- tax stations, and the grave complaints which had reached the Governor of Trong Thong as to the unwarranted interference of Lettin boats and Cruisers or boats affecting to be such with the legitimate trade of the Colony carried on with the Native merchants.
173 I added I was aware from Mr. Robertson's reports that the Vice Roy's attention had already been called to the subject, and indeed that measures had been taken to put a stop to such abuses, but the occurrences had caused a feeling of distrust and intense irritation among the Colonists and Mercantile residents, and it was deemed desirable by Her Majesty's Government that some steps should be taken with a view to the adoption of more satisfactory arrangements than those now existing between the Chinese and British Colonial Authorities.
I had been instructed to ascertain whether it would not be possible to establish such practical Regulations in Hong Kong and China, or to make such Treaty Regulations so as to place the intercourse between Hong Kong and the neighboring Coasts on a more definite and regular footing, without unreasonably obstructing the ordinary and daily traffic between Hong Kong and the Mainland, and so as to remove occasion of controversy.