This was the only sort of "active protection" that the Government
of Hong Kong at that time provided to the slave. The matter of
"protection" which concerned the "Protector of Chinese," related to
keeping the women from becoming incapacitated in the prosecution of
their employment, and to seeing that the hopelessly diseased were
eliminated from the herd of slaves. The rest of the "protection"
looked to the physical well-being of another portion of the
community--the fornicators. If physical harm came to them from wilful
sin, the Chinese women would be punished by imprisonment for it,
though their sin was forced upon them. This was "protection" from the
official standpoint.

Mr. Labouchere had replied with his approval of this Ordinance dealing
with contagious diseases due to vice, as though the application for
the measure had been made in behalf of the slaves of Hong Kong. Such
was not the case. The enclosures in Sir John Bowring's despatch had
been a sensational description of the urgent need of vicious men for
the active protection of the Government from the consequences of
their vices. Later, a Commission of Inquiry into the working of this
Ordinance comments upon official statements as to the satisfactory
consequences of the enactment of the measure in the checking of
disease. The Commission demonstrates that in many instances their
statements were absolute falsehoods, as proved by statements made by
the same officials elsewhere. Since these officials are proved to have
been so untruthful after the passing of the Ordinance, we can put no
reliance on their statements previous to its enactments, and the
more so because the statistics for Hong Kong in its early days are
hopelessly confused with the general statistics for all China,
wherever British soldiers or sailors were to be found. Therefore they