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Rh treatment of Chinese criminals the humanitarian views as to prison discipline and the objections to corporal punishment which, after centuries of progressive civilization, had lately gained ground in Europe as applicable to European prisoners. Shortly after the Governor's arrival, flogging was practically abolished. Only a few whippings, privately administered within the walls of the Gaol, took place. This change, and the attempt Sir John made to establish a Chinese Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society, although it proved a complete failure, made a great impression upon the Chinese criminal classes, among which Sir J. Pope Hennessy was thenceforth spoken of as 'the merciful man.' 'If we have a gaol on the separate system,' said Sir John (September 17, 1877), 'where the prisoners must do some useful hard work, and where they know there is not the slightest chance of their release before the end of the Judge's sentence, except by steady good conduct; if we provide reformatory and industrial training for juvenile criminals, and if we let it be clearly understood that second offences will be punished with a long sentence, that will do more to check the growth of crime than anything else we can devise.' An excellent theory this, but considering that Sir John established no prison on the separate system nor any reformatory for the reception of juvenile offenders, the theory could hardly be expected to check crime in Hongkong. The community differed from their Governor not merely because they thought that his mode of treating prisoners would be ineffective in the absence of flogging, but chiefly because they considered the immediate introduction of the separate system a practical impossibility, and meanwhile they looked to the branding, deporting and flogging system as having been found practically an effective deterrent during two preceding administrations.

In order to make his theories as to the treatment of prisoners and the abolition of flogging acceptable to the Council and people of Hongkong, Sir John laboured assiduously to produce criminal statistics, calculated to show that the re-introduction of the branding, deporting and flogging system, at the beginning