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(b)
(c)
of any kind to the British Government. The pleasure of the Government will be declared from time to time by further Proclamation,,,,、、
This is a mere exemption from charges or duties and does not amount to the grant of any right to enter Hong Kong.
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Proclamation of 7th June,1841. (Hong Kong Laws 1841-53,p.3)
This proclamation declares to the merchants and traders of Canton and all parts of the Chinese Empire, that they and their ships have free permission to resort to and trade at the port of Hong Kong....
The first thing to notice is that this proclamation did not confer any right on the Chinese as such but on "the merchants and traders of Canton and all parts of the Empire", which might include persons who were not Chinese. In my opinion it did not confer any right to settle in Hong Kong but did confer a right of unrestricted entry, but only of entry to the port of Hong Kong (and not to the Colony as a whole) and then only for the purpose of trading. The proclamation could never, therefore, have afforded good grounds for a claim that any Chinese had an unrestricted right to settle in, or that all Chinese had an unrestricted right to enter, the Colony or any part thereof; and furthermore, the Proclamation, being unilateral, was revocable (see F.0. letter at (9) on 54064/47) • The terms of the proclamation are, in my opinion, incompatible with the provisions of the Supplementary Treaty of 1843 (see subparagraph (c) below) and, while I see no reason for Hong Kong's contention (para. 3 of (1) on 54064/48) that the proclamation was revoked by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842, I think that it must have lapsed at the date of the Supplementary Treaty of 1843 and cannot have remained in force, as the Foreign Office suggest ((9) on 54064/47), until 1858.
Supplementary Treaty of 8th October, 1843. (S.P. XXXI, p. 132).
This Treaty (which was expressly abrogated by the Treaty of Tientsin, 1858 - S.P. XLVIII, p. 47) was supplementary to the Treaty of Nanking of 29th August, 1842, (S.P. XXX, p. 389) by which the cession of Hong Kong was confirmed and British subjects were allowed to reside and trade at five named Chinese ports.
Before considering what particular rights, if any, are conferred on the Chinese by the Supplementary Treaty the effect of the treaty on the proclamation of 7th June, 1841, should be noticed. From Articles XIII and XIV of the treaty it appears that one of the main objects of the treaty is to ensure that (at the insistence no doubt of the Chinese Government) trading between China and Hong Kong shall be confied to the five Chinese ports mentioned in Article XIII; and any Chinese merchant vessel which "has not a pass, or register, for one of the five ports... is to be considered as an unauthorised or smuggling vessel, and is not to be allowed to trade at Hong Kong..... This appears to me to be incompatible with the terms of the proclamation of 7th June, 1841, which provides that the merchants and traders of all parts of the Chinese Empire and their ships may freely resort to Hong Kong to trade and threatens an embargo on Chinese ports if there is any obstruction of this freedom of trade with Hong Kong. I am of the opinion, therefore, that the proclamation must have lapsed at the date of the treaty.
As regards the question of whether the Supplementary Treaty
confers any right of entry upon Chinese the important Article is Article XIII which provides that-