important a position, had at the time 25 per cent. more _secondary (true) syphilis than any other naval station in the world, except one (the S.E. American_); it had 101 of _primary (true) against 68 in the North American_, 31 in the S.E. American, and 22 in the Australian stations (_all unprotected_); and _gonorrhoea_ was _higher than in any other naval station in the world_. This _official_ misleading feature is to be found in other quarters than Dr. Murray's Reports; for in the _Navy_ Report for 1873 (p. 282), Staff Surgeon Bennett, medical officer of the ship permanently stationed in Hong Kong, says--"Owing to the excellent working of the Contagious Diseases Acts, venereal complaints in the colony are reduced _to a minimum_. The _few cases_ of syphilis are chiefly due to private prostitutes not known to the police." In a representation made to the Secretary of State by W.H. Sloggett, Inspector of Certified Hospitals, October 7, 1879, we get an exact account of what led to the passage of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance of 1857. He says: "In 1857, owing to the very strong representations which had been made to the Governor during the previous three years, by different naval officers in command of the China Station, of the prevalence and severity of venereal disease at Hong Kong, a Colonial Ordinance for checking these diseases was passed in November of that year." When Lord Kimberley was Secretary of State he wrote (on September 29, 1880) Governor Hennessy of Hong Kong in defence of the Ordinance of 1857,--at least as to the motive expressed by Mr. Labouchere for consenting to the passing of the Ordinance: "These humane intentions of Mr. Labouchere have been frustrated by various causes, among which must be included that the police have from the first been allowed to look upon this branch of their work as beneath their dignity, while the sanitary regulation of the brothels appears from recent correspondence to have been almost entirely disregarded." To this Governor Hennessy replied: "On the general question of the Government system of licensing brothels, your Lordship seems to think that I have not sufficiently recognized that the establishment of the system was a police measure, intended to give the Hong Kong Government some hold upon the brothels, in hope of improving the condition of the inmates, and of checking the odious species of slavery to which they are subjected. I can, however, assure your Lordship, whatever good intentions may have been entertained and expressed by Her Majesty's Government when the licensing system was established, that it has been worked for a different purpose." ... "The real purpose of the brothel legislation here has been, in the odious words so often used, the provision of clean Chinese women for the use of the British soldiers and sailors of the Royal Navy in this Colony." The real object of the Ordinance, commended by the Secretary of State as answering to "an urgent claim" on the part of slaves "upon the active protection of the Government," the operation of which was placed in the hands of the so-called Protector of Chinese, was plainly