CONSULTATION.
Consul-General to Viceroy.
CANTON, 4 January, 1908.
265
Your Excellency,
I have the honour to acknowledge receipt of Your Excellency's letter of the 20th December last on the subject of the Canton-Kowloon Railway, desiring the discontinuance of all further negotiations, but offering to refund certain survey expenses incurred by Messrs. Jardine Matheson & Co., against which latter Your Excellency desires to be furnished with the plans and specifications of their survey.
On receipt of Your Excellency's letter in question, I duly communicated its contents to His Majesty's Minister, and as I am now in receipt of telegraphic instructions to point out to Your Excellency, that the Canton-Kowloon Railway Agreement is a solemn contract between the two Governments and cannot be withdrawn, and further, that Your Excellency's action in this matter is wholly inadmissible.
H. M. Minister continues that if Your Excellency persists in this unfriendly attitude, he will have no option but to lay the whole matter before his Government, with the request to take serious note thereof.
In respect to British trade and enterprise, Your Excellency's action has been hostile, and has already excited considerable