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Nor can I call to mind any important question during the past 30 years not involving legislation of which it can be said that the Government forced its will upon an unwilling people. I feel sure that two of the most influential bodies in the Colony, the Chinese Community and the Hongkong General Chamber of Com- merce, would not be slow to acknowledge that the Government is never remiss in consulting them in all questions affecting trade and commerce and the Native Community.
4. The principle involved in the prayer of the Petitioners, so far as it relates to the Legislative Council, has been raised in this Colony before. It is the natural aspiration of Englishmen to govern themselves and it is an aspiration with which I personally cannot but sympathise.
But I venture to think that the Petitioners have scarcely appreciated the special nature of local conditions. To indicate some of these I cannot do better than quote from Lord Ripon's Despatch No. 135 of the 23rd of August, 1894, in answer to a similar Petition, in which he wrote :—
"To sum up, the petitioners ask nominally that Hongkong should be given self-government, and an elective system. In my opinion the place and its circumstances are wholly unsuited for what is proposed.
"An Imperial Station with great Imperial interests, on the borders of a foreign land, the nucleus of wide reaching British interests in the Far East, must, it appears to me, be kept under Imperial protection and under Imperial control.
"In saying this much I am assuming that the self-government would be worthy of the name, and that the elective system would include all ranks of the community, but this is not what the Petition demands. Those who framed it and signed it would, I gather, desire to place the power in the hands of a select few, and to constitute a small oligarchy, restricted by the lines of race. To any such change I am opposed. "I consider that the well-being of the large majority of the inhabitants is more likely to be safeguarded by the Crown Colony system, under which, as far as possible no distinction is made of rank or race, than by representation which would leave the bulk of the population wholly unrepresented.
"I can therefore hold out no hope that Hongkong will cease to be a Crown
Colony."
and from the Despatch of the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, No. 119 of the 29th of May, 1896, in which he stated :-
"In his despatch of the 23rd of August, 1894, Lord Ripon stated that he could hold out no hope that Hongkong will cease to be a Crown Colony. Neither can I hold out any such hope, for I conceive that in the case of Hongkong, Representative Government on whatever form of franchise it might be based, and with whatever supposed safeguards as to the Executive power, would be wholly out of place."
5. It scarcely seems necessary for me to endorse these weighty pronounce- ments of eminent Administrators and Statesmen, except to point out that it is quite impracticable to apply the principle of election to appointments to a body like the Executive Council. This is a question which has not been previously raised in this Colony, and it does not seem necessary to set out the very obvious reasons for which such a proposal could not be entertained. But I would briefly
draw attention to the nature of the electorate to whom the Petitioners would confide the election of all the Un-official Members of the Executive Council and of eight out of ten of the Un-official majority in the Legislative Council.
The Census for 1911 shows that the total population was 456,739 composed of 12,075 Non-Chinese and 444,664 Chinese and that at that time the British male adult Civil population numbered 1,640.