March 11.
Mr, Adrian Moreing put his fuger on the basic flaw in Shanghai's present machinery for restor confidence and economic stability when he drew the attention of the House of Commons to the grave diMeulties "now experienced by landlords here in dealing with defaulting tenants. On the ability of the Courts to uphold the contract between landlord and tenant must depend the value of property and consequently the liquidity of the mortgage as a means of supplying credit, apart altogether from the defects in the mortgage law to which Mr. J. J. Paterson pointedly referred in addressing the shareholders of the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation last_month. Mr. Paterson then recognized that legal anomalies governing the rights of landlords as against tenants required "straightening out." He emphasized, too, that Chinese no ess than foreign interests were concerned in this matter which therefore urgently demanded remedial action at the hands of the appropriate authorities. It is highly satisfactory to learn from Viscount Cranborne's reply to Mr. Moreing, that the British Ambassador has been asked fo submit a report on this specific aspect of the problem. Nor is it irrelevant to observe that the Chinese Government itself has shown a sense of the disabilities suffered by landlords, otherwise their own municipal ' authorities here would not have been empowered to enforce local regulations
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.