sanctioned by the proclamations? I assert that it cannot.... A
custom is 'such a usage as by common consent and uniform practice
has become a law.' In 1841 there could have been no custom of
slavery in Hong Kong as now set up, for, save a few fishermen and
cottagers, the island was uninhabited; and between 1841 and 1844,
the date of the Ordinance expressly prohibiting slavery, there was
no time for such a custom to have grown up; and slavery in
every form having been by express law prohibited by the Royal
proclamation of the Queen in 1845, no custom contrary to that law
could, after that date, grow up, because the thing was by express
law illegal. I go further, and I find that the penal law of China,
whilst it facilitates the adoption of children into a family to
keep up its succession, prohibits by section 78 the receiving into
his house by any one of a person of a different surname, declaring
him guilty of 'confounding family distinctions,' and punishing him
with 60 blows; the father of the son who shall 'give away' ... his
son is to be subject to the same punishment. Again, section 79
enacts that whosoever shall receive and detain the strayed or lost
child of a respectable person, and, instead of taking it before
the magistrate, sell such child as a slave, shall be punished by
100 blows and three years' banishment. Whosoever shall sell such
child for marriage or adoption into any family as son or grandson
shall be punished with 90 blows and banishment for two years and
a half. Whosoever shall dispose of a strayed or lost slave shall
suffer the punishment provided by the law reduced one degree. If
any person shall receive or detain a fugitive child, and, instead
of taking it before the magistrate, sell such child for a slave,
he shall be punished by 90 blows and banishment for two years and
a half. Whosoever shall sell any such fugitive child for marriage
or adoption shall suffer the punishment of 80 blows and two years'