Page:Europe in China.djvu/379

Admiralty. But this Board reported (March 7, 1861) their inability to come to any agreement. The matter had to be referred home. Sir Hope Grant claimed—that the idea of appropriating the peninsula had originated with the Military Authorities; that the Colonial Office had approved of the occupation of Kowloon for military purposes; that the lease had been obtained by his own authority; that the peninsula ceded by the Peking Convention should therefore be converted into a purely military cantonment separate and apart from the Government of Hongkong; that at any rate the highest and healthiest ground of the peninsula should immediately be utilized for the erection of barracks. Plans for the latter were forwarded by General Grant without delay (April, 1861) and approved, with some alterations, by the War Office (March 13, 1862). On the other hand, Sir H. Robinson represented to the Colonial Office (February 13, 1861)—that the idea of appropriating Kowloon did not originate with the Military Authorities; that the Hongkong Government, in originally mooting the acquisition of Kowloon, had in view the necessity of providing for the wants of the general population as well as of the military garrison; that the lease was obtained under his own authority; that the Peking Convention expressly declared the peninsula to be ceded as a Dependency of the Colony of Hongkong; that the peninsula is indispensable to the welfare of the Colony, it being required to keep the Chinese population at some distance and to preserve the European and American community from the injury and inconvenience of intermixture with the Chinese residents; that the peninsula is further needed by the Colony to provide storage accommodation, room for docks, for hospitals, for private residences and for air and exercise; that the site specially claimed by the Military Authorities is indispensable for the foregoing purposes and that, without that site, it would be almost worthless to the Colony to have Kowloon at all. Strange to say, these incontrovertible arguments of Sir H. Robinson, which the subsequent history of Kowloon proved to have been based on truth, were brushed aside by the simple fiat of the Imperial