CO129-371 - Public Offices - 1910 — Page 228

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Comparative leniency in the administration of justice

does not enter into the discussion at all; the real and

only points at issue are the national status of the ac-

cused and the jurisdiction to which he is amonable.

In Your Excellency's comraunication of November

8th. it is claimed that the New Territories, having been

merely leased to Great Britain, they are not on the samu

footing as lands belonging to the British Crown, and that

Chinese residents within these territories, therefore,

still retain their status of Chinese subjecte. Against

this dictum I had on November 10th. the honour to protest,

*

on the grounds that, in terms of the Convention of 1898,

in the leased territories Groat Britain has sole juris-

diction, and this protest I desire now strongly to re-

iterate.

Your Excellency is, of course, aware that re-

lations between states are governed by well known prin-

ciples of international law, and, it being expedient,

after the Convention was concluded, to discover what was

the actual status of the Chinese inhabitants within the

leased