Chief Justice Smale, of Hong Kong, has probably done more
to put down the coolie slave trade than Lord Grauville will be able to do. He decided on the 22nd of May, in the case of Kwok-a- sing, accused of piracy and murder, that a coolie kidnapped in China for Peru has a distinct legal right to regain his liberty even by killing the officers on board the kiduapping ship. He held that the Nouvelle Penelope in which the coolie had committed the acts complained of was in law a pirate-ship, and therefore ordered Kwok -a-sing, though distinctly guilty, to be discharged and set at liberty. If that decision, which is clearly just, no pirate having a right to kidnap a free man, could only be made known among the coolies, it would do more to check the trade than any amount of despatches. For it follows that if Kwok-a.sing was guilty, all who took part in confining him can be hanged as pirates in the first Consular Court that can seize them, and the coolies would only have to rise, bind the pirates, and sail with them to the nearest point, and there deliver them up to justice.
Previous page
