by means of their own elders on the basis of the Pocheung and Pokap system (Ordinance 13 to May 31, 1844) was one of the legacies handed over to Sir John Davis by his predecessor. Sir John Davis, however, disliked such a non-autocratic measure, having his own ideas on the subject. Although he got that Ordinance passed by the Council, he practically disregarded it and set to work to devise a measure of his own which, by means of registration, should immediately purge the Colony of the bad blood imported into it by the continuous influx of criminals from the neighbouring districts, as if registration would keep them away or reveal their habits. The cure proved to be worse than the evil.
On August 21, 1844, the Legislative Council, intending to check the indiscriminate influx into Hongkong of the scum of the population of the neighbouring mainland and at the same time anxious to avoid class legislation, passed a Bill to establish a registry of all the inhabitants of Hongkong without distinction of nationality. Neither the European nor the Chinese mercantile communities were consulted in the matter, nor was anything done, after passing the Bill, until Sir J. Davis returned (October 18, 1844) from a visit to the Consular ports, when the Ordinance was made public and it was notified that it was to come into force on 1st November. Then the European community woke up to the startling discovery that a poll-tax was to be levied not only on Chinese vagabonds but on all the inhabitants without exception, that all British residents, as well as Chinese, were to appear once every year before the Registrar General, answer questions as to birth, parentage, age, income and so forth, being liable to be deported if the answers were not satisfactory, and that the only distinction between a British merchant and a Chinese coolie was the enactment that the former should pay five dollars and the latter one dollar a year for his registration ticket. The reception by the British residents of such an Ordinance may well be imagined. They rose up like one man in wrathful indignation, feeling their personal self-respect, their national honour, the liberty of the subject trampled under foot
