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Hongkong Ordinance and ignore what doesn't. Their skill
in chicane and their jealousy, on occasion, of foreign
rights, are so great, that there is always the danger of
their squeezing out foreign interests by administrative
abuses. You will see from the enclosed memorandum, written before we received a copy of the Hongkong Ordinance, the
kind of difficulties in connexion with foreshore cases with
which we have recently had to deal and which give point
to the fear I have mentioned.
It
I suppose it is now too late to consider whether
anything could be done, by altering the terms of the
Ordinance, to avoid giving a handle to the Chinese.
might be a difficult matter, no doubt, in any case, and we
cannot of course claim to object to Hongkong legislation,
if it is reasonable and expedient in itself, on the ground
of possible undesirable effects on British interests in
China, unless the harm in China is likely to be dispro-
portionate to the good in Hongkong, but you will perhaps
bear in mind that Hongkong legislation may have ill-effects
outside