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Consular intervention on behalf of "British Subjects" and in
a special and limited degree on behalf of Chinese traders in Hong-Kong.Neither Imperial Acts nor Hong-Kong Ordinances can override Treaty, and I cannot believe that seven Chinese may form themselves into a Company with Chinese capital and by the merefact of registering themselves in Hong-Kong under the Ordinance become entitled to carry on a business in China un- der British protection, or in other words change themselves into British subjects" (within the meaning of the Treaty) vis-à-vis their own authorities in their own country.
I take as example an extreme case and I am per- fectly aware of the difficulty there would be in drawing a definite line between a genuine British Company and a bogus one.Many English names, I regret to say, can be easily borrowed for a small consideration, and it is equally easy to attribute to such names, as shareholders, a capital they have not got;but as matters stand, it is not even necessary to have recourse to subterfuge.
So far I have only dealt with the general thee-
ry. In practice I have no doubt but that the Chinese Authori- ties would resent any interference on behalf of businesses ob- viously carried on by Chinese subjects, and the inference they would draw would be that there were venal reasons for such action. I think I may say that British Consuls have hitherto been above any suspicion of venality, and that such a suspicion would seriously impair our influence with the Chinese when
落
genuine
}