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Chinese produce into Hong Kong, have duly cleared from the Chinese port of export; and a right equally good to see that imports, leaving Hong Kong, pay what is due to the Chinese Government as import duty.
The form of proceeding resorted to at these Custom-houses undoubtedly distresses the junk-trade, and through it reflects an injury on Colonial interests that gives the Colony some ground of complaint. It is to the change in form of proceeding, there- fore, that I have addressed myself; but, as the Chinese right to adhere to the present form is complete, it appears to me that our only escape from its irksomeness is through the discovery of a means to which the Chinese cannot object, of otherwise securing them their lawful revenue.
The action of their executive is irksome in more ways than one. It is complained that their cruizers have, in some cases, pursued Chinese junks into our waters, and have even effected captures within them. This, I hold, must be withstood without compromise. The jurisdiction of the Colony must not be invaded. It is complained that their cruizers lie in the port of the Colony to watch the junk trade. I do not see that this is a sufficient ground for the exclusion of the cruizers in question. It is argued that these cruizers are cruizers, not of the Chinese Government, but of the Provincial Government, or even of the Superintendent of Customs; and that their establishment of officers, &c., is not duly commissioned. The form of written authority under which these cruizers act may not be that with which we provide officers and vessels similarly employed; but I consider them to be employed bona fide for the execution of a duty which the Chinese Government has as good a right to require of them as, on shore, to require a like duty of the foreign establishment that assists it in the collection of its revenue on foreign trade. In any case, an intimation to the Chinese Government that, in order to secure these cruizers the consideration, formal or substantial, that is conceded to similar vessels elsewhere, it will be necessary that their status be regularised, would, I cannot doubt, immediately insure the introduction of such changes as would leave us no ground for objection under this head.
The real matter of complaint is that the junk trade is "worried" by both cruizers and Custom-houses. The lafter being exclusively Chinese, the dues or duties demanded of the junks are certain to be in excess of what is just; at least, of my measure of what is just.
By the Treaties between England and China, I think China entitled to argue that if British imports are to have the benefit of the Tariff they must be brought to one of the ports open by Treaty, and if carried thence to other parts of China, must pay the half duty composition for transit dues, or, if unaccompanied by the certificate attesting payment of this half duty, must face whatever charges may be demanded upon them.
I have been asked how, if a Chinese, having purchased manufactures in England, were to carry them direct to some point of the coast to which British shipping have not by Treaty right of access? I say that in such a case the Chinese Government would be free, in my opinion, as the Treaty now stands, to make what law it pleased. It might suit it to enable its own subjects (by Treaty it could not enable the subjects of any other Power) to pay less duties than a British subject has to pay at the open ports or more duties. The latter would at present be the more probable course, because it would prefer, I suspect, to keep the foreign import trade, on the sea-board, under the foreign Inspectorate. But it could not be held culpable or unfair if it placed our imports, brought as above by a Chinese from England, on the same footing as if they had come in a British bottom to a Treaty port. And if this were not unfair when they came from England, neither could it be so regarded, I think, if they came from a British Colony: Hong Kong, Singapore, or any other.
The arrangement I desire is this, that the Chinese Government should consent to extinguish the three Custom-houses that now keep watch round Hong Kong, and to substitute for these a branch of the Canton Inspectorate, to be located at some spot conveniently near the Colony; to agree that at this branch office there should be levied the Tariff duty on imports proceeding in Chinese bottoms to a Treaty port, and the Tariff duty and half Tariff duty on imports proceeding to any point, on the coast, or up rivers, not open by Treaty.
On opium, which article cannot by Treaty be franked and certificated like other imports, the same office should be authorized, when levying the import duty, to levy the li-kin that would be levied were it sold at Canton. Every junk arriving at Hong Kong or leaving the harbour should be obliged to call at the office of this branch Inspectorate to receive a clearance, and the Colony should engage so to assist in giving
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effect to this part of the arrangement, that disputes about limits of jurisdiction might be avoided,
If it be urged that when the duties have been collected by the branch Inspectorate the imports are not secured against an ad libitum levy of fees, &c., in addition, when they reach their destination, I reply that I cannot indeed guarantee that the Chinese will not do whatever seems good to them where the foreigner has no agent to watch them. But we must remember that before the junk-trade of Hong Kong was subjected to the surveillance now so obnoxious to the Colony, we did not hear of excessive levies of duty along the coast, and the contingency that excessive duties will be levied is certainly not increased by a measure that will largely add to the receipts of the Provincial Treasury.
After what passed between the Grand Secretary Li and myself at Chefoo in the presence of Mr. Hart, the Inspector-General, I do not anticipate objections to the substitution of the branch of the Inspectorate in the vicinity of Hong Kong on the part of the Central Government.
I shall add that if the Inspectorate found it necessary to keep an establishment at the three points now watched by the native establishments, there is, in my belief, nothing to object to in this. The point to attain is the removal of the establish- ment that would not be Chinese if it did not act oppressively in the collection of
THOMAS FRANCIS WADE.
revenue.
Sir,
February 28, 1877.
(Signed)
No. 2.
Mr. Herbert to Lord Tenterden.-(Received April 26.)
Downing Street, April 25, 1877. I HAVE laid before the Earl of Carnarvon your letter of the 12th March, inclosing a copy of a despatch from Sir Thomas Wade, written in England, and forwarding a Memorandum respecting the so-called blockade of Hong Kong.
2. I am directed by his Lordship to request you to state to the Earl of Derby that his Lordship has read the Memorandum with much attention, and I am to express his Lordship's thanks to Sir Thomas Wade for drawing his attention to the Memorandum of 1868-69.
3. With reference to the copy of a despatch from Her Majesty's Chargé d'Affaires at Peking, inclosed in your letter of the 6th April, I am desired to observe that Lord Carnarvon agrees to the suggestion contained in it that a member of the Foreign Customs Establishment might be associated with the Chinese officer if he wished it.
4. I am also to state that Lord Carnarvon concurs in the contention that the Government of China has an undoubted right to see that Chinese junks carrying Chinese produce into Hong Kong have duly cleared from the Chinese port of export, due to and a right equally good to see that imports leaving Hong Kong pay what the Chinese Government as import duty; and this position it seems to Lord Carnarvon that the officials and residents in Hong Kong are ready to admit. The grievance put forward by the Colonists may, as his Lordship understands it, be briefly stated to be that the Customs cruizers and the officials at the three Customs stations extort special and illegal rates from the Chinese junks trading with Hong Kong; that in respect to foreign goods imported into China, the duties levied exceed the duties levied on the same goods imported through Macao, a proceeding which would naturally affect the Hong Kong trade to a serious extent; and that in respect to native goods exported to Hong Kong, the duties exacted are arbitrary, uncertain, and excessive-arbitrary, because new duties are sometimes imposed at the will of the Hoppo, as in the case of the Formosa traders, who, until 1874, paid no duties to the Hoppo of Canton, and are now forced to do so; uncertain, because the amounts are not ascertained, as is shown by the disputes reported in the correspondence as having recently occurred between the Chinese authorities and the native merchants, and by the refusal to produce the native Tariff; and excessive, because goods exported to other foreign ports, as Manila and Saigon, are said to be less heavily taxed than the same goods if carried to Hong Kong.
5. Upon this latter point Lord Carnarvon has not forgotten that Sir Brooke Robertson, in his despatch of the 27th July, 1876, reported that Hong Kong is not an exception, and that a Tariff of a similar, if not the same, kind is applicable to junks
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