128
The question of the militia ought to be left entirely in the hands of the provincial authorities, who have the best means of judging of the special local requirements of the places under their jurisdiction.
No. 4.
Proposed Transit Rule Outwards.
I.
1. British merchants purchasing native produce in the interior for foreign export have the option of carrying such produce from the place of purchase to the port of shipment in one of two ways, viz., either with the privileges of the transit provisions of the Treaty, or in accordance with local rules affecting Chinese traffic.
2. If brought from the interior to a port, according to local rules affecting Chinese traffic, such produce must re-port, await examination, and pay dues and duties at every revenue station en
route.
3. If to be brought from the interior with the Treaty transit privileges, the iutending purchaser must first of all obtain a native produce Memorandum (which will be accompanied by a transit certificate) from the custom-house at a Treaty port, and must sign a declaration to the effect that the produce is intended for foreign export. From the place of purchase to the port of shipment, such certificated produce will be required to re-port and await examination at all revenue stations passed, but will not have to pay tax or charge anywhere till arrival at the "last barrier" (ie, one of the barriers nearest the Treaty port, or locally known as the "first barrier to" and the "last from" the interior on that line). On reaching the "last barrier," the owner must report arrival to the Customs at the Treaty port, and must pay transit dues on the produce before passing that barrier.
II.
4. Produce which has thus paid transit dues and passed the barrier pays a Tariff export duty of shipment for a foreign port (ie., 71 per cent. ad valorem).
5. Produce which has thus paid transit dues and passed the barrier will be required to pay four times the transit dues, in addition to ordinary export duty, at the time of shipment, if sent, not to a foreign, but to another Treaty port, ¿e.—
1. Transit due
2. Export duty
3. Four transit dues
4. Coast trade duży
In ali
Per cent.
21
5
10
21
20
6. Produce which has thus paid transit dues and passed the barrier will be required to pay seven times the transit due, if not shipped within six months to either foreign or Treaty port, ie., to make up a charge of 20 per cent.
7. After purchase and entay for foreign export at the barrier nearest the place of purchase, if produce does not reach the last barrier within eight months, the merchant concerned will be required to pay to the Customs eight times the transit due on account of inland revenue, ie., 20 per cent.
III.
8. Certificated native produce must be the bond fide property of the British merchant concerned or of a foreign house for which he is agent; if discovered to be Chinese, owned or conveyed under transit papers on Chinese account, it will be coufiscated.
9. The first barrier passed, nearest to the place of purchase (and production), will examine the produce, fill up the blank transit certificate, and send on the native produce Memorandum to the Customs concerned. The merchant or his employés must write clearly on the Memorandum the description, quantity, and quality of produce transported, and must hand that Memorandum, together with the blank certificate received with it from the Customs, to the first barrier when the goods are reported there for examination.
10. Native produce Memorandas will be issued for the province, for a neighbouring province, and for distant provinces, and will be valid for two, four, and six months respectively. The certificates received back from the first barrier will be valid for the same periods respectively. Every Memo- randum, whether used or not used, and every certificate, must be delivered up to be cancelled within the period named; failing which, the issue of Memoranda to the merchant concerned will be suspended, and will not be resumed till the document (Memorandum or Certificate) is returned, or a satisfactory explanation offered.
N.B.--The object of the transit system is to enable native produce to pass from the native pro- ducer to the foreign purchaser, for a foreign market, on a payment of 7 per cent. to the revenue, and that system is not intended to be used to exempt produce circulating in China from necessary local taxation. When accident or intent may have led to any abuse (vide Rule 2, §§ 5, 6, 7), the inerchant concerned is required by the Rule now proposed to make a total payment of 20 per cent. and the right to suspend the issue of Memoranda and Certificates, ought to suffice to protect the revenue This charge, and secure the return of all documents.
(Signed) R. HART.
Chefoo, September 14, 1876.
129-130
No. 74.
Sir T. Wade to Earl Granville.-(Received July 22.)
288
(No. 35.) My Lord,
Tien-tein, June 3, 1882. WHEN returning to my post in 1879 I requested Lord Salisbury's permission to visit India, in order that I might obtain information that would guide me in the further discussion of opium taxation. Before leaving Calcutta I addressed a letter to Lord Lytton, then Viceroy, copy of which I forwarded to Lord Salisbury in, I think, the month of May of that year. It was acknowledged with thanks by the Government of India after my return to Peking, and allusion has been made to it once or twice in Indian correspondence. It may be thought expedient to lay it before Parliament, and I therefore venture to inclose a duplicate copy of my letter.
I have, &c.
(Signed) THOMAS FRANCIS WADE.
Inclosure in No. 74.
Sir T. Wade to the Viceroy of India.
My Lord,
Calcutta, February 16, 1879. AS I had the honour to inform you on my arrival, I came to India, by permission of the Marquis of Salisbury, to offer to your Excellency in person some explanation of the clauses in the Agreement signed by me at Chefoo, that have been assumed to threaten the opium revenue of the Government of India; at the same time, to submit to you some alternative arrangement which might modify the inconvenience apprehended from that which in the Agreement I had undertaken to recommend.
Your Excellency thought with me that it would be best that I should reduce to writing what I had to say, and I am concerned to think that more than a month has elapsed since I promised to draw up a Memorandum on the subject. My desire being, in the first place, to be brief, and, in the next, to avoid as much as possible a controversial defence of negotiations the result of which has been more or less attacked, I have found the preparation of my statement a work of greater difficulty than I anticipated. There have been other reasons for the delay which I shall not intrude upon your Excellency's attention.
The negotiations referred to, it will be rememberéd, had for their principal object the adjustment of a misunderstanding occasioned by the attack upon a mission of exploration, sent by the Government of India through Burma into Yün Nan; judicial satisfaction for which I had found it scarcely possible, with the evidence in my hands, to insist upon. My demands, consequently, were directed less to reparation for the past than to security for the future; and, under this head, it is not necessary to explain at length why improvement of intercourse, diplomatic and commercial, presented itself as a chief condition. For years past, we have not had a just cause of complaint against China that might not be traced to the reluctance of her Government to recognize what is due to us as a Treaty Power her equal in degree, or as a trading community; and bad I not pledged myself, even before news of the Yün Nan atrocity reached me, in March 1875, to require some assurance of a better order of things, I should have considered it an omission of duty if I had allowed so favourable an opportunity to pass without availing myself of it.
But I was already pledged. I had obtained leave to return to England at the beginning of the year; and I had warned the Yamên of Foreign Affairs that before I left Peking I must look for such a declaration regarding our privileges, diplomatic and commercial, as would be satisfactory to Her Majesty's Government. Our experience of the Regency, which had lasted from 1861 to 1873, with the prospect of a new Regency similarly constituted, and certain almost to be of equal duration, justified this precaution on my part.
Our commercial position in China is, of course, in no small degree influenced by the position our Diplomatic and Consular Representatives are enabled to hold, but there will be no occasion here to examine detailedly in what fashion or degree. The question immediately under consideration is exclusively commercial.
Our contention has been that under Article X of Sir Henry Pottinger's Treaty, signed at Nanking in 1842; the Separate Article of equal significance with that Treaty, signed at Hong Kong in 1843; Article XXVIII of the Treaty, sigued by Lord Elgin at Tien-tsin in
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