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228 arrest political refugees as being members of the Triad and other secret societies, who, after a term of imprisonment, should be branded each on the cheek and then be deported to Chinese territory where of course the Mandarins would forthwith arrest, torture and execute them. That a British Governor should ever have enacted such a monstrously barbaric and un-English law is hardly credible. It is a strange fact that with all his experience of Chinese, philanthropic Sir John Davis allowed himself to be so duped by Chinese diplomatists as to become the unconscious tool of Mandarin oppression in its worst form. It was not merely an unwise disregard of the sound principle formulated by Gladstone, that 'England never makes laws to benefit the internal condition of any other State'; it was not merely a drastic denial of the world-wide assumption that British soil is a safe refuge from political tyranny and oppression; but it was also a positive assertion, in the face of all China, that Hongkong Governors would pledge themselves to co-operate with the Manchu conquerors of China in arresting, imprisoning, branding on the cheek (as the life-long mark of the outlaw) and delivering into the hands of Mandarins for execution any hapless Chinese patriot that should be fool enough to put his foot on British soil. By order of the Home Government this barbaric Ordinance (No. 1 of 1845) was modified nine months later (October 20, 1845) by substituting, in an amendment (No. 12 of 1845), branding under the arm for that mark on the cheek which would have made reform even in the case of a criminal absolutely impossible.

Not quite so bad, but based on an equal ignorance of the utter inapplicability of European enactments to the peculiar features of the social and political organism of China, was the interference with local Chinese bond-servitude which Sir H. Pottinger had attempted in his Slavery Ordinance (No. 1 of 1844), the disallowance of which Sir John Davis had now (January 24, 1845) to proclaim. He announced by a proclamation that the said Ordinance was null and void, and gave notice 'that the Acts of Parliament for the abolition of