681595-1881-Legislative-Council — Page 15

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THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 11TH JUNE, 1881.

-our Dock Company, Sugar Companies, River Steamer Companies, Insurance Companies, our Gas. Company and our local European Banks.

What Eastern Company is more flourishing than the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank? Well, the success that has attended these Companies arises, no doubt, in the first instance from the enterprise of those who originated them, but we must not forget the fact that they are worked in the midst of a Chinese community, and that it is impossible to separate the prosperity of our fellow countrymen from the prosperity of the natives of the Colony.

There is one other consideration which I may venture on this occasion to point out to you. is this,---that of all the colonies in Her Majesty's Empire, this is, perhaps, the most interesting in what may be called the foreign policy that is forced on the Government. We are close to an extraordinary Empire. This little Colony has with the Empire of China the most intimate com- mercial relations. What should be the duty of this Colony to the Chinese? Apart from the. general principle of doing justice to all, I have to look to the interests of England and the instruc- tions of Her Majesty on this subject, and there is no doubt, the interests of England are gravely involved in having this Colony maintain friendly relations with China. The Chinese have at the moment, and have had for many years, a great deal of internal content. And what is the con- sequence? Throughout China now, there is a development of industrial resources and a pro- duction of wealth which cannot fail to benefit the British manufacturer and British ship-owner. China is an essentially progressive nation,-- cantious and slow, but, I say, eminently progres- sive. It is not progressive in certain respects, no doubt; for instance, not in that way one sees sometimes depicted in Punch, where children assume to lecture their parents, and where the rising generation expresses contempt for grey hairs. That is a species of progress we do not see in: China. His Honour on my right will also, perhaps, have noticed in some of the commercial cases before him, that there are some practices sanctioned by our bankruptcy law in which one would be sorry to see China making progress in the sense in which the term is sometimes used in Western nations and the United States. My own experience on the subject is confirmed by the evidence printed by order of the Congress of the United States with respect to the Chinese who had gone from Hongkong to San Francisco. There I find the evidence of the Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, a gentleman apparently of large business transactions. He speaks of having trans-

actions amounting to millions of dollars with the Chinese. But what he says is, in effect, this,-

I find I can have these business transactions

"with the Chinese in San Francisco with perfect

“ safety. I take no bond or security from them.

Large sums of money and goods to a consider-

"able amount pass. If it were a countryman of

my own or any other foreigner, I would have to adopt a different system." In short, he

says.--

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429

設此公司者之確有才識

司之順遂獲有成效原因 香港上海銀行者乎該公 各地有何公司獲利愈於 及本港各銀行試問東邊

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另華港叉争之國作與人處更

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易國窮

堂者忌

千刊准

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及願

華人

人人實

譏也

肯彈中手地華