Mr. Pope Hennessy is in hot-water again. The man will
not let white men flog yellow men any more than black men in peace and comfort. He had been directed to inquire into prison dis- cipline in Hong Kong, where punishments for offences committed in prison mount up at a fearful rate, and found the facts recorded in the following table :—
Floggings in Prison for Five Years, ending July, 1870.
Population.
England 4,088 24,000,000 Scotland 679 8,400,000 Ireland 84 5,250,000 Hong Kong 1,149 140,000
The proportion in Hong Kong being therefore about forty times as great as in England and Scotland. Moreover, prisoners being flogged on the back only are liable, on the testimony of the medi- cal officers, to serious lung complaints. Sometimes the wounds do not heal for ten days. The Governor, therefore, directed that prisoners should be flogged as in India and Eton, on the breech, and that no flogging should be inflicted without his sanction, and re- placed some foreign assistant-turnkeys by Chinese. Many of the residents in Hong Kong accordingly declare that he is curry- ing favour with the Chinese, and relaxing British authority, and are forwarding complaints to London on that ground. All ex- perience, nevertheless, shows that the discipline of a prison, like that of a ship, may be tested by the absence of violence.
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