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advantages, as well as to the policy of the Imperial Government, and to the fact that, being strongly guarded, it has attracted a large Chinese population who have found that under British rule their lives and their property have been safe.

I should be inclined to judge not merely that it has prospered as a Crown Colony but that it has prospered in great measure because it has been a Crown Colony.

9. It may, however, be contended that while the Crown Colony system was suited to the infancy of the Colony, it is now time that a larger measure of self- government should be conceded.

I therefore propose very shortly to examine the separate points as to which the petitioners suggest that some concession should be made.

10. They ask in the first place for "the free election of representatives of "British nationality in the Legislative Council of the Colony."

The words are somewhat ambiguous. They may mean that the voters should be of any nationality European, American, Asiatic or Chinese, provided that the representatives for whom they vote are of British nationality. The term British nationality again may be taken to mean either British subjects of all nationalities or simply persons who have been born or are the children of those who have been born in the United Kingdom. I assume, however, that what the words are intended to convey is that the English, Scotch and Irish in Hongkong should elect representa- tives of themselves to the Legislative Council. If this is the meaning then it is obvious from the figures which have been given above that considerably more than nine-tenths of the population will be entirely excluded from the franchise, that Europeans who are not of the category described, and Americans will be excluded as well as Chinese, and that among those British residents who alone will be, it is presumed, entitled to vote, the civil element, some proportion of which moreover consists of Government officials, will be swamped by the military and naval element.

It may be said that the naval and military forces should be debarred from voting on the ground that they are not resident in the Colony, but the same objection would apply also, though possibly in a lesser degree, to the civil population. Indeed, over and above any other arguments which can be urged against representative government in Hongkong, it appears to me that the transient character of the population is by itself a serious obstacle.

11. The second claim is the complement or rather the extension of the first. The petitioners ask not only that there shall be elected representatives in the Council, but that there shall be a majority of such representatives, in other words that, at any rate as regards legislation, the power shall be vested in a very small section of the population, and that more than nine-tenths of it shall be controlled by representatives of the small remainder.

12. The third demand is that the Official Members shall be allowed to speak and vote as they please. It is a demand which is familiar in the case of Crown colonies, but only one answer can be given to it, viz., that the paid servants of the Government cannot be left free to oppose the Government. I should be surprised to learn that the Officials themselves wished to be given this freedom.

It is in fact not peculiar to the Crown Colony system; it is of the essence of all administration that the paid supporters or components of a government should either vote for and when necessary speak for the settled policy of the government or else resign their places.

13. The fourth and fifth claims are to the effect that the Council, or rather the elected majority in the Council, should have complete control over local expenditure and the management of local affairs.