I have nothing before me to show the extent & which may apprehensions have been realized. Experience is enough to justify the assumption that a punitive Executive, charged with the duties of a preventive service, would be guilty of great resistance. From such causes it would necessarily result, that a large proportion of our imports carried heretofore by the Junk Traders, would cease to be carried, and that this province would have to receive whatever its supply might be through the Port of Canton, of course to the restriction of the supply.
A line of steamers between Kinchow & Hongkong would do something towards restoring the trade which the province cannot but have lost since I left it in 1868. In a Memorandum on the Revision of Tariffs & the Early opening of the Port, I had urged the opening of the Port; but the fact that in the Convention of 1869, the right to open it had been surrendered, would have made it of course very difficult.
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