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advico of His Majesty's Minister. Swaking broadly, it will probably be best to resist any Chinese pressure for the investigation of such matters by the Commission unless to do so would postpone those changes at Shanghai on which these is already a measure of agreement in principle. Ii on the other hand it seems likely that an enquiry by the Commission would help to get that agreement translated into practice
then any objection of principle to the Commission's investigating such matters would be pro tanto removed.
16. In that event the Commission will doubtless direct their attention to what is not the least of the evils arising from the exclusion of Chiness sovereignty from the Inter- national Settlements and Concessions, namely that they become alsatias for political and other refugees. This might possibly be remedied by making Chinese writs run in the settloments and concessions with either no, or only the simplest, form of extraditive proceedings.
17.
If the deliberations of the Commission take the channel indicated above, a question, which affects His Majesty's Government almost exclusively, may be expected to arise; name- ly whethor the time has not come for the less important foreign concessions to be returned to China. Subject to the bearing of such an act on the general political situation at the moment (as to which the advice of His Majesty's Minister should be sought), His Majesty's Government, so far as they are concernod, would not be averse from returning such a concession as that at Chinklang, which does little or nothing to promote or assist British trade, and is alwaye liable to
operate as a stimulus to anti-British agitation. an alterna-
tive to the surrender of such Concessions to China, might be
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