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It was conceded on the plea of necessity or right.
The nature of the proposed establishment backed by force to compel the payment of duties is contemplated and the hounding machinery warehouses would be made compulsory.
This would be most inconvenient and give rise to perpetual difficulties. The customs could not propose to collect duties on opium consumed in Hongkong or shipped to California.
Under these four premises, opium would perpetually find its way to the mainland and such a system of hauling the native craft in to harbour would have to be adopted as to necessitate their giving up anything like the control of the business.
Foreign vessels would likewise soon have to come under the customs supervision. If officers had not the power of boarding, examining, and inspecting their manifests and giving such orders as they thought proper, there would be no means of checking the trans-shipment of opium at Macao, in the harbour, or in fact the trans-shipment of it to another foreign vessel in the harbour itself.
And in the case of the late wreck, trans-shipment discharge into native craft.
It was said some foreign government claimed some special rights of escheat.
In a case, in the time of which they personally...