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THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
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August 13, 1896.
the Chinese law on the subject. Consular declarations cannot be held to have the force of judicial decisions, and even in one of the declarations quoted there is an ad- mission which seems destructive to the argument. We refer to Consul BRADFORD'S statement that at the junk anchorage at Tun-kah-doo taxes are paid by the owners of the front lots upon land for several tens of feet under water. The only conceivable reason why the owners should pay taxes for land under water is that they had taken the precaution to secure ownership of the land in question in order to prevent anyone else coming between them and, their water frontage. That has not been done along the bund, and the claim that by a change in the river bed the owner of an acre of land might become entitled to five acres or any other larger area appears to us untenable. It may well be understood that in the case of agricultural land along a river any small accretious that may occur are as a rule cultivated by the owner of the adjoining land without opposition, but that could not be taken as a binding precedent when large questions like that of the Shanghai bund · foreshore arise.
seeing European patients willingly carrying | Council placed him on the Register, which it out their treatment. This change of certainly would not do for a quarter of a localisation does not shut out the Alice century at least, nor until the Hongkong Memorial Hospital from being used for College has greatly improved its teaching. educational purposes, but the main In a previous article we took exception to teaching centre would be at the Civil Hos- the conferring of high sounding titles pital. With the change in localisation there without commensurate qualifications, but would also be a change of administration. under all the circumstances of the case The present College is a voluntary organisa-"Licentiate of the Hongkong Medical tion and free entirely from state control. College' may perhaps be considered It thus flourishes while willing volunteers
as simple and convenient a choose to work it; it is liable to come to.grief could be chosen. The title Assistant when such volunteers are not forthcoming. In "Surgeon" would be liable to objection, as the wear and tear of a tropical climate such it is now borne by many fully qualified organisations with difficulty survive. To English surgeons. It seems a pity to differ remedy this weakness, to give the College a as to titles at a time when already in 1896 alone definite stability, and to ensure its continuous eleven hundred inhabitants of the colony existence, the Committee recommend its have died of a preventible disease which being placed under the Colonial authorities depends entirely on insanitary conditions. as a Colonial institution. It may thus per- The education of the Chinese in sanitary haps lose the enormous driving force of and medical matters would help to bring enthusiastic workers, but it will likewise be about sanitary reforms with the concurrence saved from perishing altogether from want of of the Chinese themselves and so tend to staff. Its working would become a part and mitigate their opposition and passive resist parcel of the duties of the Colonial Medical ance. As an important port of call, the Department and it would be part of the Charing Cross of the Eastern Seas, as a official duties of the Colonial Surgeon to act fortress, and as a coaling station of the first as its Principal. Whoever is nominated to class, Hongkong should be able to have at fill that post after Dr AYRES's retirement all times a clean bill of health. All that English law on the subject is quite clear, would thus know that the supervision of the tends in that direction helps the colony. and in a case at Shanghai it has been de College would be part of his ordinary work. No one can deny that sanitary teaching|cided that "if a certain piece of land were The Committee in thus acting have presum- helps in that direction.
given in the title deeds as being of so ably copied the Indian custom, where all
many mow between certain limits, of the medical schools are directly under state
which low water were one, and if low control and worked by state-paid medical
water subsequently receded, it was of no advantage to the renter." This, the N. C. Daily News says, is entirely contrary to. Chinese law, and the expression of this unfortunate opinion has done a great deal of harm; for the Chinese and their hungry advisers have triumphantly brought it up against successive Consuls and Councils ever since, quite oblivious of "the fact that, though it may be soundTM
English law, it has nothing whatsoever to do with land rented under Chinese "title deeds from the Emperor of China." But if the law is "elastic enough to work in 'all sorts of ways," in other words, if there is no settled law on the subject in China, it is reasonable to suppose that the principles of common sense on which the laws of other countries in relation to the
men.
One special doctor to teach anatomy and physiology would have to be imported, as this teaching is highly techuical, and this official would be the real working head of the school, acting under the general supervi- sion of the Principal, who would be the Colonial Surgeon. Five years is laid down as the period of study. In India only four years is required for the Assistant
Surgeon" class.
