CEL
-ni-1870 xelqnoon to altod diensoer and blova dniuý I IIiw anoijaszava .eonsaibyo Isool bas Ilouvo0-
し
.Vl97eonie BTNOY
.zivsⱭ 809Я .7 (.ba)
COPY.
Dear Rees Davies,
No. 3.
179031
309
Shanghai, 4th April, 1912.
143
Many thanks for your letter of the 29th.
March. I have got little further with my proposed draft as I got a
telegram a fortnight ago from the Foreign Office telling me to await a memorandum from the Board of Trade on my despatch of the 15th. January, - copy of part of which I sent to Sir F. Lugard. It has not yet arrived.
I had better wait for this despatch before I
return to the general qüestions at issue, but it will do no harm to clear one or two matters out of the way. Sir F. Piggott's judgment no doubt finally upset the old system, but you are mistaken in thinking that it was satisfactory to the mercantile community or the officials in in China, and I am pretty sure that our recent troubles over rubber
and the ownership of British ships would have caused us to move. A registry in Shanghai has been asked for more than once in the past and the arrangement at Hongkong was only resorted to as a pis aller. How- -ever that is matter of history, the question is, how to work out a scheme which will work well.
From my point of view as judge, I have no wish to curtail the jurisdiction of the Hongkong Court; I don't think it will make much difference whether the power under the Companies Ordinance remains in Hongkong, so long as we have equal powere with reference to "China Companies". But I know that the community here find it very onerous to make the various returns in Hongkong and they wish to be able to come to their own Court and registry, and not to go to the Colony every time. think a local registry would meet this and that nothing else would do so. As regards other ports I don't think any difficulty is to be anticipated with those. The number of Companies with head offices in them is small, and they cannot, and will not for a long time be able to justify a demand for a separate regis- -try. I think you may make your mind quite easy on this point. All that is necessary is a registry in Shanghai, and I am quite sure that the mercantile community will not be satisfied with less. They feel