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CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM.
Brief Sketch of a Popular Local Movement.
[By H. A. CARTWRIGHT,
At a time when democratic institutions are spreading rapidly through- out the world the government of the British Colony of Hongkong remains a picturesque survival of a bygone age-the age of privilege and patronage. The community to whose enterprise and commercial ability this Colony owes ite foundation and prosperity is still for some cryptic reason excluded from any effective participation in the management of its own affairs. On both the Executive and Legislative Councils there is, it is true, an Unofficial element. but as this is in a permanent minority it can only express the views of the limited class it represents on the measures that are put before it without any prospect of being able to enforce them. The hopeless position of an Un- official Member of the Legislative Council in these circumstances was drawn attention to as far back as 1883, by the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, the Hon. Mr. F. P. Johnson, who was at that time the local head of Messrs. Jardine, Matheson & Co. He said: ** I need not tell you that the Unofficial We Members of the Legislative Council are not representatives in any sense. are nominated by the Government, we have no real power and cannot exer- cise any effective control over expenditure, and there is left to us only a very modified power of protest." Even more important than this numerical inferiority is the fact that of the Unofficial element no more than one-third, even in the Legislative Council, can be regarded in any sense as represent- ative of the community, for only two members are subject to election--those representing respectively the Chamber of Conunerce and the Unofficial Justices of the Peace The remaining four-two of whom are Chinese-are nominat- ed by the Government.
In these days, when every little village in England bas its elected Parish Council and the humblest in the land has been admitted to the
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