30
THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 16TH JANUARY, 1892.
In fine, foreign Companies are only to be permitted to carry on business in the Protectorate with the consent of the Government.
This carries out the old Prussian maxim which has always been upheld by the Legislature.
The extension of this maxim to the Protectorate is at once justified, when it is considered how the uncontrolled influx of foreign Companies with large capital would influence the development of economic life in the as yet undeveloped Protectorate.
One has not only to consider the dangers which might arise to the fixing of the relations of exchange between the Protectorate and the Empire.
The immediate damage to the development of our Protectorate would have to be anticipated, if there were a possibility, by availing ourselves of the easier forms of foreign legislation in Colonies, of our beginning to found Companies, deprived of a solid basis, and whose collapse would for years bring economic undertakings in the Protectorate into discredit.
It may be imagined further, that the Government will not establish Regulations with regard to the admittance of foreign Companies, which will frighten away foreign capital from the desirable parti- cipation in the economic development of the Protectorate.
How the medium will be found between these conflicting interests cannot further be gathered from general Regulations. The Colonial Council has made a wise reservation, even though with regard to this it has only established two points.
The Government, before admitting foreign Companies, shall demand proof of sufficient working capital. It shall secondly make sure that those Companies are always represented in some way in the Protectorate, which will spare to the creditors the risk and consequences which are connected with the prosecution of legal claims in a foreign country.
The second question is no longer a question of the right of a Company.
It refers much more to the general question of the validity of the Concessions of the natives, regardless of whether they are granted to foreigners or not, to single individuals or Companies.
The manner in which many of these Concessions have been obtained is sufficiently well known. Subjects of Concession have frequently been the most valuable rights of sovereignty and possession, stretches of territory as big as kingdoms, the entire mineral produce of a country, and exclusive rights of innumerable description.
The Colonial Council justly concluded that the Protectorate of the Empire is to be looked upon as. a sort of guardianship over the natives, who in their dealings with White men cannot be looked on as capable of trading. One of the first acts of the Government in the Protectorates, therefore, has been the publication of Decrees, whereby the validity of negotiations between the natives and White men with regard to possession of land, mining rights, &c., are subjected to the approval of the Government. It remained a question how to deal with such legal negotiations concluded prior to the declaration of the Protectorate.
An attempt to decide this question was made in the Agreement with England of last year, whereby a difference was made between Concessions having sovereign rights as their object, and such as contain permission to carry on trade or mining operations.
Between Germany and England, it was at that time decided that the exercise of sovereign rights should ever be dependent on the consent of the protecting Power.
A glance at these decisions enables one to note the bearing of the decisions of the Colonial Council on the second question.
The kernal of the decisions lies in this, that the Colonial Council sees, not only in the granting of exclusive rights and monopolies, but also in the giving over of the rights to the territory of the tribe or to improportionately large or insufficiently bounded portions of 'territory, a renunciation of sovereign rights which the Government is not to look upon as valid.
In such instances, as a fact, the acquisition is tantamount to occupation of the district in question. It is self evidently in opposition to the conception of the sovereign right of a State when, in the territory which is subject to its sovereign authority, the members of some other State possess rights of use and property, which render entirely out of the question the economic expansion by private persons, and place the development of the country entirely in the hands of this proprietor.
He who has possession of the whole territory has also the sovereignty over its members, and determines their social, economic, and political development.
Should others than foreigners become the proprietors of such an extended possession, the objections to such a state are not so apparent, though actually the position is the same.
It thus appears that with regard to the decisions under (d), the difference between foreigners and non-foreigners only becomes evident when the Government is recommended, in those instances where, according to the circumstances of the case, it feels it incumbent on itself to recognize Concessions of this character, to establish as a condition that the Company to be formed to carry on the Concession must be subject to German law.
We are unconsciously here reminded that the Government once refused to one of our Colonial Companies their consent to a by no means disadvantageous Agreement for the handing over of the larger portion of their Colonial possession, because those who would acquire it were foreigners.
The Colonial Council in its decisions has placed itself on the same footing.
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.