treatment have an urgent claim on the active protection of Government." Hong Kong, the British colony, had existed but fourteen years when this was written. Only a handful of fishermen and cottagers were on the island before the British occupation. Its Chinese population had come from a country where, as we have seen, laws against the buying and selling, detaining and kidnaping human beings were not unfamiliar. Only eleven years had elapsed since the Queen's proclamation against slavery in that colony had been published to its inhabitants, and yet, during that time, slavery had so advanced at Hong Kong, against both Chinese and British law, as to receive this recognition and acknowledgment on the part of the Secretary of State at London: 1st, That it is a "grave fact that" at Hong Kong "large numbers of women" are "held in practical slavery." 2nd, That this slavery is "for the gain of those to whom they suppose themselves to belong." 3rd, That it is so cruel that "in some cases" they "perish miserably ... in the prosecution of their employment." 4th, That it is "by no choice of their own" that they prosecute their employment, and "are subjected to such treatment." 5th, That they have "an urgent claim upon the active protection of Government." 6th, That the service to which these slaves are doomed, through "no choice of their own," is the most degraded to which a slave could possibly be reduced, i.e., "prostitution." When Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin," she sounded the note of doom for slavery in the United States. After that, slavery became intolerable. Many have remarked on the fact that the book should have so stirred the conscience of the Christian world, when there are depicted in it so many even engaging features and admirable persons, woven into the story of wrong. Her pen did not seem to make slavery appear always and altogether black. But there was the fate of "Uncle Tom," and the picture of "Cassie," captive of "Legree." It was not what slavery always was, but _what it might be_--the terrible possibilities, that aroused the conscience of Christendom, and made the perpetuation of African slavery an impossibility to Americans. The master _might_ choose to use his power over the slave for the indulgence of his own basest propensities. Almost at the same time of these stirring events connected with slavery in the United States, Mr. Labouchere penned the above words, admitting that slavery at Hong Kong had descended to that lowest level. Infamy instead of industry was the lot of these, engaged in the