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19. Temples may lose their popularity or otherwise fall on evil days. Section 11 gives the Chinese Temples Committee power in such cases to close the temple and to sell its assets and transfer the proceeds to the General Charities Fund. Before closing any temple, however, for this reason, the Committee will have to call a meeting of the members of the community who would be expected to be interested in the matter. Such meeting might result in revived support and the temple might then be allowed to continue.

20. Section 12 exempts from sectious 3, 4, 6, 7, 9 and 10 of the Ordinance the Chinese temples specified in the Schedule to the Ordinance. These are all old established temples which were founded by families or individuals and not by the community or sections of the community, and their administration is unobjectionable, though the profits do not go to the community. As these temples are private property, and are run for private benefit, section 12 also provides that no public collection or appeal must be made for them except within the precincts of the particular temple for which the collection or appeal is being made. Section 12 also provides that the Ordinance as a whole shall not apply to the Man Mo Temple, because the affairs of that temple are already regulated by the Man Mo Temple Ordinance, Ordinance No. 10 of 1908.

21. Section 13 gives the ordinary powers of search.

22. Section 14 provides that every person who con- travenes any of the provisions of the Ordinance or of any regulation made thereunder shall be liable to a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars.

23. The main principles of the bill were approved by the District Watch Committee, the Tung Wa Hospital Committee, the Po Leung Kuk Committee and the Kwong Wa Hospital Committee. All the members of these committees except four signed a memorial in favour of the principles of the bill. One of the four who did not sign was absent through illness, and the other three were absent from the Colony. The members of three of the four committees are all elected by the community. It would be difficult to find stronger evidence of the support given to the principles of the bill by the leaders of the Chinese community in this Colony. It it believed that the details of the bill merely carry out the main principles which have been so strongly recommended,

16th January, 1928.

J. H. KEMP,

Attorney General.