can be settled fairly quickly in consultation with you, if constitutional development in Hong Kong is to take the course recommended in your despatch No. 145.
11. If, however, you now agree, as the result of this telegram, that the main advance should be made in the Central Government with some liberalisation of existing local govemment arrangements short of an elected municipality, the terms of the statement will require some consideration. The following draft has been prepared (in the form of a reply to a possible Parliamentary Question) to meet that eventuality should it arise, Please comment as freely as you wish upon its temis. Begins;
"On the 1st May my predecessor announced in this House that His Majesty's Government had had under consideration the means by which in Hong Kong, as elsewhere in the Colonial Empire, the inhabitants of the territory can be given a fuller and more responsible share in the management of their own affairs, He went on to say that it was thought that one possible method of achieving this end would be by handing over certain functions of internal administration to a Municipal Council constituted on a fully representative basis but that the Governor had been asked thoroughly to examine these important issues in consultation with the representations of all sections of the community in Hong Kong. Since that time the Governor of Hong Kong and his Advisers have been continuously engaged, in consultation with local opinion, in formulating proposals for the creation of a largely autonomous municipality, whose members would be elected under a wide franchise, and to which would be transferred many of the Services at present administered by Government, I regret that throughout these consultations there has been little evidence of any substantial local opinion on this matter and certainly little enthusiasm for any substantial change in local government the success of which requires the full
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