-4-
68
under that Ordinance but the wording of the paragraph night
be taken to include persons practising medicine or surgery
according to purely Chinese methods because the right of such
persons to practise and to recover fees is expressly saved by
section 3 of the Medical Registration Ordinance, 1884,Ordi-
nance No. 1 of 1884.
Such persons will now be definitely
excluded from the electorate, and this is done, partly in order
to carry out what appears to be the present intention, and
partly because clains to registration on this ground might
give rise to some difficulty.
9. The paragraphs relating to editors of newspapers
and their staff has been altered so as to make it refer only
to editors, sub-editors and reporters. The word staff
might include even an office messenger, and it is obvious
that the exemption from jury service was intended to apply
only to persons whose professional avocations are such as to
make it difficult for them to serve on juries.
;
10. Masters of vernacular schools were not eligible for
the electorate, unless of course they were on one of the
jurors lists. A serious question arose at the last ballot
as to what are v ́rnacular schools, because there is no statu-
tory definition of the term. There is a definition in the
Grant Code, 1924, which reads as follows, "Vernacular school
moans a grant school in which the Chinese language is the
principal medium of instruction", but it will be noticed that
this definition refers only to grant schools. The Education
Department does in fact classify all schools into the two
i.e., vernacular schools and schools which are not
vernacular schools, but, as in the case of the Grant Code, this
has no statutory authority. It would seem that the only
classes,
practicable course will be to accept the classification of the
Education Department as decisive on the point as to whether
any particular school is vernacular or not. This solution is adopted in paragraph (1) of the new section 8(4).
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.