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Your Excellency's Chinese proclamation, he was regarded as a traitor to the cause of the rebels and a sympathiser with the British. The crime in itself an atrocious one was committed for political reasons and therefore differs from the ordinary crime of murder.
It must also be remembered that one of the men implicated in the murder, Tang Ts'ing Su, has been the prime mover in organising resistance to British rule. If prompt action had not been taken against him I have no hesitation in stating that the Un Long Division of the Territory, the most thickly populated and most important portion of the newly leased area, which has been the headquarters of the anti-British movement and in which Tang Ts'ing Su resided, would not have been restored to order so quietly as it has been. This is not an opinion peculiar to myself, but is shared by all the Europeans who have been on the spot during the recent trouble and who have had personal experience of the situation and by all the Chinese, who know their countrymen better than anyone else.
Another point that should be borne in mind is that all those implicated in the murder and the deceased belong to the same clan and have the same surname and that the heads of their clan informed us previously to any action having been taken that the murder had been carried out by Tang in at the instigation of Tang Ts'ing Sz and Tang I Sak. Such evidence may not be admissible in a Court of law, but in dealing with a people living under the clan system, where the clan and not the individual is the unit, it cannot be disregarded as of no importance.
Your Excellency reminds me that the people must learn that the troops and police are here for the protection of the well-desposed and their presence does not involve
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