the ground within it to the British Government in the same manner as Hong Kong, when it would be in the "ower of the latter to exercise complete jurisdiction over the place". In the event, а temporary lease of the territory in question was
arranged, pending a permanent settlement. The Deed of Lease (Annex D) was signed by Parkes and Lao on 20 March 1860 and was taken for the basis of article VI of the Convention of Peking later in the year. The agreement signed between Parkes and Governor Lao provided for the lease of "all that part of the Kowloon peninsula lying South of a Line drawn from a
point near to but South of Kowloon Fort to the Northernmost point of the Stone-cutters island, together with that island". An annual rent of five hundred taels of silver (then about £166 12s and 6d) was agreed, and that "no claim can ever be made by the Chinese Government for the return of the said ground as long as the British Government punctually pay to them the said amount of rent". Since it existed only as a "preliminary measure". no term was fixed for the lease. Nevertheless, the interpretation written into Article VI of the Convention, which cancelled the lease and provided for the cession to Britain of the land formerly leased by Parkes, was that the lease had been "granted in perpetuity". The clear implication (although it is not asserted) is that the territory in question was ceded in perpetuity also. Such an interpretation would also follow from the fact that this territory was ceded to Britain "to have and to hold as a dependency of Her Britannic Majesty's Colony of Hong Kong", which itself constituted territory ceded in perpetuity. Article VI also takes the lease as the reference for the boundaries of the new cession. Thus, although Article VI does not specifically refer to it, Stonecutters Island is conventionally deemend to have been ceded by the Convention of Peking 1860.
8.
There was one other important result of the hostilities between 1856 and 1860. That was the severance of the colonial from the diplomatic and
/consular