COPY.
J.: No. 1844.
Sir,'
ENCLOSURE /5.
19230
Hongkong, August 19th., 1899.
20
re. Charles Abrens.
In reply to your letter of the 17th. instant, No. 1324, I beg to say that I have no doubt the legacy left to Abrens would be paid over to a Committee duly appointed according to Hongkong Law.
The money available for Ahrens, if I remember rightly from the paper which you transmitted to me with your letter of the 8th of April last and which I returned with my last despatch, amounts to not more than about $240 in all. Under the circumstances the cost of the necessary proceedings in lunacy would amount. to double the legacy left to Ahrens.
I avail myself of this opportunity to express my regret that this matter is causing your Government so much trouble and expense, and that I am not in the position to do anything to lessen the same.
I may mention, that the Foreign Office in Berlia, in its last rescript in the matter, again expounds the principle adopted by the British Government in several similar cases occurred in Germany, that every Stats, in the absence of a treaty providing to the contrary, has to take care of foreigners who became destitute in its territory.:
I have etc., (Sd.) Dr. P. C. Rieloff,
Imperial German Consul.
The Honourable
The Colonial Secretary.
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