[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]
AFFAIRS OF CHINA.
CONFIDENTIAL.
78
[April 6.]
SECTION 13.
ま
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(10914]
(No. 85.) Sir,
No. 1.
Sir J. Jordan to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received April 6.)
Peking, February 18, 1907. ON the 10th January last I received a telegram from His Majesty's Consul- General at Shanghae stating that two Chinese residents in the Settlement had been arrested on a Mixed Court warrant at the instance of the Viceroy at Nanking charged with being concerned in the bomb outrage at Peking and with being members of a revolutionary society. Sir Pelham Warren asked whether he could insist on a primá facie case being made out against them or whether he should hand them over simply on the demand of the Viceroy.
In my telegraphic reply of the following day, I informed Sir P. Warren that the men should not be surrendered on the mere demand of the Viceroy, but that they should be brought before the Mixed Court, where the Assessor, whom I presumed to be Mr. Barton, should watch the case, and if it was found that the charges were made on bond fide grounds, I considered that the accused should be handed over to the Chinese authorities.
I telegraphed at the same time to the Judge of His Britannic Majesty's Supreme Court asking him to give the British Assessor the benefit of his advice in dealing with the case, and I explained to Sir Havilland de Sausmarez that in view of the revolutionary activity in Central China it appeared to be important on political grounds that care should be taken to prevent the international Settlement at Shanghae from being regarded as a refuge for seditious characters.
In his reply of the 17th January, Sir H. de Sausmarez pointed out that there had been no case in recent years of a prisoner arrested in the Settlement having been handed over to the Chinese authorities without a preliminary inquiry in the Mixed Court; that this practice was recognized in the draft of the Mixed Court Amend- ments (1 (b)); and gave it as his opinion that evidence satisfactory to the Magistrate and Assessor should be produced. Such evidence, he added, need not be as strict as would be required in Europe, nor need it he given publicly.
The foregoing telegrams were repeated to you, and on the 19th January I had the honour to receive your telegram No. 7 stating that, unless there was some established usage or some special reason of which you had no knowledge, the preliminary investigation in the Mixed Court should take place in public.
Your instructions were duly communicated to the Consul-General in Shanghae, who telegraphed that the Consular Body had decided to refer the case to the Diplo- matic Body here.
A meeting of the foreign Representatives was accordingly held on the 22nd January, at which, after considerable discussion, and with some hesitation on the part of one or two of my colleagues, it was decided to adopt the views embodied in my telegram to Sir Pelham Warren as supplemented by your telegraphic instructions above referred to. A telegram, copy of which I have the honour to inclose, was sent in this sense by the doyen to the Senior Consul at Shanghae, and the accused, who had been remanded from the 9th January, were again brought before the Mixed Court on the 28th January. The identity of the men was duly established, and, the evidence against them being such as was regularly admitted by the Court and sufficient to satisfy both the Magistrate and the Assessor that the charges were founded on reasonable grounds, the Court decided that they should be sent to Nanking for trial.
A full account of the proceedings at the preliminary investigation and copies of the correspondence which passed between the Tuotai and the Consul-General on the subject will be found in the despatch from Sir Pelham Warren copy of which I have the honour to transmit herewith.
On the receipt of this communication I thought it wise to telegraph to His Britannic Majesty's Consul at Nanking asking him to suggest privately to the Viceroy the advisability of giving the men a public trial in order to establish confidence in the justice of the case, but I have not yet received a reply.
[2450 f-13]
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