and to sack the whole town. The rumour was so strong that the Police took accordingly precautious. However, with the year 1879 Sir John commenced a system of increased strictness of gaol discipline. The system of deportation also was resumed in 1879 and a rule was made that all old offenders should be tried in Supreme Court, where they might receive sentences commensurate with habitual indulgence in crime, instead of the frequent short sentences inflicted by the Police Magistrates. These measures served to disperse the illusions which Chinese offenders had entertained concerning the regime of 'the merciful man' and crimes began to decrease, both as regards their type and their frequency. Unfortunately the annual reports of the Superintendent of Police for the four years from 1878 to 1881 were suppressed and for them were substituted, by order of the Governor, bare statistics of crimes committed. But even these tables show that there was in 1877 an increase of serious crimes, amounting to 12.86 per cent., which the Superintendent ascribed to famine and floods in China and to the unusually high price of rice in Hongkong. In 1878 there followed a further enormous increase of serious crimes amounting to 32.31 per cent. The year 1879 brought a decrease of 8.19 per cent. but, whilst in 1880 there was a further decrease of 14.43 per cent., there was a fresh increase of serious crimes in 1881, amounting to 13.55 per cent.
Whether successful or not in the reduction of crime, Sir John gained his main points in the treatment of Chinese criminals. Almost all that he had been seeking in this respect since he made the first declaration of his philanthropic policy in the Legislative Council in 1877, he obtained in November, 1880, when Lord Kimberley sanctioned the final abolition of all branding of criminals, permanent discontinuance of public flogging, repeal of all Ordinances providing for the flogging of Chinese, prohibition of all flogging except in cases where it would be inflicted in the United Kingdom, and finally an order that flogging of Asiatics should in all cases be on the breach and not on the back. In September, 1881, notice was given that the Prison Amendment
