argument for the thing as put before the woman and before the world.
CHAPTER 2.
TREACHEROUS LEGISLATION.
In 1849 a man whose name is known the world over as a writer of Christian hymns, went to Canton as British Consul and Superintendent of trade. After a few years he returned to England, and in 1854 was knighted and sent out to govern the new colony of Hong Kong. It is he who wrote that beautiful hymn, among others, "Watchman, tell us of the night." He also wrote, "In the Cross of Christ I Glory." One is tempted to ask, in which Cross?—the kind made of gilded tin which holds itself aloft in pride on the top of the church steeple, or the Cross proclaimed in the challenge of the great Cross-bearer, "Whosoever doth not bear his Cross, and come after Me, cannot be my disciple"? The Cross is the emblem of self-sacrifice for the salvation of the world. Oh, that men really gloried in such self-sacrifice, and held it forth as the worthiest principle of life! Did Sir John Bowring hold aloft such a Cross as this, and, with his Master, recommend it to the world as the means of its elevation and emancipation from the blight of sin? We shall not judge him individually. His example should be a warning to the fact that even the most religious men can too often hold very different views of life according to whether they are embodied in religious sentiments or in one's politics. But nowhere are right moral conceptions more needed (not in hymn-book nor in church), as in the enactments by which one's fellow-beings are governed. Other religious men not so conspicuous as Sir John Bowring, but of more enlightened days than his, have died and left on earth a testimony to strangely divergent views and principles, according to whether they were crystallized in religious sentiments, or in the laws of the land, and according to whether they legislated for men or for women.
On May 2nd, 1856, Sir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong, wrote to the Secretary of State for the Colonies at London submitting a draft of an Ordinance which was desired at Hong Kong because of certain conditions prevailing at Hong Kong which were described in the enclosures in his despatch. Mr. Labouchere, the Secretary of State for the Colonies at the time, replied to the Governor's representations in the following language: "The Colonial Government has not, I think, attached sufficient weight to the very grave fact that in a British Colony large numbers of women should be held in practical slavery for the purposes of prostitution, and allowed in some cases to perish miserably of disease in the prosecution of their employment, and for the gain of those to whom they suppose themselves to belong. A class of persons who by no choice of their own are subjected to such treatment have an urgent claim on the active protection of Government."
Hong Kong, the British colony, had existed but fourteen years when this was written. Only a handful of fishermen and cottagers were on the island before the British occupation. Its Chinese population had come from a country where, as we have seen, laws against the buying and selling, detaining and kidnaping human beings were not unfamiliar. Only eleven years had elapsed since the Queen's proclamation against slavery in that colony had been published to its inhabitants, and yet, during that time, slavery had so advanced at Hong Kong, against both Chinese and British law, as to receive this recognition and acknowledgment on the part of the Secretary of State at London:
1st, That it is a "grave fact that" at Hong Kong "large numbers of women" are "held in practical slavery."
2nd, That this slavery is "for the gain of those to whom they
suppose themselves to belong."
3rd, That it is so cruel that "in some cases" they "perish
miserably … in the prosecution of their employment."
4th, That it is "by no choice of their own" that they prosecute
their employment, and "are subjected to such treatment."
5th, That they have "an urgent claim upon the active protection of
Government."
6th, That the service to which these slaves are doomed, through "no choice of their own," is the most degraded to which a slave could possibly be reduced, i.e., "prostitution."
When Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin," she sounded the note of doom for slavery in the United States. After that, slavery became intolerable. Many have remarked on the fact that the book should have so stirred the conscience of the Christian world, when there are depicted in it so many even engaging features and admirable persons, woven into the story of wrong. Her pen did not seem to make slavery appear always and altogether black. But there was the fate of "Uncle Tom," and the picture of "Cassie," captive of "Legree." It was not what slavery always was, but what it might be—the terrible possibilities, that aroused the conscience of Christendom, and made the perpetuation of African slavery an impossibility to Americans. The master might choose to use his power over the slave for the indulgence of his own basest propensities.
Almost at the same time of these stirring events connected with slavery in the United States, Mr. Labouchere penned the above words, admitting that slavery at Hong Kong had descended to that lowest level. Infamy instead of industry was the lot of these, engaged in the "prosecution of their employment," through "no choice of their own."
Can we anticipate what legal measures would be asked for at Hong Kong, and granted in London in order to relieve this horrible condition. It seems at once obvious that the following would be some of them at least:
1st, A clear announcement that this slavery was prohibited by the Queen's Anti-Slavery Proclamation of 1845, and would not be permitted.
2nd, Women who "supposed themselves to belong" to masters would be at once told that they were free agents and belonged to no one.
3rd, The master who dared claim the ownership of a former slave would be prosecuted and suitably punished.
4th, Any slave perishing miserably from disease would not only be healed at public expense, but placed where there was no further risk of contagion.
5th, Since such slaves had "an urgent claim on the active protection of the Government," they would be treated as wards of the State until safe from like treatment a second time.
6th, Since this slavery had sprung up in defiance of law, any official who at a future time connived at such crime would be liable to impeachment.
The Ordinance sent home for sanction, and approved of by Mr. Labouchere as needed for the "protection" of slave women, was proclaimed as Ordinance 12, 1857, after some slight modifications, and an official appointed a few months before, called the "Protector of Chinese," was charged with the task of its enforcement. This official is also called the Registrar General at Hong Kong, but the former name was given him at the first, and the official at Singapore charged with the same duties is always, to this day, called the "Protector of Chinese."
The new Ordinance embodied the following features:
1st, The registration of immoral houses.
2nd, Their confinement to certain localities.
3rd, The payment of registration fees to the Government.
4th, A periodical, compulsory, indecent examination of every woman slave.
5th, The imprisonment of the slave in the Lock Hospital until cured, and then a return to her master and the exact conditions under which she was "from no choice of her own," exposed to contagion, with the expectation