It has telegraphic communication with the whole civilized world, and
its trade is kept thereby in a continual fever.

It has a large garrison, for which it pays to England 20,000 pounds a
year. Were it not for this force, its six hundred and fifty policemen,
of whom only one hundred and ten are Europeans, might not be able to
overawe even as much as they do the rowdy and ruffianly elements of its
heterogeneous population. As it is, the wealthier foreign residents,
for the security of their property, are obliged to supplement the
services of the public caretakers by employing private watchmen, who
patrol their grounds at night. It must be admitted that the criminal
classes are very rampageous in Victoria, whether from undue and unwise
leniency in the treatment of crime, or whether from the extraordinary
mass of criminals to which our flag affords security is not for a
stranger to say, though the general clamor raised when I visited the
great Chinese prison in Canton, "I wish I were in your prison in Hong
Kong," and my own visit to the Victoria prison, render the former
suspicion at least permissible.

Hong Kong possesses the usual establishment of a Crown Colony, and the
government is administered by a Governor, aided by a Legislative
Council, of which he is the President, and which is composed of the
Chief Justice, the Colonial Secretary, the Attorney-General, the
Treasurer, and four unofficial members, nominated by the Crown on the
Governor's recommendation.

The enormous preponderance of the mixed Oriental population is a source
of some difficulty, and it is not easy by our laws to punish and
destroy a peculiarly hateful form of slavery which is recognized by
Chinese custom, and which has attained gigantic proportions in