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never remise in consulting them in all questions affecting trade
und commerce and the Native Com unity.
4.
The principle involved in the prayer of the Petitioners so far as it relates to the Legislative Council, has been raised in this Colony before. It is the natural aspiration of Englishmen to govern themselves and it is an aspiration with which I personally cannot but sympathise.
But I venture to think that the Petitioners
have scarcely appreciated the special nature of local conditions. To indicate some of these I cannot do better than quote from Lord
Ripon's Despatch No. 135 of the 23rd. of August, 1894, in answer
to a similar Petition, in which he wrote:-
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"To sum up, the petitioners ask nominally that Hongkong should be given self-government, and an elective system. In
my opinion the place and its circumstances are wholly un- -suited for what is proposed.
"An Imperial Station with great Imperial interests, on the borders of a foreign land, the nucleus of wide reaching British interests in the Far East, must, it appears to me,
be kept under Imperial protection and under Imperial control. "In saying this much I am assuming that the self-govern-
-ment would be worthy of the name, and that the elective
system would include all ranks of the community, but this is
not what the Petition demands. Those who framed it and signed
it would, I gather, desire to place the power in the hands
of a select few, and to constitute a small oligarchy, restrict -ed by the lines of race. To any such change I am opposed.
I consider that the well-being of the large majority of the inhabitants is more likely to be safeguarded by the Crown
Colony system, under which, as far as possible no distinction
is made of rank or race, than by representation which would leave the bulk of the population wholly unrepresented.
"I can therefore hold out no hope that Hongkong will cease to be a Crow Colony."
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