Directory_and_Chronicle_1925 — Page 1077

998

HONGKONG

Commissioner, Ke-shen, and himself. One of the terms was stated in the circular as follows:-

1. The cession of the island and harbour of Hongkong to the British Crown. All just charges and duties to the Empire upon the commerce carried on there to be paid as if the trade were conducted at Whampoa." On the 26th January, the island was accordingly taken formal possession of in the name of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. The treaty was subsequently repudiated by both parties, and it was not until the conclusion of the Nanking Treaty in 1842 that the Chinese Government formally recognised the cession of the island. In the meantime it was held by the British-who had come to stay -and on the 1st May, 1841, the Public Notice and Declaration regarding the occupation of Hongkong was promulgated. On the 7th May of the same year, 1841, the first number of the Hongkong Gazette was published, printed at the American Mission Press, Macao. This first number contained the notification of the appointment (dated 30th April) of Captain William Caine, of the 26th (Cameronian) Regiment of Infantry, as Chief Magistrate, the warrant being under the hand of Charles Elliot, Esquire, Her Majesty's Plenipotentiary, etc., etc., "charged with the Government of the Island of Hongkong." Captain Elliot's idea was that the island should be held on similar terms to those on which Macao was at that time held by the Portuguese, and the Chief Magistrate, instead of being charged to administer British law, was authorised and required "to exercise authority, according to the laws, customs, and usages of China, as near as may be (every description of torture excepted), for the preservation of the peace and the protection of life and property, over all the native inhabitants in the said island and the harbours thereof"; and over other persons according to British police law. The first land sale took place on the 14th June, and building thereafter proceeded rapidly, the population of the new town at the end of the year being estimated at 15,000. On the 6th February, 1842, Hongkong was formally declared a free port by Sir Henry Pottinger, who had succeeded Captain Elliot as Plenipotentiary. Until the signing of the treaty, however, the ultimate fate of the new settlement remained in doubt. Sir Robert Peel, when asked in the House of Commons whether it was the intention of Her Majesty's Government properly to colonise the place or give it up, declined to answer what he deemed an unparliamentary! question during a period of open war with the country by whom the cession of the island was both made and repudiated. The Treaty of Nanking, however, settled all doubts. On the 23rd June, 1843, Ke-ying, the Chinese Imperial Commissioner, arrived in Hongkong for the exchange of the ratifications of the treaty, and the ceremony took place in the Council Room on the 26th of that month, and immediately afterwards the Royal Charter, dated 5th April, 1843, erecting the island into a separate Colony, was read, and Sir Henry Pottinger took the oaths of office as Governor. At first progress was rapido. The Queen's Road was laid out for a length of between three and four miles, and buildings rose rapidly. But a check was received owing to the unhealthy conditions which were developed by the breaking of the "malarious" soil, and in 1844, soon afte the arrival of Sir John Davis, who assumed the government in June, the advisabiliti of abandoning the island altogether as a colony was seriously discussed. Mr Montgomery Martin, H.M.'s Treasurer, drew up a long report, in which he earnestly recommended the abandonment of a place which, he believed, would never be habitable for Europeans, instancing the case of the 98th Regiment, which lost 257 men b death in twenty-one months, and of the Royal Artillery, which in two years lost 5 out of a strength of 135, and gave it as his opinion that it was a delusion to hop that Hongkong could ever become a commercial emporium like Singapore. Sir Joh Davis, in a despatch dated April, 1845, strongly combatted Mr. Martin's pessimist conclusions and expressed a firm belief that time alone was required for the develop ment of the colony and for the correction of some of the evils which hindered it early progress. Sir John (who died in November, 1890, in his ninety-sixth year) live to see his predictions most amply verified, and in after years must have reflecte with satisfaction on the fact that his views had prevailed in Downing Street. On thi 26th May, 1846, the Hongkong Club house, situated in Queen's Road Centra at its junction with Wyndham Street, was opened with a ball, and was occupied H the Club for over fifty years, being vacated in July, 1897, when the Club moved in new and more commodious premises on the New Praya. Sir John Davis resigned January, 1848, and left the colony on the 30th March of that year, Major-Gener Stavely Administering the Government until the arrival, a few weeks later, of St George (then Mr.) Bonham. During Sir George Bonham's administration, whic lasted, with two intervals, until April, 1854, the Colony continued to progress, b the garrison and residents still suffered severely from malaria. On the 13th Apr