(This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.)
AFFAIRS OF CHINA.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[19838]
No. 1.
C33-
37616 REC
[June 17.]
15 001 08
SECTION 2.
(No. 288.) Sir,
Sir Edward Grey to Sir J. Jordan,
Foreign Office, June 17, 1908.
I HAVE received your despatch No. 212 of the 12th ultimo, regarding the purchase by a German subject of a lot in the British Concession at Hankow.
While approving your action in the matter, I take this opportunity of stating, for your information and guidance, the general principles of British Law on the points which arise out of the present case.
The tie of allegiance that binds a man to his own State is one that he cannot dissolve either wholly or in part without that State's concurrence. The Treaty right that His Majesty possesses to jurisdiction over all British subjects in China would not be affected by the undertaking of an individual to submit to the jurisdiction of a foreign Tribunal, and His Majesty's Government would have every right to complain if a German Tribunal, relying on some such undertaking by the individual, attempted to exercise over him a jurisdiction that belongs exclusively to the British Court. British Consuls have no power or authority to concur, on behalf of His Britannic Majesty, in the submission of British subjects to German jurisdiction. They are, in fact, in precisely the same condition as the German Consuls, who appear to have no power to consent to a German purchaser of a lot in a British Concession submitting himself to British jurisdiction.
The German authorities may be entitled, if they see fit, to annex to the purchase of lots in a German Concession conditions which will have the result of debarring British subjects from becoming purchasers, and where this is the case there would be no means of preventing them from exercising their rights. Whether or not it may be desirable for the British authorities to insist in return on conditions which will exclude Germans from British Concessions is a question of policy, and I shall be glad to learn whether, in your opinion, if the conditions now insisted on by the German authorities are adhered to, it would be desirable that we should retaliate by refusing sanction to German purchases in British Concessions.
[1819-21
I am, &c.
(Signed)
E. GREY.