Indian soldiers of whom the corps was made up were helpless, in their ignorance of the native language, without the assistance of Chinese constables, and as the latter were of the lowest order, this establishment of a Colonial police made things rather worse. An order was also issued (May 10, 1843) that no boat on the harbour should leave its moorings after 9 p.m. and that, on shore, Chinese should carry lanterns after dark and not stir out of their houses after 10 p.m. Incendiarism, robberies, murders, piratical exploits on land and sea were in no way diminished by the foregoing measures. The nursery of crime was a heavily armed contraband trade in salt, sulphur and opium, established and vigorously developed by the lowest classes of Chinese residents in the Colony, doing as much injury to the best interests of Hongkong commerce as to the revenues of the Chinese Government.
No wonder that Hongkong was in bad odour among the Cantonese officials and people, that Chinese trading junks now commenced to give the harbour of Hongkong a wide berth and that the Chinese mercantile community, which had just begun to develop, disappeared even more rapidly than it had come. But what a depressing effect all this had on the mercantile prospects of the Colony may easily be imagined. English merchants now began to fear that the Colony was an egregious failure. Chusan was freely spoken of as being after all vastly preferable to Hongkong on sanitary and commercial grounds. Among the merchants, regrets were heard on all sides over the amount of money sunk in investments in land and buildings.
A summary of the complaints which the mercantile community gave expression to on sundry occasions, may be of interest. The allegations made against Sir H. Pottinger at the close of his administration were as follow: (1) that, relying upon the validity of Elliot's and Johnston's land-sales and expecting perpetuity of tenure, British merchants spent from $25,000 to $200,000 each, in buildings and improvements, but that Sir Henry advised the Home Government, ignorant of these facts, to grant them only leases of 75 years; (2) that he thus broke
