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public matters was raised. The editor described the suggestions made then as nonsense.
He did admit "that the opinion of respectable and intelligent Chinese should be solicited by the Government in a manner similar to that in which European views are obtained” but then qualified this concession by stating that "to suggest that the Chinese residents as a body, irrespective of education or intelligence, should be called upon to take an active part in legislative work, was nothing more than one of those misleading tricks which entered so largely into the ingenious underground working of the late administrator."
Having denigrated the Chinese, the editor next praised them: “It is a most satisfactory and gratifying sign of the times, and one which speaks volumes for the good sense and shrewdness of the native community, that the members of the deputation have so accurately realised their rights, and have not been led away by the pernicious course of ‘blarney' to which they have been subjected for the last few years."
The positive aspects of the deputation as far as the editor of the China Mail was concerned were, first, the confidence of the Chinese community in the new head of Government, Mr. Marsh, and, second, their evident unwillingness to go along with "the attempts made by the late Governor to pander to their so-called rights.”
The Europeans had seen any rights claimed by the Chinese as threats to their own position. The editor remarked that “one of the principal complaints made by European residents against the late Governor was that he sought to adapt the laws to the convenience of the native, while he overlooked that of the European residents."
The editor of the Hongkong Telegraph took a different view of the delegation. He pointed out that the group was made up of the same men as those of previous years. There was nothing especially innovative about it. Though the editorial did not say so, the only new element was the presence of Dr. Ho Kai, its spokesman, who had not many months previously returned to Hongkong from Europe, but more of this later.