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."