From 0. R. High Court to Comptroller.
COPY.
8th July, 1938.
76
X For this pur- pose "outside creditors" means creditors in respect of debts not contracted
by the Company within the Colony.
I have nothing to add to my Minute of the 7th August,
1937, as to the desirability of equality of distribution and
the possible repercussions in foreign countries of the
deliberate abandonment of this principle.
I find it difficult to appreciate the Colonial Office's
expressed reason for wishing the English practice to be
departed from in Hong Kong. Even if, for the sake of
argument, it be admitted that it may be expedient that
certain Chinese depositors in Chinese Banks carrying on
business in Hong Kong and elsewhere should, in the event
of the liquidation of the Bank, be liable to be deprived of
some of the money to which they would in the existing state
of the law be entitled, that hardly furnishes a valid
X
argument for treating other outside creditors of such Banks
in the same way and still less for depriving all outside
creditors of every Company carrying on any business in Hong
Kong and elsewhere of part of their existing rights in the
event of liquidation. It would, of course, under the terms
of the Section, be possible on the ground of justice and
expediency for the Court to differentiate between Chinese
and other outside creditors or between different kinds of
business but I can hardly imagine any Court doing this.
Many of our laws are, no doubt, to a large extent based
upon expediency but for the legislature to delegate to the
Court the responsibility of deciding whether in any par-
ticular case it is expedient as well as just that certain
persons should be deprived of their normal commercial
rights and remedies seems to me to be a most dangerous and,
so far as I know, novel proposition. It would be amusing
to watch the reactions of say, the Lord Chief Justice if he
were called upon to exercise his discretion on such con-