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258
THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
(Daily Press, Is: Octobe:.) We may congratulate the Hon. ROBERT SHEWAN on the ability which marked his criticism of the Colonial Estimats at the meeting of the Legislative Council on Thursday, but at the same time express our regret that he should have treated nearly every point with a flippaucy which might be suited to a debating club, but scarcely accords with the dignity of a Legislative Assembly. Mr. SHEWAN has it in his power to be of great service to the Colony in the position in which he has been placed by the Chamber of Commerce, but it scarcely needs to be said that if Mr. SHEWAN W shes to make that influence felt he must abandon his flippancy and treat public questions in a more serious and dignified manner. With most of his criticisms of the Budget we are more or less in agreement. Everybody, for instance, must recognise the amazing want of prescience which has been shown by the administration in the past with regard to the development of Hongkong, and it is well to constantly urge upon our legislators the necessity of looking into the future and making more allowance than has been done hitherto for the growth of this great port, which we may safely say has not yet by a long distance reiched the limits of its pos-
■bilities.
With regard to the public works now in progress, it is impossible to make any weighty or fair criticism of the New Law Courts, and, as His Excellency the GOVERNOR rightly remarked, it would be better to defer criticism until the building is completed, or at least in a more advanced stage than it is at present. We do hope, however, that Mr. SHEWAN's remarks about pushing on with the work will be taken to heart, and we have faith that they will be, for His Excellency the GOVERNOR appears to be fully cognisant of the need of the building. The comments made concerning the deforestation com- menced by the head of the Botanical Department a new departure which has hardly been satisfactorily disavowed by the Government-were very much to the point, though, we say again, we think Mr. SHEWAN's remarks would have been better appreciated had they been less flippant. We must trust, however, to the Government's assurance that only a thinning "of the forests will be effected and not their destruction The idea of attempting to create a revenue from this source cannot be too strongly denounced, and we regard it as most unfortunate that the CULONIAL SECRETARY should ever for on moment have beeu iuduced to entertain such an idea. Coming to the references to expenditure on precautions against plague, figuring in the Budget at nearly half a million dollars, we could wish that the COLONIAL SECRETARY had a better defence to offer.
"
FTL
"It seems a subject for reflection," said Mr. SHEWAN, "that in spite of our expenditure and precautions and our "boasted Western medical science, the plague should run its course here just "exactly as it does, neither sooner nor later, in Canton, where nothing is done to cor- tend with it." Neither Mr. SHEWAN nor any other public man would be prepared to advocate a cessation of our precautions in the belief that we should suffer no more than if we continued with them; but we cannot say in, the light of past experience that the reply of the COLONIAL SECRETARY conveys an assurance that we are getting value for our expenditure under this heading. We may be; no man can convincingly demonstrate that we are not,
[October 8, 1904.
BRITISH SHIPPING AND CONTRABAND.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
but all Mr. MAY could tell us was that his BLAKE's last letter in particular being a infor.nation and the information of the m.st unfortunate indiscretion which ought Sanitary Board was to the effect that never to have been penned by a high during the current year Hongkong has been Government official, no matter what the conspicuous by its freedom from plague with | provocation may have been. plague all round it. We may remind the COLONIAL SECRETARY that there have been years when Hongkong has enjoyed even greater freedom from plague than it has this year, but he would be a blù man who
(Daily Press, 3rd October.) would say the immunity we enjoyed in We reproduced a week ago the verbatim 1895 and 1897, an gain in 1902, was report of a speech delivered by Mr. Balfour directly attributable to the sanitary mea- to a deputation representa ive of British sures we adopted. Whether plague has been shipowners who sought information as to more or less prevalent in Canton this year the intentions of the Government with than in other years we do not know, It regard to the protection of British shipping forms no subject of report either to the during the continuance of the war between local or the imperial authorities or to Russia and Japan. The speech, we fear, foreign governments, and the only statistical can have afforded small consolation to data that we have about the extent of the British shipowners and the mercantile com- ravages of plague in Canton are the munity generally, except in so far that it estimates of an American Missionary who effectually dissipated the idea that British after gathering information as to the num- ships are subjected to one law by the ber