§ MR. TOULMIN (Bury, Lancashire)To ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if his attention has been c lied to the fact that Major General Ventris has charged the editor of the China Times (Pekin) with inciting to a 280 breach of the peace in an article comdemning Russian ill-usage of defenceless Japanese, and that, in default of his giving security for good behaviour, his deportation is pending; will he state whether there is any British authority in China with power to deport a British subject under such circumstances; and, if not, under what authority the Court is acting before which the editor has been brought.
(Answered by Earl Percy.) The attention of His Majesty's Minister at Pekin having been called by the General-Officer-Commanding, China, to certain virulent and defamatory articles against Russia, published at Tientsin by the China Times, Sir E. Satow directed that an information should be laid against the editor in His Majesty's Consular Court at Tientsin under Article 106 of the China and Japan Order in Council, 1865. Under this Article, should it be shown on oath, to the satisfaction of any of His Majesty's Courts in China, that there is reasonable ground to apprehend that the acts or conduct of any British subject in China are or is likely to produce or excite to a breach of the public peace, the Court within the jurisdiction whereof he happens to be may cause him to be brought before it and require him to give security to the satisfaction of the Court to keep the peace or for his future good behaviour as the case may require; and if the person required to give security should fail to do so, the Court may order that he be deported from China to such place as the Court directs. His Majesty's Government have approved Sir E. Satow's action in the matter.