Enclosure 2
GP16 SEP 09
Hon. Colonial Secretary,
I attach a "Confidential" Memorandum by the Crown Solicitor on the 4 cases in which a Jury was refused. It appears to have been the repeated and unusual refusal in those cases which aroused the Mercantile Community to action.
In each of those cases a very large sum of money was involved - the amount being in the case in which the Hongkong Bank was interested over one million dollars. In all the cases material issues of fact had to be determined.
In each case, as it seems to me, the discretion should not have been exercised to refuse a Jury: but having been exercised there was, in the present constitution of the Appeal Court, only an appeal from the Judge exercising the discretion in Chambers to the same Judge sitting with another in the Appeal Court.
(Sd.) H. Berkeley, A.G.
28th July, 1909.