Ordinance 13 of 1856) the privilege of seeking qualification as legal practitioners. The government of the Chinese people by means of officially recognized and salaried head-men (Tipos) under the supervision of the Registrar General was organized (by Ordinance 8 of 1858) and a Census Office established. As to the latter, Sir John all along recognized the practical impossibility of individual Chinese registration, but insisted upon a registration of houses. He revised also the night pass regulations extending the time, when Chinese had to keep indoor, from 8 to 9 p.m. The markets of the Colony having hitherto been worked under a system of monopoly, which augmented the price of food stuffs in the Colony, Sir John introduced an Ordinance (9 of 1858) which to some extent diminished the evils of monopoly and transferred to the Government, in the shape of augmented rental, a portion at least of the profit which was before in the hands of two or three compradors supposed to enjoy special official patronage.
But the most effective and beneficial legislative act of this period, and one for which Sir J. Bowring deserves much credit, was the so-called Amalgamation Ordinance (No. 12 of 1858). This Ordinance empowered barristers to act as their own attorneys and thus gave the public the choice of engaging an attorney and barrister in the persons of two or of one member of the legal profession. The evil which it was intended to counteract by this measure consisted in the excessive amount of pettifogging, needless litigation and worthless conveyancing that prevailed in the Colony for many years previous. This evil was supported by adventurers, the riff-raff of Australian attorneys, who had infested the local Courts. Indeed the legal profession of this period was in even greater need of reform than the Civil Service. The Courts were in a continual ferment and the lower one of the two branches of the legal profession was a by-word. Evidence was produced before the Council, shewing not only that the public was systematically fleeced by exorbitant attorneys' bills for worthless work, but that attorneys kept Chinese runners whose duty was to hunt up and to stir up
