56
J. H. HAAN
the fact that so many foreigners came from countries in which one form or another of representative government was part and parcel of the political structure, in Shanghai it was hard to speak of democracy apart of course from the Chinese having practically no official say in it.
In the very early days there was a real form of direct democracy in the Settlement. There were few people, few enough to make this kind of democracy feasible; nearly all were land-renters and there was a widespread feeling of doing something positive when introducing representative government into part of the Chinese empire.
Sometimes there were fierce clashes between the land-renters and the Municipal Council, as in 1852 when the Municipal Council even decided to resign because a Public Meeting had rejected their drainage plan, a decision which was only reversed when another Public Meeting repealed the rejection;55 or in 1854 when a large number of renters objected to the expense of police barracks and the increase in taxation, and the newly established Municipal Council was threatened in its very existence; or in 1864 when the whole budget was rejected and a new one had to be drafted.57
Discussions at these meetings were often very spirited affairs, with letters to the editor appearing in the columns of the North China Herald.
Gradually, however, the meetings seem to have become "cut and dry affairs"; sometimes debate became more heated, but lethargy prevailed, as became clear when the very important proposal to restrict Child Labour came up for discussion in April 1925, when not even the quorum to make a decision binding was present.
One of the defects of the system was that it was not really a representative one. There were in the 1930s over 3500 rate-payers with the right to attend Public Meetings. If every one of them had wished to make use of this right, the meeting would have been turned into a complete Babel.
Any person speaking at a Public Meeting was only speaking for himself, and it was difficult to be clear as to whether he had
56
J. H. HAAN
the fact that so many foreigners came from countries in which one form or another of representative government was part and parcel of the political structure, in Shanghai it was hard to speak of democracy apart of course from the Chinese having practically no official say in it.
In the very early days there was a real form of direct democracy in the Settlement. There were few people few enough to make this kind of democracy feasible
nearly all were landrenters and there was a widespread feeling of doing something positive when introducing representative government into part of the Chinese empire.
Sometimes there were fierce clashes between the landrenters and the Municipal Council as in 1852 when the Municipal Council even decided to resign because a Public Meeting had rejected their drainage plan, a decision which was only reversed when another Public Meeting repealed the rejection;55 or in 1854 when a large number of renters objected to the expense of police barracks and the increase in taxation, and the newly established Municipal Council was threatened in its very existences; or in 1864 when the whole budget was rejected and a new one had to be drafted.57
Discussions at these meetings were often very spirited affairs, with letters to the editor appearing in the columns of the North China Herald.
Gradually however, the meetings seem to have become "cut and dry affairs"; sometimes debate became more heated, but lethargy prevailed as became clear when the very important proposal to restrict Child Labour came up for discussion in April 1925, when not even the quorum to make a decision binding was present.
One of the defects of the system was that it was not really a representative one. There were in the 1930s over 3500 rate- payers with the right to attend Public Meetings. If every one of them had wished to make use of this right, the meeting would have been turned into a complete Babel.
Any person speaking at a Public Meeting was only speaking for himself and it was difficult to be clear as to whether he had
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