C
270
Wongking and Torshaw on account of commercial importance of
the great
advices and documents reaching this Colony from Foochow in time for the
Haneward Mail which under the
present system has
very
rarely been
Mr Mitchell, the Postmaster
General, having recently returned from
his annual inspection of the poststations,
9
enabled to extract from the proof of his unpublished report now before me (Par. 18 to 38) ample informa-tion to assist Your Lordship in forming opinion of the great importance
to the commercial world of the postal communication in question, not because
Enclosure 2.
much
correspondence and many
transactions which now find their
way to Shanghai would in that case come to Hongkong,
but because it is
the interest of the mercantile world having regard to the
enormously
heavy transactions in connection with Foochow amounting sometimes to 24½ millions of dollars by the mail,
get
that they should be able to get their latest advices and documents at the Port of final departure of the Mail from China.
Mr Mitchell appears to think that a contribution by the Imperial Post Office of £3000 per annum (Par.31), added to a bounty to be given