576
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now is. Liang Tou could no doubt have been dealt with by
His Britannic Majesty's Consul-General at Canton as a
fugitive offender under the provisions of the Fugitive
Offenders Act, if he had been handed over to him, and what
the Consul-General asked was that the Chinese Authorities
should hand the prisoner over to him as the British
Authority which alone could exercise criminal jurisdiction
over a British subject. This the Governor-General refused
to do and I understand that the Foreign Office is of opinion
that the Governor-General was justified in his refusal on
the ground (a) that the opinion of the Law Officers of the
Crown expressed in September, 1899, that persons inhabiting
the leased territory at the time of its cession, as well as
persons born there during the continuance of the lease,
should be deemed to be British Subjects, cannot (in the
absence, I presume, of agreement on the subject with the
Chinese Government) affect the national status of such
persons who when within the limits of the Chinese Empire
will, without doubt, be deemed by the Chinese Government
to be subjects of the Emperor of China and amenable solely
to Chinese Jurisdiction and (b) on the ground that there
is no treaty obligation on the part of the Chinese to surrender their subjects to Great Britain or to British
possessions.