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the Certificate mentioned in Standing Rules and Orders,
No. 41; in which case, the amendments might, if the
Council so desired, have been adopted en bloc.
The Orders of the day were sent to Members
on 12th. March for the meeting on 15th., and I suggested
the desirability of sending with the original Bill, a
print of the Bill containing the proposed amendments, to
each Member with the Orders of the day, so that they
might, beforehand, have an opportunity of considering
what would be the total effect of the amendments which
I proposed to suggest in the original Bill. I was not
aware that there was likely to be any opposition to any of
those amendments. The title of the original Bill was "The
New Territories Land Court Ordinance". This had been
amended by the Law Committee into "An Ordinance to facili-
tate the hearing, determination, and settlement of land
claims in the New Territories, to establish a Land Court
and for other purposes".
In the Orders of the day, the two Bills
being sent to Members, the amended title was inserted by
inadvertence. I did not myself notice it, as I probably
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ought to have done, but my Report, referred the original
Bill and by its original title, and the original Bill was
the one brought on for the consideration of the Council as
indeed was specially pointed out by His Excellency the
Governor. (See p.3 Local Hansard Report, annexed.)
The original Bill was then considered,
Clause by Clause and amended in Committee of the whole
Council, so that when amended it assumed the shape of the
print of the amended Bill.
To suggest that, because the amendinnets
suggested by the Law Committee are somewhat numerous, the
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original Bill must abandoned and a new Bill incorporating
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such amendments be read a first time, is a somewhat extra-
ordinary suggestion, and such a course would lead to great
delay