I therefore hold that there is x2 power in the Regulations to refute this transfer, nor in the Crown vase, as the proposed transferee does not come within the restrictive covenant. But it is then said that the Secretary of State may! withdraw protection from the Bank and that that is enough i itself to make the Bank ineligible as a Crown lessee. I do not know where this theory came from. It is true that the Secretary of State has drawn protection from this Bank and thus emphasized its British nationality ina letter dated some two months after this action. was commenced: a step_not, as far as Tam aware, communicated to la or any one else. I do not attempt a definition of what "protection" means, and I have not been referred to any case oF textbook upon it; but I know it is different from "recognition" (see Orders in Council 1904, Article 162 (10), 1921, Article 2 (9), and 1913, Articl 51), "and it has nothing to do with The withdrawal of protection does not subject the individual concerned to the jurisdiction of the Chinese Courts: he can still sue and be sued in H.BM. Courts in China. I suppose it means at least the giving of help to for. ward interests and to resist impositions: but it is an enormous step further to say the withdrawal of "protection" from a man withdraws from him legal rights Unat he has already acquired and even subjects an innocent third party (og. Vasania in this case) to pains and penalties (see paragraph 11 the defence). It is a claim that somewhere in "protection" is hidden the right of the executive to object to a proposed transfer or mortgage of a Crown Lease: and that, without any notification t> the public of the right, nor any' notification of the actual exercise of it, It may be, as is contended, that such a right ought to exist: Tam not concerned with that one way or the other; but it is not law, with which alone I am concerned,' that, because it ought to exist, therefore it does exist,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.