Sessional_Paper_1886-1887 — Page 162

159

No. 35

1886.

HONGKONG.

CORRESPONDENCE RESPECTING THE GERMAN MAIL STEAMERS.

Presented to the Legislative Council by Command of His Excellency the Officer Administering the Government,

on the 27th August, 1886.

The Secretary of State for the Colonies to the Officer Administering the

Government of Hongkong.

HONGKONG.

No. 82.

SIR,

Memo: 24th Februar

DOWNING STREET,

24th June, 1886.

I have the honour to transmit to you the accompanying copies of a Memo- randum delivered by Count BISMARCK to Her Majesty's Ambassador at Berlin, and

this Court, relative to a request made by the German Government that certain mail vessels subsidized by that Government, should be placed on the same footing as the French Messageries Maritimes Steamers, under the Postal Convention with France of September 24th, 1856.

Lord ROSEBERY, 26 Ap., 1886 of a letter in reply to it from the Earl of Rosebery to the German Ambassador at

It is the wish of Her Majesty's Government that the privileges mentioned in article 5 of the Postal Convention with France, should be extended to these German vessels so long as the French Convention shall remain in force, and I therefore request that you will take the necessary steps for procuring the enact- ment of an Ordinance similar to No. 10 of 1884, for this purpose.

The Officer Administering the Government of

HONGKONG.

(Copy.)

I have, &c.,

(Signed),

R. H. MEADE, For the Secretary of State.

MEMORANDUM.

From July next the North German Lloyd at Bremen intends to establish a line of steamers to run between Germany, China and Australia.

The steamers will carry the official mail, for which they will receive a certain subsidy from the Imperial German Government. Besides the steamers are bound to transport, free of cost, criminals from abroad to Germany.

As, according to British Law such criminals, when the steamer touches at a British Colonial port, might demand a hearing before a British Judge, thus delay- ing the course of law and preventing the prompt delivery of the mail, the Imperial Government lays great stress on these mail steamers being looked upon as in some sense men-of-war.

This demand does not appear to be an unusual one, for in modern Treaties of Commerce and Navigation such privileges have more than once been accorded to subsidized mail-steamers.