Regulations appear to concern only the revenue leviable upon Opium"; but I have before represented, it is hardly to be expected that the native Executive levying duties, regular & irregular, upon opium, will leave the rest of the cargo untaxed.
I have received no report on the subject but I see from the papers that at one point on the coast a special tariff has been prepared for piece goods & other foreign imports. We cannot complain. These goods not having entered a Treaty Port & being carried from a foreign country, though otherwise than through a Treaty Port into China, cannot claim the benefit of Treaty Tariff.
We should have endeavoured to make it not worth the while of those to contrive an expensive apparatus for the protection of its revenue in a form hurtful to our own interests.
It is this consideration which should have induced the Colony to invite the establishment of a branch Preventive Inspectorate in the Port of Victoria. There has been nothing in this to alarm the Junk Trade.
The chances are, I repeat, that this trade will now be frightened away from Hong Kong to the detriment of the Colony. The producer at home will suffer, not to the same extent; because a portion at least of the requirements of the coast districts will be satisfied by the Treaty Ports of Canton, were it open, Hainan west of the Province, and Swatow.
They will feed all the coast. An American merchant being ready to run steamers between...
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