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to Your Lordship in his despatch No. 39 of the 28th of February 1877, he also recorded as aware, Your Lordship is doubtless his views as to the extent to which this Government might be properly expected to go, in the direct discouragement of illicit traffic and the punishment of smugglers.
2.
That he should have desired to terminate the question before proceeding to his new Government was natural. It had occupied his attention more, perhaps, than other public questions; he had mastered all its details, and by his unremitting anxiety to protect the commercial interests of the Colony was he had justly gained the entire confidence of the mercantile community. He was therefore well aware that the most valuable boon he could leave to Hong Kong and the greatest service he could confer on his successor would be to record his own accumulated experience and sound judgment as embodied in a formal proposal for the settlement of the blockade question; and this accordingly he did, on the day before he embarked for Queensland.
3.
The proposals he made on behalf of this Government were substantially as follows:- that the three revenue stations which the Chinese authorities had established
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