4
bloodshed; and in so doing to seek the advice of British agents accredited to their native States.
The engagement, in fact, consisted of fourteen Articles. Of these, the first five refer to the settlement of questions in dispute between the Chiefs; the 6th and 7th to the reception by the Sultan Muda and the Government of Laroot of British officers accredited to them with the title of Resident; the 8th charges the revenues of Perak with the cost of the establishment of these Residents; the 9th charges the same revenues with the Sultan's civil list; the 10th stipulates that the advice of the Resident shall be taken in the collection of revenues; the 11th and 12th define boundaries; the 13th provides for restoration of property and compensation for damages during recent disturbances; the 14th, and last, stipulates the acknowledgment of a debt due to the Straits Settlements. And this all. It is needless to point out the essential difference between the character of such an engagement and that of the French Commercial Treaty with Annam.
By Article IV of this Treaty it is proposed to levy in Annam differential duties favouring goods imported from Saigon into Aunamite ports and goods exported from Annam to Saigon, as well as upon goods in transit from and to Saigon and the province of Yunnan.
The object of this provision is doubtless to cause the foreign trade of Annam to pass through the hands of the French at Saigon; and as the Commercial Treaty is intended to have the same duration as the Political Treaty, the above-mentioned privilege appears to have been sccured in perpetuity by the restriction imposed on the King of Annam under Article III of the Political Treaty, which prohibits the King from making with other countries any Treaties of Commerce at variance with his Treaty with France.
Another provision, of which the principle appears objectionable to Her Majesty's Government, is the one contained in Article XV.
This requires that the captain of any foreign vessel, upon his arrival at any of the open ports in Annam, instead of reporting his arrival at the Custom-house, as is usual, shall report it to the French Consul at the port, and place his ship's papers in the hands of the said Consul.
The same remarks apply to the terms of Article XVII, whereby foreign merchants having occasion to load or unload goods, must do so through the agency of the French Consuls at their respective ports.
Again it is stipulated by Article XII that all disputes between foreigners and Custom-house officials in Annam as to the interpretation of Customs laws and regulations are to be settled by the French Consul with the assistance of an Annamite Judge.
This Article, viz., XII, appears to Her Majesty's Government peculiarly objection- able in principle and likely to be injurious in practice to the commercial interests of other countries. It affords no security for an impartial treatment of disputes arising in the course of commercial transactions between foreigners, other than French, and the natives or traders of Annam.
The absence of any such security becomes, indeed, conspicuous when it is borne in mind that the Customs laws and regulations of Annam are to be originated and directed chiefly by French officials.
Great Britain has at all times strictly maintained the rights of extra territorial jurisdiction whereby British Consuls at the various treaty ports take cognizance of cases in which their countrymen are concerned, and it does not appear to Her Majesty's Government that either civil suits or criminal trials affecting British subjects can be properly committed to the jurisdiction of a French Consul in a country which has not even the pretension to be French territory.
Similar objection is offered to another provision in Article XV, whereby the French Government assumes, conjointly with that of Annam, the responsibility of pronouncing judgment with reference to the confiscation of European and American vessels declared to have introduced munitions of war in quantities sufficient to constitute a public danger.
The Political Treaty of March 15, with which this Commercial Convention is specially connected, by the last clause of it having been already ratified, is beyond reach of the remonstances to which the present Memorandum is confined. But it is impossible for Her Majesty's Government so completely to dissociate the terms of the latter from the aims of the former as not to recognize, in the stipulation above referred to, the necessary consequence of a scheme having for its object a control over the trade of Annam, so complete as to justify Her Majesty's Government in regarding those stipula- tions from a political as well as a commercial point of view.
In point of fact, it would appear that the practical effect of the Political Treaty when fully completed by that of the Commercial Treaty, may be not only to place the
5
Custom-houses of Annam under the exclusive supervision of France, and their conduct under her special protection by means of French ships of war in open ports, as well as to give to the same European Power exclusive command of access to the Chinese Province of Yunnan by means of the Tongka River, but also to complete the surrender to French agents exclusively of whatever real authority may have been hitherto possessed by the King of Annam in political as well as commercial matters.
Such a result would constitute, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, an unprecedented departure from the salutary understanding which has hitherto governed the common practice of the great European Powers in their commercial and political dealings with countries in the category to which Annam belongs, and Her Majesty's Government have, therefore, full confidence that the remonstrances contained in this Memorandum will not be disregarded by the friendly Government of France, whose National Assembly, in the Report of its Committee on the Political Treaty, to which the Commercial one is attached by its concluding Article, has referred with pride to the part taken by France in concert with England towards procuring for the common advantage of European commerce, the opening of the Treaty ports of China.
Paris, November 15, 1874.
C
[648]
505
Page 510Page 511