Page:Europe in China.djvu/266

248 of mail steamers by the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (August 1) and completion of a temporary Government House (November 1). The Hongkong Club, also planned in 1845, was opened on May 26, 1846, in a stately building erected, opposite the new Court House, at a cost of £15,000 by G. Strachan with funds provided by shareholders who. appointed a Board of Trustees as a Standing Committee of the Club. Resident members were to be admitted by ballot and required to pay an entrance fee ($30) and a monthly subscription ($4). A fund for the relief of sick and destitute foreigners was established by a public meeting (July 13, 1846) which passed the remarkable resolution that 'the term foreigner shall include natives of every country except China.' This public sanction of the local use of the word foreigner was dictated by common sense yielding to the force of a usage which dated from the time when Englishmen were residing, as foreigners, in Canton and Macao. At a meeting of the above-mentioned Medical Society (January 5, 1847), it was proposed to establish a Philosophical Society for China, and this proposal resulted in the organisation (January 15, 1847) of a China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in Hongkong, under the presidency of Sir J. Davis. A public subscription was started (May 24, 1847) for the relief of destitution in Ireland and Scotland and realised £1,000.

At the close of the year 1840 and throughout the early part of the following year, dissensions were rife among the officers and civil employees of the garrison. Court-martials were frequent and differences arose even between the officers constituting the Court and Major-General D'Aguilar. Local society, centering still in the grandees of the mercantile community, took a lively interest in the matter adverse to the General, who, as he resented the criticisms of civilians, was at this time as much detested by the community as the Governor himself. But the animosities thus aroused speedily died away. Before the close of the year the breach was healed. The ceremony of presenting new colours to the 95th Regiment (February 17, 1848), on which occasion the General's successor, Major-General Staveley, took over the