COPY.
Room 61, Tel. 23998.
SOMERSET FITZROY,
STOCK EXCHANGE BUILDING,
10, ICE HOUSE STRENT,
HONG KONG,
2nd August, 1938.
Sir,
I propose to lay before you certain facts with
regard to the legal professions and administration of the
law in the Colony of Hong Kong with a view to producing
a considerable change in the same.
1. I am a member of the Hong Kong bar and for some
5 years was acting as Public Prosecutor, assistant
Attorney General and occupied in drafting legislation
for the Colony.
2.
The professions of the bar and solicitors are
at present separate.
In other parts of the Eest, viz. in H.B.M.
Supreme Court, China and in the Straits Settlement and
F.M.S. they are joined. In China I am a legal
practioner in H.B.M. Supreme Court.
It seems contrary to good policy to keep the
professions apart here, which is the smallest Colony
and where trials of Original Jurisdiction Actions are
few and far between.
I do not think that such actions taken over a
period of some 10 or 15 years can possibly average 10
in a year.
Often I know considerably less. Criminal
prosecutions are conducted by a Crown Counsel, lately so
called and Assistant Crown Solicitors who have a right
of