CO129-433 - Governor Sir May - 1916 [5-6] — Page 217

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sure that they themselves would not claim more than this. Nobody

knows better than the learned Counsel that a Director, or a whole

Board of Directors, can only speak for a Public Company after ob-

-taining the approval of a Meeting of Shareholders held in pur-

-suance of a notice which has stated that such approval would be

asked for. The signatures to the Petition do not therefore in any way represent the long list of Commercial and Industrial Companies

set out in the letter.

-

On the other hand it is remarkable that two out

of the four European Un-official Members of the Legislative

Council have not signed the Petition; that the two Chinese Un-

-official Members who represent one of the largest Commercial

interests in the Colony that of the Chinese Community declined

the overtures made to them, as I an assured, on two occasions

with a view to obtaining their and other Chinese signatures; that the Managers of the two greatest European Mercantile interests in the Colony - the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and the

Firm of Messrs. Butterfield and Swire have declined to lend even

their personal support to the Petition; that Sir Paul Chater,

C.M.G., Un-official Member of the Executive Council, and Mr. E. H. Shorp, K.C., who has been appointed to be an Un-official Member of

that Council since the Petition was launched, have likewise re-

-frained from supporting it; and finally that the most important and influential Public Body in the Colony, the Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce, have not signed the Petition notwithstanding the fact that it is upon its shoulders that the Petitioners would lay the responsibility of electing in the future two Un-official

Members of the Executive and four Un-official Members of the

Legislative Council.

7.

In this letter as in the Petition itself there

is a striking absence of any adequate reason for a violent constitutional change. The instinces given of the alleged constant

employment