§ MR. STANLEY LEIGHTON (Shropshire, Oswestry)asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether Mr. Mavrogordato, an officer in the Cyprus Police Force, has applied for letters of naturalization, and been refused on account of objections raised by the Colonial Office; whether Mr. Mavrogordato, who is not a subject of the Porto, is the husband of an English wife, and the son of an English mother; whether he has been in the service of the Crown for five years, holds his appointment under a gazetted Commission from Her Majesty's High Commissioner in Cyprus, and has taken the official oath "to serve faithfully Her Majesty the Queen, her heirs, and successors;" whether the gazetted appointments in the police, such as Mr. Mavrogordato holds, are only seven in number; and, whether he will consider the expediency of placing Mr. Mavrogordato, as a servant of the Crown in Cyprus, in a similar position to Her Majesty's alien servants elsewhere in respect to the privilege of letters of naturalization?
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE (Sir HENRY HOLLAND) (Hampstead), in reply, said, it was true that the Secretary of State for the Home Department refused a certificate of naturalization to Mr. Mavrogordato, in accordance with the views expressed by successive Secretaries of State for the Colonies in similar cases. The Act provided that the Secretary of State—
May, with or without assigning any reason, give or withhold a certificate as he thinks most conducive to the public good, and no appeal shall lie from his decision.But there was no reason why he should not state the grounds upon which the objection was based—namely, the peculiar conditions of the administration of Cyprus, which was still part of the Ottoman Dominions. Mr. Mavrogordato, in his Petition for Naturalization, stated that he intended last May to marry an English lady; but they did not know if he had carried out that laudable intention. They did not know his nationality of origin, or that of his mother. Mr. Mavrogordato has been for over five years in the service of the Cyprus Government, and now holds an Inspectorship—or Assistant Inspectorship—of Police, an appointment of which a notification appeared in The Cyprus Gazette. 488 As such an Inspector he took an oath of service, in which the words quoted in the hon. Member's Question occur; but which is limited to service in Cyprus, so long as he holds a commission in the military police. There are about 28 posts in the police (not seven) to which appointments are gazetted.