administer such an Ordinance? There was laid before my Legislative
Council a case of one of the European Inspectors of brothels, and
I was struck by this fact in his evidence. He says: 'I took the
marked money from the Registrar General's office, and followed a
woman, and consorted with her, and gave her the money; and the
moment I had done so, I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out
the badge of office, and pointed to the Crown, and arrested the
woman.' She was henceforth 'a Queen's woman'."




CHAPTER 6.

THE PROTECTOR'S COURT AND SLAVERY.


The justification for the passage of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance
at the beginning, as set forth in Mr. Labouchere's dispatch on the
27th of August, 1856, to Sir John Bowring was, that the "women" "held
in practical slavery" "through no choice of their own," "have an
urgent claim on the _active protection_ of Government." It has been
claimed again and again by officials at Hong Kong and Singapore that
protection is in large part the object and aim of the Ordinance. For
instance: In 1877, Administrator W.H. Marsh, of Hong Kong, learning
that there was a likelihood of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance being
disallowed by the Home Government, wrote to the Secretary of State for
the Colonies:

"It is the unanimous opinion of the Executive Council that the