CO129-365 - Governor Sir Lugard - 1910 [1-3] — Page 584

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now is. Liang Tou could no doubt have been dealt with by

His Britannic Majesty's Consul-General at Canton as a

fugitive offender under the provisions of the Fugitive

Offenders Act, if he had been handed over to him, and what

the Consul-General asked was that the Chinese Authorities

should hand the prisoner over to him as the British

Authority which alone could exercise criminal jurisdiction

over a British subject. This the Governor-General refused

to do and I understand that the Foreign Office is of opinion

that the Governor-General was justified in his refusal on

the ground (a) that the opinion of the Law Officers of the

Crown expressed in September, 1899, that persons inhabiting

the leased territory at the time of its cession, as well as

persons born there during the continuance of the lease,

should be deemed to be British Subjects, cannot (in the

absence, I presume, of agreement on the subject with the

Chinese Government) affect the national status of such

persons who when within the limits of the Chinese Empire

will, without doubt, be deemed by the Chinese Government

to be subjects of the Emperor of China and amenable solely

to Chinese Jurisdiction and (b) on the ground that there

is no treaty obligation on the part of the Chinese to surrender their subjects to Great Britain or to British

possessions.