Page:Crime and government at Hong Kong.pdf/63

 to port, negociated for the highest obtainable sum, and then returned with the ransom to release their prizes.

"As a corrective of this growing evil, merchants and traders paid liberally for foreign convoy: an arrangement which for a time was mutually advantageous. As the junks sailed in fleets, a moderate contribution from each vessel secured it exemption from a heavy black-mail; while the foreigner was merely delayed a few days on his voyage. Even the imperial navy profited by it;—admirals put to sea in fair weather, going out with the ebb and returning by the flood, and performing a cruize in safety. Those were halycon days; but, unhappily, they were brief; in so much that they are now well nigh forgotten.

"Convoying became an object of competition. The proximity of the Macao Portuguese, with their simple lorchas or sloops, manned to a great extent by Manilamen or Cantonese, enabled them to underbid those who sailed square-rigged vessels; and soon the Lusitanian colours displaced all others from this line of business. Abuses quickly sprang up; causing mariners, fishermen, and coastlanders to sigh for the times, when native pirates pursued their comparatively harmless vocations. The poor people were formerly chastised with whips; now with scorpions. Smuggling, also, the never-ceasing vice of foreigners, assumed a systematic form at the non-consular ports.

"Lorchamen often dictated, to Custom-house officers, the amount of duty to be paid for the whole fleet; reserving to themselves the sum abated. While intimidating mandarins ashore, they prac-