of house owners to make room for new improvements, and particularly his Martial Law Ordinance (20 of 1844) which he passed through Legislative Council on November 20, 1844, in order to give the Executive the power of declaring the Island to be under martial law without the concurrence of that Council. Never in the whole history of Hongkong was there, nor is there ever likely to be, any need for such a drastic measure. The characteristic attitude towards any enlightened and strong government, which Chinese residing on British soil display in every part of the world, gives a complete denial to the supposition which called forth this enactment. Yet the accomplished sinologue misread the character of the Chinese so completely that he passed this Bill which, when it became known to the Chinese that Her Majesty's Government curtly disallowed it, only served to lower him in the eyes of the Chinese people as a defeated would-be autocrat.
But there is worse to tell. Mandarin misrule of the neighbouring provinces of China had at this time reached such a pitch that throughout South China the population was honeycombed with secret political societies, the principal of which was called the Triad Society. The aim of these secret associations was to act on the first suitable occasion upon the recognized right of rebellion, a right plainly taught in the authorized national school-books. To drive out the Manchus and to reestablish a Chinese dynasty, was the secret desire of almost every energetic Chinaman unconnected with mandarindom. When the first mutterings of the coming storm of the Taiping Rebellion, which in the providence of God was destined to ire-establish the waning fortunes of Hongkong, were observed by the Cantonese Authorities, they shrewdly availed themselves of the known fact, that the Chinese in Hongkong were as much influenced by that secret political propaganda as those in the interior of China, to strike another blow at the success of Hongkong as a Colony for Chinese. So they persuaded Sir J. Davis into passing an Ordinance (No. 1 of 1845) the effect of which was that the Hongkong Police should search out and
