";",,,-
.....
226
Comparative leniency in the administration of justice
does not enter into the discussion at all; the real and
only points at issue are the national status of the ac-
cused and the jurisdiction to which he is amonable.
In Your Excellency's comraunication of November
8th. it is claimed that the New Territories, having been
merely leased to Great Britain, they are not on the samu
footing as lands belonging to the British Crown, and that
Chinese residents within these territories, therefore,
still retain their status of Chinese subjecte. Against
this dictum I had on November 10th. the honour to protest,
*
on the grounds that, in terms of the Convention of 1898,
in the leased territories Groat Britain has sole juris-
diction, and this protest I desire now strongly to re-
iterate.
Your Excellency is, of course, aware that re-
lations between states are governed by well known prin-
ciples of international law, and, it being expedient,
after the Convention was concluded, to discover what was
the actual status of the Chinese inhabitants within the
leased