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of revenue which found their way into the Imperial and provincial exchequers were small; no written rules and regulations existed-they were stored in the shupans' (native clerks) heads; and the payment of duties was therefore a matter of private bargains. Finally natives who ought to know assert that no less than 10,000 persons were dependent, at least for a fraction of their livelihood, on their connection with the Tientsin Custom House, and that there were several hundred persons who had inherited rights in the proceeds of the Native Customs-rights acquired years ago at a beavy expenditure by their forefathers. That the above figures are not a façon de parler after-experience of the actual yield of this department would seem to show."
He quotes a statement by Mr. GEORGE JAMIESON taken from the Peking Gazette in illustration of this. In 1892 the Customs Taotai reported the takings of the Native Customs at 93,923 taels, of which he remitted 68,000 taels to the Imperial exchequer; little wonder that Mr. HANSSON should exclaim; what a blessing in disguise the Boxer rising has turned out for the Imperial Exchequer! So far as there are any regulations, the latest tariff generally seems to have been compiled towards the close of the eighteenth century, but affairs have naturally so much altered in the course of trade within the century and a quarter, that the chief clerk at each station made his own
tariff, wherein his own pocket was the chief consideration. These reports, short as they are, throw considerable light on the past history of China. Thus the following ex- tract from that on Shanghai made by Mr. H. E. HOBSON shows us a state of affairs not long past, but yet of interest : hsiao-yang-yao-ch'uan owe their origin to the troublous times of the Taiping Re- bellion. In those days 33 Cantonese opium hongs subscribed the sum of taels 100,000, and paid it to the then Shanghai superin. tendent, TING JIBCH'ANG, for the privilege of arming and equipping boats to carry their opium to the Kiangpeh district, for sale. There are still twelve of these bats afloat each of which is in possession of a special pass sued by the Taotai. They trade only to the Kiangpeh; they carry miscel- laneous cargo, and are still allowed to be armed, though their origins' ..cion of trading in opium disappeared long ago."
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
BED AND BUSINESS.
(Daily Press, October 24th.) A gentleman named WILLIAM WILLETT bas discovered that on An average two hundred and ten hours of daylight every year are "wasted" by every person in England. It does not appear from his pamphlet that he is one of those annoying people who
consider every moment of inaction a sin. It is daylight, and not time, that he desires to see fully utilized. It must have occurred to everyone at some time or other that if people rose and retired with the sun, a great deal of the unnecessary expense of living would be saved. Mr. WILLETT sees further that people would have more time for healthy outdoor recreation. As quoted by a contemporary, he would cut off some of the moruing hours and add them on to the afternoon. This, he proceeds to show, could be effected by no greater task than that of putting the clocks of the nation on a few minutes, and back a few minutes, at stated intervals according to the rise and fall of the would be most naturally April and September. The months selected for this change year. Between October 1 and March 31 ordinary Greenwich time would be observed. But in April the clocks would begin to be put forward, let us say, twenty minutes at a time for four successive Sundays at 2 a.m.. in order to choose an hour that would be most generally con- be a clear advance of an hour and twenty venient. At the end of the month there would
minutes in standard time which would automati-
cally be added on to after-office hours, and thus business, apparently ending at 6 p.m., would really be done with by 4.40-an obvious gain for the purposes of air and exercise. Similarly in September the clock would be put back twenty minutes on four Sunday mornings, in order to bring the movements of the community back to standard time. The change in either direction could thus be made so gradually as to be hardly noticeable, at the sole cost of submitting to four days of twenty-three hours forty minutes, and four of twenty-four hours twenty minutes in the whole year. As Mr. Willett remarks: "Those remember how easily they accommodated them- who have travelled by sea east or west will selves to the frequent alterations of time on board ship;"-which alterations, it may be observed, are far more violent than those that he suggests.
At first it looked like a bit of Silly Season twaddle, but London seems to have been taking it seriously, and the North China Herald as gravely recommends the idea to Shanghai. In the hot summer months at Hongkong, we have sometimes thought it might be an advantage to turn night into day, working or playing through the comparatively cooler night hours and sleeping during the day, but it was merely a random thought, and ignored as it deserved. We cannot see that there is any advantage in playing with our clocks as suggested.