of coffins which passed through the Russinus and the shipping of other nation- city gates in 1896 and 1898 calculated that alities to a more lenient law. Adequate the mortality from plague in each of those proof is certainly wanting for the mainteu- years was somewhere in the neighbourhood ance of this idea up to the present. While of 40,000. If similar statistics are still ready to accept the brave words of the collected it would be possible to form some Prime Minister that the e pressed deter- idea of the relative prevalence of plague in mination of the Government to uphold the Hongkong and Canton in any given year.rights of neutral shipping was no empty What we should like to know is not phrase, the British public have not "seen whether plague has raged very severely in sufficient evidence of the intention to dis- Canton, this year, but whether it has raged abuse their minds of the idea that the to a greater or less extent than last year. dilatory, alm st apathetic way in which the The inadequacy of the COLONIAL SECRE- Government has dealt with cases of appa- TABY's reply will be obvious on a study of rently indefensible assault and robbery ou the following returns of plague mortality the part of tassia constitutes an exhibition in Hongkong since 1894 :-
of feebleness whico is as lamentable as it is unparalleled. Some months ago the. British Government declined to regar i coal, foodstuffs and cotton as absolutely coutra- bind of war, and tele raphically we bave learnt within the past week that His Majesty's Government has re-asserted (in words ouly) that attitude, at least so far as coal is concerned. Consider this declaration in its relation to the circumstances connected with the confiscation of the British steamer Prior to the outbreak of the war Allanton.
Deaths. 2,485
Year.
189..
1895..
36
1896..
1,204
1897
19
1898
1899
1,325 1,487
Year.
Deaths. 1900........ 1086 1901......... 1,837 19 2......... 540 1903..
1,400 1904.
500
A study of these returns loes not tend to inspire us with confidence in the efficacy of the measures we a lopt at great cost to the Colony to prevent a recurrence of these epidemics, but we find some consolation in the thought that but for the stringent sanitary measures we bave adopted the infection would have strengthened its boli on the Colony and the yearly mortality be much greater than is actually the case. We cannot for a moment think of tollowing the example of Canton in doing nothing to contend against the scourge, ut so for the present the ouly criticism of the item of plague expenditure that might with any profit be made is with regard to details, as, for instance, whether it is worth while paying medical men to do what is practically the work of senior sanitary inspectors.
It
There are just one or two other points in the speech of Mr. SHEWAN which call for brief comment. Apropos the hon. mem- ber's references to Pedder's Wharf and Blake Pier, it se ms to us that they would have been more opportune at the time the change in nomenclature was made. is too late, two or three years after the event, to begin to criticise, and in any case we cannot consider Mr. SHEWAN's remarks on the subject in good taste. The change of name might even be defended on the ground that the wharf was B wholl different one and placed in a different posi- tion at the end of a reclamation that did not exist when Pedler's Wharf was destroyed. We would fain add the hope that we have now heard the last of the differences between Mr. SHEWAN and Sir HENRY BLAKE. We think the correspou- dence that appeared in London papers from both was much to be regretted, for it reflected no credit on either, Sir HENRY
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she was chartered to carry a cargo of coal from Cardiff to Hongkong or Sasebo. The. cargo was discharged at the latter port after the outbreak of the war, and she was after- wards chartered to convey a cargo of coal from Muroran to Singapore, this being part of a cargo of 50,000 tons which a British firm at Singapore had agreed to buy for delivery during the present year. While on her voyage to Singapore the Allanton was overhauled by Russian warships, and owing to the alleged irregularity of her papers she was seized and taken to Vladivo stock, where she was condem ed a fo night later on the untenable supposition that she was carrying contraband of war to a Tue Court Japanese or Corean port. reached this conclusion on evidence being tendered that the steamer set her course by the west of the Japanese Islands, "that is through the theatre of war," instead of going by the route east of Japan. It is to be assumed that the defen- dants pleaded (and had the Court afforded the facilities it could have been conclusively proved) that this western route is the one which is always followed by merchant vessels coming south from Japau, because it is 200 miles shorter, aud also because an adverse current and numerous small islands A second reason for are avoided thereby. the Court's finding consists in the statement that the steamer had a Japanese cabin buy on board! Thirdly, the decision was based on the fact that the official log-book had not been entered up since the steamer left Hongkong, her last neutral port. To this
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