Page 403
A dispute arose regarding a statement made by Fung, which was contested by another party. The latter claimed that the property in question mostly belonged to Chou Jung-yao, a Chinese subject, and that Fung had mortgaged it in collusion with Chou to defeat the ends of justice. To support this contention, certain entries from the account books of the coal business were produced.
It seemed to me that this question of fact was crucial to the matter and should be investigated before deciding on the Bank's proper remedy. If the property was not Fung's to mortgage initially, the deed relied upon by the Bank would likely provide grounds for proceeding against Fung but would not entitle them to demand possession of the coal.
The Hongkong Government, however, wished to rely on the argument that since the coal was in the legal possession of the Bank at the time of seizure, the Viceroy had no right to seize it without the intervention of a British Court. This argument seemed to be a technical point that I would find difficult to present.
...
Page 403
(The rest of the original text appears to be garbled and not relevant to the coherent text that follows, likely due to OCR errors.)
# RESTRICTED
## MEMORANDUM FOR EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
...
However, to follow the exact instruction for output format using HTML and to correct and reformat the given text properly, here is the revised response:Page 403
A dispute arose regarding a statement made by Fung, which was contested by another party. The latter claimed that the property in question mostly belonged to Chou Jung-yao, a Chinese subject, and that Fung had mortgaged it in collusion with Chou to defeat the ends of justice. To support this contention, certain entries from the account books of the coal business were produced.
It seemed to me that this question of fact was crucial to the matter and should be investigated before deciding on the Bank's proper remedy. If the property was not Fung's to mortgage initially, the deed relied upon by the Bank would likely provide grounds for proceeding against Fung but would not entitle them to demand possession of the coal.
The Hongkong Government, however, wished to rely on the argument that since the coal was in the legal possession of the Bank at the time of seizure, the Viceroy had no right to seize it without the intervention of a British Court. This argument seemed to be a technical point that I would find difficult to present.
Given the initial text was heavily garbled, the above response focuses on the coherent part of the text that was provided.