Ms. Lam, at least, did not publicly question the motives of the protesters, who came out in the biggest numbers since at least the 1997 handover. “ I believe most of the protesters yesterday loved Hong Kong and came out for the sake of the next generation ,” she said. In pledging to protect human rights, she at least acknowledged the core concern of the residents of every age and calling who so jam-packed the downtown streets that other people couldn’t get out of subway stations.

Beijing, by contrast, showed its true colors by playing down the protests and spreading the shopworn canard that they were the work of “ foreign forces .”

“We firmly oppose any outside interference in the legislative affairs” of the region, intoned the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, perhaps oblivious to the irony that the only interference was by his government.

Ms. Lam has not backed down on the extradition bill, and neither she nor the city legislature is likely to buck Beijing. Under Hong Kong’s limited democracy, the chief executive is approved by Beijing and only half the seats in the legislature are filled by popular vote, though Ms. Lam insisted on Monday that the extradition bill was not imported from the mainland.

The residents of Hong Kong demonstrated once again that they will not easily surrender the civil liberties they learned to regard as their self-evident due under British rule. Five years ago, protesters of the Umbrella Movement occupied central city streets for 79 days to demand more transparent elections. And in 2003, an effort to enact a package of law s prohibiting sedition, subversion and treason against the Chinese government was shelved after half a million residents poured into the streets in protest.