dealing respectively with Public Roads, Railways, and Buildings, which were approved by the Ratepayers and by the Consular Body Inst year, have not yet become operative, owing to the decision of the diplomatic Body that they cannot be enforced until the opinion of the Tsungli Yamen in regard thereto shall have been expressed. The Doyen ut Peking addressed the Yamen on the subject in November last without apparent result, but the Council has again urged that the Diplomatic Body may sanction the enforcement of the new Regulations pending receipt of the Tsungli Yamén's reply. Without some such solution of the difficulty these Regulations are likely to meet with the same unhappy fate as the lost Code of 1883, and
public roads must become urgently neces-those which apply to buildings and sary, so soon as the Council is called upon to take control over a greatly extended area, it is to be hoped that no pains will be spared to have the matter definitely settled. Coming now to the subject of public roads, I must refer briefly to the position in which the Municipality actually stands in regard thereto. You are aware, gentlemen, that Land Regulation VI gives—or rather, I should say, that it was believed for the last thirty years to give—certain powers to the ouneil in the matter of claiming under certain conditions the free surrender of land required for public roads. You are also probably aware that the Council of 1894, realising the growing need for thoroughfares in the outlying districts, took steps to provide for the enforcement of the provision of the Regulation in regard to all land that should be purchased from native owners after that date. It fell to the present Council in carrying out the intentions of our predecessors to apply the first test case in the acquirement of land required for one of the proposed roads in Hongkew, and you will remember that, as the result of the judgment given by Sir N. Hannen in the case of the Council v. McMurray, the Council is debarred from exercising those powers which had been thought to exist in
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.