Again at Amoy, Mr. BowRA gives an account of the ancient trade. Speaking of the Zayton of MARCO POLO, he remarks: "A veil falls between China and Europe on the expulsion of the Mongols, and when it rises in the sixteenth century Zayton has disappeared-disappeared SO completely that a controversy has raged over the indentification of the site. Into the details
Those who want to use of this it is needless to enter, for the weight more daylight for recreation may rise earlies of evidence to the mind of the writer at in the morning; there is nothing to hinder least sustains the plea advocated stoutly them. In the East, many people do so, by the late Mr. GEORGE PHILLIPS for many riding or swimming before breakfast. The years that the molern district city of simpler way, though it would tend to Haiteng, situated at the entrance of the dislocate business, would be to let the clocks Changchow River, and formerly called tick on with their usual regularity, and Gehkong, the port to the city of Changchow adjust office hours to the seasons. Make till superseded by Amoy, occupies the site the working day in winter an hour or two of the port of the celebrated medieval shorter, and in summer an hour or two town." Of the present arrangements he longer. But as mails come and go in winter adds that in 1738 all-Customs affairs were much as they do in summer, and work made the care of the Tartar General: and must be done, we do not press the suggestion this arrangement, he says, still holds. These
as an urgent reform. There is one mitter are some of the curious arrangements of raised in the discussion, however, that seems times long passed away that still remain to worth passing notice, and that is the folly connect the China of the present with that of those who are foolishly anxious to “ map of MARCO POLO: they are doubly interest-out their time," and in so doing think it ing at the present, now that change in place of primitive stagnation is becoming the order of the day in China, as well as else. where.
heroic to curtail the hours of sleep. It is practically certain that the author of the "early to bed and early to rise" saw was a taskmaster concerned more
[October 28, 1907
man,
with the accomplishing of his tasks than with the future health, wealth and wisdom of his auditors. The man who perpetrated that other aaw about six hours sleep being sufficient for a seven for a woman, eight for a child, and nine for a fool, was something still worse, and we trust has had his reward. Accord- ing to SHAKESPEARE, it is "
sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,' and it is gratifying to find that modern common. sense is overcoming the old humbug. We read now that it is impossible to sleep too much. A recent authority writes:
19
How the superstition ever grew up that there is such a thing as weakening yourself by over. sle ping I cannot imagine. Whatever may have been the source of the delusion, it is atterly without basis in physiology. No one ever got too mash healthy, natural sleep, or injured himself physically by staying in bed until he felt rasted. Most men and all women would be better for a nap of from twenty minutes o an hour after the midday meal. Sleeplessness is even more emphatically a sign of disease in children than in adults. To make up before they have had their sleep oat, and children or rapidly growing young adults get feel thoroughly rested, is not merely irrational but cruel, and when it is done as a routine at boarding schools, or other institutions, by those who pretend to be fitted to have the care of children, it is little short of criminal.
The writer knocks the old "beauty There is no foundation for it, and still less sleep" fallacy determinedly on the head, for the notion about one hour before mid- night being worth two afterwards. This latter idea has grown up "with the early. rising fetich."
There is nothing to prove that the last two hours' sleep do not give fully as much rest as the first two. Nor is there any necessary physiological connection between sleep aul darkness. The reason why working by night and sleeping by day is often injurious is because of the lack of sunlight, The writer would have had much sympathy with the schoolboy who made his famous subject of the early bird catching the worm. retort to the paternal admonition on the
There is no advantage, he asserts, in early rising in itself. It is a survival from more primitive times when our agricultural ancestors had to work in daylight only, and when candles were dear. Civilisation and late hours always go hand in hand. He says further:
Nor is there any adequate support for the impression that the early morning hours are in periods of the day. Except in summer time they any way toore wholesome or healthy then later
re apt to b damp, foggy, chilly, and among the last desirable hours of daylight. It is quite true that during the summer there is a sunse of exhilaration about bing abroad in these early morning hours, but this evaporates with the dew, and is apt to be succeeded by a corresponding depression and loss of working power later in the day.
EVIDENCE,
(Daily Press, October 25th.) It is curious how a sentiment or idea passing from mouth to month, repeated parrot-wise and still passed on, can become crystalised into something like a popular conviction. The number of men in Hong- kong who have lately expressed it as their private and particular and deliberately (volved opinion that no man should ever be convicted on the capital charge on the strength of "circumstantial evidence is incalculable, but we have reason to estimate it at something large. The first man who at the on dit rolling among the TOMLINSONS was doubtless thinking of historical incidents read and remembered, in which capital punishment had, as it afterwards turned out, wrongly and unjustly followed inferences and deductions from circumstances prim
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