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reported by the Portmaster General of this Colony, led to a correspondence (a copy of which I now enclose),
terminated with a very lucid Memorandum from the Attorney General, from which it appears that the "Master of the "Chevinge" is not liable to any penalty under Imperial Act, and that the local Port office Ordinance also falls short of meeting the case.
Such a state of affairs leads me to lay the question before Your Lordships, not so much with regard to the special case of the Chevinge, as in the hope that will be provided for the remedy of the serious inconveniences which may arise from carelessness, malice or dishonesty on the part of Shipmasters, to which those inconveniences might become (and in the absence of some legislative enactment to occur) appears from a review of the situation.
6.
The extreterritorial privilege enjoyed by an Englishman in China and Japan, introduces the British Shipmaster to perhaps the longest, and certainly the most important cluster of ports in the world where the Consular Officer has to check upon his acts in Consular authority. The native Authorities have been...