"Important as this Colony is, politically and commercially, it is but a dot in the ocean; its area is about half that of the county of Rutland; the circumference of this island is calculated at about 27 miles, whilst that of the Isle of Wight is about 56 miles. The cultivated land on this island may be to the barren waste about one-half per cent, and there is no agrarian slavery here in nearly the total absence of farms, and on this dot in the ocean it is estimated that the slave population has reached ten thousand souls! I first became fully alive to the existence of so-called domestic slavery in this Colony at the Criminal Sessions in May last, on the trial of two cases.... But it is said that what is called domestic slavery, as it exists in Hong Kong, is mild, and it is said to be the opinion of a gentleman of great experience in Chinese, that, as it exists here, it is not contrary to the Christian religion, and that it is as general a fashion for Chinese ladies in Hong Kong to purchase one or more girls to attend on them as it is for English ladies to hire ladies' maids, and that the custom is so general that it would be highly impolitic, if not impossible, to put down the system. It may be that slavery as it exists in the houses of the better classes in Hong Kong is mild, and that custom among the better classes renders servitude to them a boon as long as it lasts. It is, I believe, an admitted duty that when the young girl grows up and becomes marriageable she is married; but then it is the custom that the husband buys her, and her master receives the price always paid for a wife, whilst he has received the girl's services for simple maintenance; so that, according to the marriageable excess in the price of the bride over the price he paid for the girl, he is a gainer, and the purchase of the child produces a good return. But the picture has another aspect. What, if the master is brutal, or the mistress jealous, becomes of the poor girl? Certain recent cases show that she is sold to become a prostitute here or at Singapore or in California, a fate often worse than death to the girl, at a highly remunerative price to the brute, the master. It seems to me that all slavery, domestic, agrarian, or for immoral purposes, comes within one and the same category." Every word uttered on this occasion by Sir John Smale, Chief Justice, has value, but it is impossible for us to quote it all. Referring to the purchase of kidnaped children from the kidnapers by well-to-do Chinese residents of Hong Kong, without effort on the part of these purchasers to ascertain from whence the children came, he says: