Directory_and_Chronicle_1882 — Page 720

CODE OF CIVIL PROCEDURE-HONGKONG.

149

in evidence, whenever they refer to a matter into which the Court has to inquire, but shall not alone be sufficient to charge any son with liability.

2.-The Hongkong Gazette and any Government Gazette of any country, colony, or dependency under the dominion of the British Crown, may be proved by the bare production thereof before the Court.

3.-All proclamations, acts of state, whether legislative or executive, nominations, appointments, and other official communications of the Government, appearing in any such Gazette, may be proved by the production of such Gazette, and shall be prima facie proof of any fact of a public nature which they were intended to notify.

4.-The Court may, on matters of public history, literature, science, or arts, refer, for the purposes of evidence, to such published books, maps, or charts as the Court shall consider to be of authority on the subject to which they relate.

5.-Books printed or published under the authority of the government of a foreign country, and purporting to contain the statutes, code, or other written law of such country, and also printed and published books of reports of decisions of the Courts of such country, and books proved to be commonly admitted in such Courts as evidence of the law of such country, shall be admissible as evidence of the law of such foreign country.

6. -All maps made under the authority of any government, or of any public municipal body, and not made or the purpose o. any litigated question, shall primg facie be deemed to be correct, and shall be admitted in evidence without further proof. Affidavits,

LVI-Every affi lavit used in the Court must be in the English language.

2.—It must be in the first person, and must be divided into paragraphs numbered consecutively.

3. Every affidavit used in the Court must contain only a statement of facts and circumstances as to which the witness swears, either on his own personal knowledge, or from information which he believes to be true.

4. Where the belief in the truth of the matter of fact sworn to arises from information received from another person, the name of such person must be stated.

5. Where there are many erasures, interlineations, or alterations, so that the affidavit proposed to be sworn is illegible or difficult to read, or is, in the judgment of the oflicer before whom it is proposed to be sworn, so written as to give any facility for being aldel to, or in any way fraudulently altered, he may refuse to take the affidavit in its existing form, and may require it to be re-written in a clear and legible and unobjectionable manner.

6. Any affidavit sworn before ang judge, officer, or other person in the United Kingdom, or in any British Colony, possession, or settlement, authorized to take affidavits, or before any commission r duly authorized by the Supreme Court to take affidavits in the United Kinglom or abroad, may be used in the Court in all cases where affidavits are admissible.

7. Any affidavit sworn in any foreign part out of Her Majesty's dominions before a julge or magistrate, being authenticated by the official seal of the Court to which he is attached or by a public notary, or before a British minister, consul, vice- consul, or consular agent, may be used in the Court in all cases where affidavits are admissible.

8.-The fact that an affidavit purports to have been sworn in manner hereinbefore prescribed by paragraphs 6 and 7 shall be prima facie evidence of the seal or signature, as the case may b, of any such court, judg, magistrate, or other officer or person therein mentioned appended or subscribed to any such affidavit, and of the authority of such court, judge, mazistrate, or other officer or person to administer oaths.

9.-The Court may permit an affidavit to be use ì, notwithstanding it is defective in form according to these rules, if the Court is sati-fi d that it has been sworn before a person duly authorised.

10. An affidavit shall not be admitted which is proved to have been sworn before a person on whose behalf the same is off red, or before his attorney, or before a partner or clerk of his attorney.

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