Cloughing
No 163. 24th December 1872.
Governor to Sir Archibald Kennedy Kessly, CB.
The Right Honorable the Earl of Kimberley.
The Foreign Offenders (Attention) Ordinance. No 14 of 1872 -
Copy transmitted with Report from Attorney General.
Statement of Objects and Reasons,
This Ordinance provides for the temporary custody, during their passage through Hongkong, of foreign criminals sent to Europe for trial or punishment from China and Japan under the Warrant of the Minister or other representative of the nation to which they belong.
Foreign Ministers in China and Japan have not many opportunities of sending Home in a Vessel of War, for trial or punishment, criminals over whom they exercise in those countries extra-territorial jurisdiction by Treaty. Such criminals, therefore, are frequently sent by Mail steamers and other merchant vessels to Hongkong, with instructions to the Consul of the nation to which the prisoner belongs, to provide for his safe custody until an occasion presents itself of effecting his transmission to Europe. Upon the arrival of the Mail steamer or other merchant vessel, the prisoner is at once landed, and the Hongkong Police Authorities are applied to by the Consul to provide for the prisoner's temporary custody in the Colonial gaol.
The Consuls urge that the General Comity of Nations entitles them to invoke the assistance of the local Government under the circumstances, and that the refusal to accede to their application appears a denial of reciprocity towards their own Governments. Formerly, the local Government did in some instances accede to the application of the Consul, and the prisoners were confined in the gaol, but they were immediately delivered on a writ of Habeas Corpus, as there is no power to detain a foreigner charged with a crime committed out of the Colonial jurisdiction, except in cases which fall within certain Extradition Treaties. Of late years, therefore, the practice has been to refuse such applications, and in consequence of such refusal, these criminals have been let loose upon the Colony.
Hongkong possesses so limited a territory, and is already so much over-run with dangerous characters from the neighbourhood of Canton, that any additional influx of criminals must be viewed with great apprehension. The most dangerous of all are these foreign criminals, who if let loose in this island without the means of livelihood, hang about the ports of China and Japan, and league themselves with the Natives to commit piracies and other crimes.
The Colony is unfortunately situated in this respect, though unavoidably so, owing to its geographical position. Thus the Supreme Court of China and Japan is empowered to send offenders for imprisonment to Hongkong, so that at the expiration of their term of punishment, they are turned out into the streets of the Colony in a destitute condition. That Court is also empowered to deport British subjects to Hongkong, and unless the Governor of the Colony deports them again to England (which he is authorized to do), they must be set at large on the spot. Again, the Government of the Philippines, who are likewise empowered to deport their criminals, have occasionally sent them to Hongkong in a Man of War and simply landed them there.
It is manifestly desirable to check, as much as possible, such a confluence of criminal population in Hongkong; and this Ordinance, therefore, has been framed under instructions of the Secretary of State to empower the Governor, upon the request of foreign Ministers and Diplomatic Agents in China and Japan, through the Consuls in the Colony, to issue a Warrant for the temporary custody of criminals of the class above referred to, on their arrival in Hongkong, pending arrangements for their transmission to their respective countries, and upon such conditions as may be deemed reasonable.
JULIAN PAUNCEFOTE, Attorney General.
2 Inclosures
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