16
REVIEW
flower. Its roots are fed by, and are totally dependent upon, an international appreciation which is shared by its own businessmen, merchants and professionals, whether local or foreign, that Hong Kong has set its face absolutely against sudden change by headstrong Government. Indeed that an absence of arbitrary action is not only guaranteed by the Constitution but also, just as important, has long been demonstrated as a fact by history. To develop the image, the Constitution and its conventions, as I describe them above, are the fertile topsoil in which the flower of confidence, delicate though it is by nature, has been enabled to grow and set forth its blooms.
But vital to prosperity and success though the Constitution and the Laws have been, they alone have not produced prosperity; they have been a conduit through which the irrepressible enterprise and industry of the people has been enabled to flow. To borrow another ancient metaphor, the Constitution is the point around which the economy turns:
"Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
But it is the axle hole which alone makes it useful."
(Lao Tsu: Tao Te Ching)
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