The Tankas helped the British in many ways in waging these wars, and when peace was established went to live with them on the island. This action on the part of these "river people" is significant as showing as much or more attachment to the foreigner than to the other classes of Chinese. There seems always to be less conscience in wronging an alien people than in injuring a people to whom one is closely attached, and this sense of estrangement from other Chinese may account to some extent for the facility with which this aboriginal people engaged, a little later, in the trade in women and girls brought from the mainland to meet the demands of profligate foreigners. Sir Charles Elliott, Governor of Hong Kong, wishing to attract Chinese immigration to the island, issued, on February 1st and 2nd, 1841, two proclamations in the name of the Queen, to the effect that there would be no interference with the free exercise on the part of the Chinese of their religious rites, ceremonies and social customs, "pending Her Majesty's pleasure." Following the custom of all Oriental people, to whom marriage is a trade in the persons of women, when the Tankas saw that the foreigners had come to that distant part almost universally without wife or family, they offered to sell them women and girls, and the British seem to have purchased them at first, but afterwards they modified the practice to merely paying a monthly stipend. All slavery throughout British possessions had been prohibited only a few years before the settlement of Hong Kong, in 1833, when 20,000,000 pounds had been distributed by England as a boon to slave-holders. Hong Kong's first Legislative Council was held in 1844, and its first ordinance was an anti-slavery measure in the form of an attempt to define the law relating to slavery. It was a long process in those days for the Colony to get the Queen's approval of its legislative measures, so that a year had elapsed before a dispatch was returned from the Home Government disallowing the Ordinance as superfluous, slavery being already forbidden, and slave-dealing indictable by law. On the same day, January 24th, 1845, the following proclamation was made: "Whereas, the Acts of the British Parliament for the abolition of the slave trade, and for the abolition of slavery, extend by their own proper force and authority to Hong Kong: This is to apprise all persons of the same, and to give notice that these Acts will be enforced by all Her Majesty's officers, civil and military, within this Colony."