as Her Majesty in perpetuity by Her Britannic Majesty, her heirs, and successors, and to be governed by such laws and regulations as Her Majesty shall see fit to direct. The Chinese if possible is still stronger. It is literally to hold and guard the Lordship, and according to convenience establish laws, govern and regulate." The 15th Article of the Supplementary Treaty provides that debts from Chinese inhabitants of Hongkong shall be recovered by the English Courts of Justice, which plainly admits that the English Law shall be supreme.
Your Lordship quotes statement of Sir Henry Pottinger, that the Chinese Authorities had tacitly abandoned the claim of jurisdiction. Such an abandonment on their part could not be otherwise, for they dare not for their lives commit it to paper. A written concession of such a point is out of the question, but the virtual possession of the right and practice since our arrival in this Colony is proved by the enclosed list of 940 Prisoners in the gaol: most of them Chinese, sentenced (for crimes of all grades from Piracy down to theft) to punishments of various degrees from seven years imprisonment with flogging and hard labor, to the lowest penalty. I may observe that for Piracy the punishments are much too light, that for the Chinese, instead of death, I should be disposed to adopt transportation for life to our penal settlements, as a most powerful dissuasive from crimes of atrocious violence.
With reference to the case of the pirate
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