One hundred years ago
SIR H. Parkes, Premier of New South Wales, has telegraphed to the Colonial Office a despatch which, to speak plain- ly, insists that the Mother-country shall obtain a treaty from China prohibiting the emigration of Chinese to Australia. Otherwise, he says, New South Wales will at once prohibit the entrance of Chinamen by a local law. The reasons he gives are identical with those we gave last week, and there is no reason to doubt that he expresses the final deter- mination of all the Australian Colonies. We mentioned last week the terrible sanctions by which the Chinese Secret Societies enforce their laws, which of themselves make them dangerous sub- jects, and the Liverpool Post of Wednesday furnishes a remarkable illustration. According to a report from the American Minister at Pekin, a man belonging to an association of gold- beaters at Soochow recently took more apprentices than one. This is forbidden, so the local Trades-Union took up the matter, and condemned the man to be bitten to death, and the sentence was literally carried out. 'One hundred and twenty-three men had a bite at him before he expired.' It would not strike the childlike and bland Chinee that there was anything specially horrible in such a form of murder. But that Singa- pore can be shelled, and that overt resistance to law is therefore impossi- ble, the Hoeys would make that great entrepot almost uninhabitable.
The Spectator, 19 May 1888
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