THE SHANGHAI BUND FORESHORE.
The arguments adduced by the N. C. Daily News with reference to the ownership of the Bund foreshore at Shanghai will perhaps not strike persons at a distance as possessing such force as residents of the Model Settlement may ascribe to them. It seems to us that in relying upon Chinese law and custom as giving the holders of riparian land a right to all accretions our friends in the North are leaning upon a broken reed, and now that the question has, not for the first time, been raised, it would be well to take steps to effect a permanent settlement by diplomatic action at Peking. With the growth of manufacturing industry at Shanghai the water frontage will become more and more valuable and the temptation | to the Chinese authorities to lay hands ou the Bund foreshore will become propor- tionately stronger; but the claim that the foreshore should be reserved for public use is just and reasonable and should be placed beyond all doubt, not only in the minds of foreigners but also in the minds of Chinese, by formal and binding agreement with the Chinese Government, for the law of the land leaves the matter, to say the least, in a state of uncertainty. Our Shanghai contemporary claims that Chinese law gives the owner of riparian lands a right to all accretions, but at the same time it admits that the law "is elastic enough to work in all sorts of ways." We would have that elasticity removed so far as regards the Shanghai bund foreshore.
It is most difficult to find a title for the graduates of the College. It will not for years be possible to train men here up to the English standard, nor is it needed. The Committee presumably again wish to copy the Indian custom, which is quite different from the highly expensive and technical English routine. The Indian Government is year by year turning out fairly taught men who go through a much less technical curriculum than in England and who even tually get a licence as "assistant surgeons," and these men are replacing the ignoraut natives who formerly treated the masses of the people. The wish is to do the same iu Hongkong, namely, to have an easier and less technical curriculum and to turn out men year by year fitted for minor appoint ments and for general medical work, but excluding the more severe operations or technical duties. For the next twenty years Hongkong can hardly aim at more than this, and must import its higher medical men from England. The Indian Government has no dealings whatever with the General The weakness of the case put forward by Medical Council in England. It licenses our Shanghai contemporary will be seen by its inferior but very useful graduates for carrying it to its logical conclusion. Less than work within India only; and the Hong- half a century ago the Yellow River changed kong graduates would be labelled "Made its bed and has since discharged some two in Hongkong-For Colonial Use only." hundred and fifty miles further north than No question of English registration should formerly. According to the Daily News, be raised at all. To appeal to the English the owners of land on the southern bank General Medical Council would merely be of the old bed at the time of the change to upset the whole scheme under the guise should have entered into possession of all of producing a doctor like an English one. the land between their original holdings As it is unlikely that any graduate of the and the southern bank of the new bed, the College would go to England to seek practice river constituting the northern boundary there is no need whatever to ask the General of their lots; which would be absurd. Nor Medical Council to intervene. Besides, even do we find in our contemporary's article, if a graduate did go to England he could which we reproduce in another column, not practise there unless the General Medical | mention of any authoritative ruling as to
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same subject are based would be held to apply also in China. The strongest point made by our contemporary is that in connection with the Land Regula- tions, Art. VI. of which states that “land "heretofore surrendered by the various
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foreign renters to public use, such as "roads and the beach grounds of rivers "within the aforesaid limits, shall remain "henceforth dedicated to the same uses;." but as the various foreign renters could not surrender more than they themselves possessed even this is not absolutely con- clusive, though our contemporary thinks it · is plain enough and allows no room for quibbling. It is the beach of the river "that is reserved for public use, and--not any other spot-if the river recedes the "beach goes with it." At the time the Land Regulations were drawn up probably no one thought that the river would recede or took any account of that contingency. but now that the contingency has arisen a question of ownership of land cannot be decided simply on the assumption of one of the parties. The foreshore, however, is essential to Shanghai and the Chinese authorities cannot be allowed to sell it, but as the existing arrangements leave the question of ownership in some uncertainty, it would be more dignified and straightforward to inat upon a new agreement clearly recog nising the accretions present and future as