"Considering the deep hold which this system has on the Chinese people, it is not to be wondered at that Chinese can scarcely comprehend how an English judge could come to designate this species of domestic servitude as 'slavery.' On the contrary, intelligent Chinese look upon this system as the necessary and indispensable complement of polygamy, as an excellent counter remedy for the deplorably wide-spread system of infanticide, and as the natural consequence of the chronic occurrence of famines, inundations, and rebellions in an over-populated country. But the abuses to which this system of buying and selling female children is liable, in the hands of unscrupulous parents and buyers, and the support it lends to public prostitution, are too patent facts to require pointing out." "The moment we examine closely into Chinese slavery and servitude," declares Dr. Eitel, "from the standpoint of history and sociology, we find that slavery and servitude have, with the exception of the system of eunuchs, lost all barbaric and revolting features." (!) "As this organism has had its certain natural evolution, it will as certainly undergo in due time a natural dissolution, which in fact has at more than one point already set in. But no legislative or executive measures taken in Hong Kong will hasten this process, which follows its own course and its own laws laid down by a wise Providence which happily overrules for the good all that is evil in the world." There was, indeed, a certain justice in defending the Chinese as against the foreigner, on Dr. Eitel's part. But two wrongs do not make a right. From this time onward, the word of sophistry is put in the mouth of the advocate of domestic slavery, just as the word of sophistry had been put in the mouth of the advocate of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance. Mr. Labouchere had spoken of the latter as a means of protection' for the poor slaves, and the expression, 'protection,' has been kept prominently to the front ever since Dr. Eitel suggested, likewise, not a change in the conditions, but a change in the name by which they were known. Let it be called 'domestic _servitude_' instead of 'domestic _slavery_.' All the advocates of this domestic slavery from that time have called the noxious weed by the sweeter name.