(March, 1868) a Commission and invited the public to bring before that Commission their complaints against the operation of the Ordinance and suggestions for its improvement. The Chamber of Commerce accordingly passed (April, 1868) a series of resolutions which were forwarded to the Commissioners. In pursuance of their recommendations, the Stamp Ordinance was subsequently amended (May 23, and November 21, 1868) and the community, finding eventually that the Ordinance did not materially injure the prosperity of the trade of the Colony, became in course of time reconciled with this measure which has ever since proved to be one of the most important sources of revenue.
It is necessary in this connection to refer to the measures adopted by Sir Richard for the regulation of Chinese gambling houses, as these measures, though originally projected rather as a solution of an intricate social problem and as a preventive of corruption in the Police Force, resulted in a considerable augmentation of the Colony's temporary and special revenues. The administration of Sir R. MacDonnell is, indeed, specially distinguished by the fearless attempt he made, in bold defiance of public opinion and official restraints, to solve the problem, which had troubled all his predecessors in office, connected with the well-known Chinese mania for gambling. This national vice, like opium smoking and prostitution, but more widespread and powerful than either, is rooted in an ineradicable, because congenital, disease of the Chinese social organism. Sir Richard was quite right in stating that the passion for gambling, as observed in European nations, is nothing compared with the same craving as it appears among all classes of Chinese, and that in Hongkong it presents, through the corruption of the Police Force, necessarily resulting from a legal prohibition of it, a problem which it is easy to ignore but, for a Governor, imperative to solve in some form or other. It has been mentioned above that Sir J. Bowring, the first Governor who recognized the importance of the problem, proposed to deal with it by licensing, as in Macao, a few gaming houses and
