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the inna. Or a loose under municipal law. Moreover, if I am correctly informed, leasehold tenure was unknown to Chinese law and hunce : lease could not have been granted from China to Great Britain under Chinese municipal law which was of course the law prevailing in the N.T. prior to 9th June 1898.
The effect, in the words of Professor O'Connell,
is that:
"It has been taken for granted that the effective sovreignty in these cases (of leases of territory) passed with the grant of the lease, reversion
remaining in the grantor". O'Connell: International Law 2nd Edition p.329
With effective sovreignty goes the prerogative jurisdiction to rule and legislate, as described in Section I above.
Leases beyond 1997
The Crown does not hold as "tenant" from China: by the N.T. Order in Council it claims full sovreignty but for a limited period. Hence when the Crown grants leases expiring before 1997 it does so as the prerogative possessor of the land, and not as tenant of China. The position is similar to that of Crown Land held in England: See Halsbury 4th Edition Vo. 8 paras. 1416 et seq, 1625. I accept as a principle of municipal law the statement of Lord Greene in Milmo v. Carreras 1946 1 KB 306 at 310 that:
"...... where a lessee by a document in the form of
a sub-lease, divests himself of everything that he has got (which he must necessarily do if he is transferring to his so-called sub-lessee an estate as great or purporting to be greater than his own)
the relationship of landlord and tenant, in respect
of tenure cannot any longer exist.......that relationship