abuses rooted in the inveterate Chinese habit of gambling. Sir J. Bowring boldly proposed to Lord John Russell (September 4, 1855) and subsequently to Mr. H. Labouchere (February 11, 1856) to regulate the vice that could not he suppressed and to adopt the system in vogue at Macao of controlling Chinese gambling houses by licensing a limited number of them. The Lieutenant-Governor (W. Caine), the Acting Colonial Secretary (Dr. Bridges) and the Attorney General (T. Ch. Anstey), strongly supported the Governor's arguments, which were fortified by a considerable array of favourable reports, received from India, the Straits, the Dutch Possessions and the Governor of Macao (I. F. Guimaraes) as to the good results of such a control of Chinese gambling. None but the Superintendent of Police (Ch. May) and the Chief Magistrate (C. H. Hillier) raised a voice of warning. Accordingly a draft Ordinance, 'relating to public gaming houses and for the better suppression of crime,' prepared by Dr. Bridges and assented to by all the Members of Council (Mr. Hillier excepted), was submitted to H.M. Government (April 17, 1856). Although the measure met with a blank refusal on the part of Mr. Labouchere, who would not even consider it, Sir J. Bowring again and again, but in vain, represented to Mr. Labouchere's successors (Lord Stanley and Sir E. H. Lytton) his ardent conviction that the system of licensing vice for the purpose of controlling it was as legitimate in the case of gambling as in the case of prostitution and opium smoking, and that the existing state of things resulted in general corruption of the Police. The problem was left to be taken up ten years later by Sir Richard MacDonnell.
That piracy was specially rampant during this period was natural. The periodical onslaughts which British men-of-war made on the pirates swarming in the neighbourhood of Hongkong appeared to make little impression. Captious critics, both in the Colony and in Parliament, and particularly European friends of the Taiping Government, occasionally threw out doubts whether all the junks destroyed by British gunboats were actually
