Slavery as known to the Westerner "has always been an incident of race." "Slavery, therefore, has such a peculiar meaning ... that one ought to hesitate before applying the term rashly" to Chinese domestic slavery. Slavery in China grows out of the fact that the father has all power, even to death, over his family. The father, on the other hand, "has many duties as well as rights." Therefore his power over his family "is not a mark of tyranny, but of religious unity." "Few foreigners have comprehended the extent of social equality, ... the amount of influence which woman, bought and sold as she is, really has in China,... the depth of domestic affection, of filial piety, of paternal care." "To deal justly with the slavery of China, we ought to invent another name for it." "The law, although sanctioning the sale of children for purposes of adoption within each clan, and even without, is here in advance of public opinion, as it expressly allows, by an edict, ... the sale of children only to extremely poor people in times of famine, and forbids even in that case re-sale of a child once bought." This last admission on the part of Dr. Eitel, a fact already pointed out by Sir John Smale, seems to us to clearly demonstrate that a pretext was now being sought to justify at Hong Kong a state of things as to slavery that the laws of China forbade and which in no wise could be justified as Chinese "custom." "The reason for this immense demand for young female domestics lies in the system of polygamy which obtains all over the empire, and which has a religious basis." By this he means that it is from the Chinese standpoint a religious duty for a father to leave a son, upon his death, to continue the family sacrifices. Therefore if the father has no son by his first wife, he will "take a second or third or fourth wife until he procures a son." "A family being in urgent distress, and requiring immediately a certain sum of money, take one of their female children, say five years old ... to a wealthy family, where the child becomes a member of the family, and has, perhaps, to look after a baby.... But the child may be sold out and out. In that case invariably a deed is drawn up." And this is the state of things concerning which Dr. Eitel says: "Few foreigners have comprehended the extent of social equality ... the amount of influence which woman, bought and sold as she is, really has in China ... the depth of domestic affection, of filial piety, of parental care," etc. He adds: