The applicant is entitled thereto. The Government certifies its belief of the approved applicant's right to British citizenship in the form of which a copy is annexed. But the validity for all practical purposes of the holder's certificate is at once questioned when he has recourse to a British Consular Officer at any of the Treaty Ports, for his recognition or registration as a British subject, and produce the certificate granted by the Government of Hong Kong.
5. Cases have occurred within your Petitioners' knowledge when British subjects have been placed in positions of peculiar embarrassment and no little difficulty by the positive denial of British Consular officers to recognise them as such. They are thus placed in the predicament of being without the hope of aid or official protection in the event of their personal safety in the port or in the interior being endangered or their business being placed at hazard for want of a proper official to whom they can apply as of right.
6. Your Petitioners believe that this anomaly does not exist in the case of French or Portuguese subjects.
7. Your Petitioners respectfully submit that when they have not elected to sink their British nationality, they still remain, whether within or without the British dominions, of such nationality, and have a right to expect all the advantages arising from the fact of their being British subjects.
8. It might be well to mention that your Petitioners believe that the denial of British recognition and protection to British Subjects resorting or travelling in China is probably due to the fact that those British Subjects "have not discarded the Chinese costume and adopted some other dress or costume whereby they may be readily distinguished from the native population".