Sept. 3.
The "Chinia Press," amiably discharging its duty as an apologist for the Government, considers that foreigners are unreasonably objecting, to pay income-tax under the new Jaw:
There who propose to shierd theme selves from making this contribution by extraterritoriality,—may evade legal action. They cannot evade moral censure.
This apparent plea for waiver of extraterritorial rights is more specious than convincing. The British community—to cite one section of extraterritorial foreigners '—has in certain matters. properly, it unnecessarily, disregarded the strict interpretation of the extraterritorial privilege in order to escape what the "China Press" calls moral censure. That abnegation has not met with reciprocal treatment, as anyone knows who has observed the ingenuity with which extraterritorial obligations have been evaded by the exercise of what might be called oblique pressure. British leaders have found one of their greatest difficulties in persuade ing their countrymen to ce-operate in the mitigation of extraterritorial claims has been the irrefutable evidence of the one-sided nature of the process. If the frivolity be permitted, the extraterritorial foreigner, like the weather-worn spinster, has done all the forgiving, and had little of the kissing. Apart, from that, legal rights cannot be so readily abandoned as the "China, Press" appears to think. This particularly applies to the disarming Suggestion that extraterritorial foreigners—overcoming that human reluctance to pay taxation wherever met—chould forget their status and voluntarily pay the _income-tax under the new Law. It is safe to assert that legal practitioners con cerned in the administration of {rusts would promptly expound the weightiest objections to that pro-
Foreigners fully recognize their obligation to make contribution to
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.