to Hongkong.
Sir William Des Voeux has, it is needless
to say,
sympathy
with the persons arrested who in all probability
are, as
they
are
charged
to be, notorines criminals.
But however atricines have been their
may
crimes they
are entitled when on British soil, to the protection of British law, and their forcible exclusion from this privilege is a flagrant breach of that right of Asylum which Great Britain has in all her history most jealously guarded, and is certain when the circumstances become known, to cause
general
191
general indignation throughout the British Empire.
The arresto in
arde
question were indeed, of comparatively little consequence when
ded as the ignorant acts of inferior officers. But they
they assume an exceedingly grave aspect when there supervenes
the part of superior. authority a refusal
-E
or delay of immediate redress in the only acceptate form, viz:- return to British territory of the arrested persons. Then they constituti on outrage
on international comity which is practically
an act of war, and
an