COPY.
No. 947.
Sir,
>
Enclosure 1.
CO
1,320
255
Hongkong, 21st. March, 1912.
522 APR 12,
I have the honour to ask you kindly to advise me on the
following subject:-
Ordinance No. 1 of 1872 provides sub 5 (4) that if a foreign offender who is going to be detained temporary in this Colony is brought before the Magistrate he shall be asked
*if he has any valid cause to show why the should not be committed to gaol to await the order of the Governor".
This subjection (4) was repealed by Ordinance No. 23 of 1911 Section 2 (c). When moving the second reading of this Bill the Attorney-General said (Hongkong Hansard 1911 p. 123):
"Apparently that clause is put there owing to an extra- -dition precedent. This is not an extradition Ordinance. A man does not come here as to an asylum. He is brought here in law- -ful custody".
By Ordinance No. 43 of 1911 Section 2 the repealed paragraph was restored, as His British Majesty's Secretary of State "did not sanction the principle underlying the secondary object" of Ordinance No. 23, 1911 (Hongkong Hansard 1911 p. 202).
This seems to me to imply that the Ordinance No. 1 of 1872 might be construed as an extradition ordinance and that therefore only those offenders could temporarily be detained in Hongkong who, under other circumstances, could be extradited. This principle would lead to the most serious consequences as a German who is brought within the Colony in the course for his transmission to Germany or Tsingtau for trial on a charge of, for instance, desertion, sodomy or a political crime, would be a free man in Hongkong. After Ordinance No. 64 of 1911 has eliminated the reference to China this is of greater importance than it was before, as that Ordinance directly brings in the question
of
¿