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in favour of your plan, and in order to avoid smuggling at Hong Kong he thought all Indian opium should be registered at Hong Kong on its arrival, and delivered there to Chinese dealers. A note of their purchases and exports would be made, and given to a Chinese official stationed for the purpose at Hong Kong, who would inform the Customs authorities of the port to which the opium was to be sent, aud the Chinese importer would pay the duty when the opium was lauded. He said that Governor Hennessy had declared his willingness to accept this arrangement, and although he, the Governor-General, had no voice in the matter, which was in the hands of the Yamên and Li Chung-tang, he per- sonally would be glad to see some such arrangement as he had described carried out. then told him of the commercial changes that were under consideration at Peking. He said he knew that you were discussing the import trade question with the Yamên, and M. von Brandt the export trade, but they had told him nothing about the 10 per cent. duty scheme, although they had written to inquire what the annual -kin receipts amounted to. He thought that the i-kin free-area arrangemeut, provided for in the Chefoo Agreement, was preferable, but since, as he had heard, the other Foreign Ministers had objected to this arrangement, some new one must be made, if they would not accept the Yamên's readings of the Treaties on the subject of transit passes, and the extent to which they covered foreign imports: 10 per cent. seemed to him rather low, but if the Yamên were satisfied they were quite capable of fulfilling their engagement that no further tax should be levied. Of course the inland provinces would cry out, but they would have a percentage of the revenue allotted to them, and when once the new arrange- ment became law by Imperial Decree no one would dare to interfere with foreign imports. At present the authorities inland had a right, according to his view, to tax foreign goods that were clear of their transit pass.
I had some difficulty in making him understand the inseparability of the opium and general trade questions, because he maintained that if an understanding could be come to with the Indian Government, the opium trade would be closed to all but British and Chinese merchants, and he seemed hardly to realize the possibility of Persian opium being introduced in any quantity. He thought, as Li Chung-tang had done, that Persia was a dependency of Great Britain, or, at any rate, that she could easily make arrangements with her.
This finished all I had to say to the Governor-General,
(Confidential.)
My dear Sir Thomas,
I have, &c.
(Signed)
WALTER C. HILLIER.
Inclosure 6 in No. 75.
Mr. Hillier to Sir T. Wade.
Foochow, September 8, 1881. I PAID my visit to the Governor-General this morning, aud I think I can perhaps make my Report fuller if I confine myself in the first instance to a private letter. I propose to submit a formal Report of all my interviews on my return from Hankow.
I arrived on Saturday the 4th instant, P.M., and sent in your note to Ho Chih-t'ai on the following morning, after having called on Mr. Sinclair and informed him of the object of my visit. The Governor-General sent back his card in reply to your note, and excused himself from seeing me for a day or two, as the Governor was just starting for Formosa, and he was busy finishing up current work with him. Two days later he wrote to say that he would receive me this morning at the Yamên of the nich-t'ai, his own Yamên being under repairs.
I was received on arrival by Yeh Tao-t'ai, the Acting Judge, Sheng Tao-t'ai, the opium li-kin collector, another tao-t'ai whose name I could not catch, and a smaller official who was not introduced to me. The big gates were opened for me, and the Governor-General met me just inside the inner court-yard.
used at After the usual preliminaries, I explained, in much the same words that Canton, the object of my visit, and assured the Governor-General that no changes in the inanner or frequency of correspondence between the Consuls, and the high authorities was contemplated beyond the substitution of the forms cha hui and chao fu for shen ch'ến and cha fu respectively. Mr. Sinclair had complained that the Governor-General was trying to avoid answering his despatches altogether, and asked me, if I saw an opportunity, to obtain an assurance from Ho Chih-t'ai that he would answer despatches from the Consul, so I dwelt rather pointedly upon the form in which the Governor-General would reply under the new arrangement. Ho Chih-t'ai replied that he would certainly answer
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despatches from a Consul, but reminded me that these should only be addressed in urgent cases, and when I asked him (also at Mr. Sinclair's suggestion) what circumstances he would consider to justify direct appeal, he said that, without laying down a hard and fast line, he considered that no case ought to be referred to him by the Consul until an appeal to the Tao-t'ai had failed. I assured him that the Consuls had been informed that the new arrangement was in no way intended to increase communication with the high authorities, and I felt sure that he would find that it would not have that effect, though the Consuls whom I had seen had expressed a hope that it would not be regarded as curtailing the privileges they had hitherto enjoyed.
This was, in sum, what passed on the subject of intercourse. At Mr. Sinclair's request, however, I alluded to the return by the Governor of a despatch addressed to him by Mr. Sinclair, which understand has been reported to you. I explained that the matter was in no way an affair of mine, but while we were on the subject of intercourse, I might mention that Mr. Sinclair had regarded the return of his despatch by the Governor as an insult to himself, and I should be glad if I were able to show him that it
was not.
Ho Chih-t'ai replied that he could reassure Mr. Sinclair on that point. The Governor, who had left for Taiwan, had received this despatch on the eve of his departure, and had returned it on the ground that he was not authorized to correspond officially with foreign Consuls with a Governor-General above him. He had told the Governor-General of his action after the return of the despatch.
Ho Chih-t'ai did not attempt to defend the action of the Governor in any way, in fact, he gave me the impression that he rather regretted it; but he said that he, Ho Ka Jen, was undoubtedly the person whom the Consul should have addressed if the matter was of sufficient importance to justify a direct communication. Had Mr. Sinclair written to him his despatch would certainly have been accepted and have received attention. He could at the same time assure Mr. Sinclair that no slight was intended.
Ho Chih-t'ai then referred to your visit to Foochow in 1879, and to Brenan's subsequent visit last year. He spoke in high terms of Brenan's judgment and intelligence, and said it was a pity that the settlement of the missionary cases he had arranged with Breuan should be delayed so long, owing to the obstinacy of Mr. Stewart. Mr. Sinclair had declared himself willing to call upon Mr. Stewart to accept those terms, but said that he must first receive instructions from you, which were not yet forthcoming, I replied that Ho Chih-t'ai had, I thought, inisunderstood Mr. Sinclair's meaning, for I was certain that you had written to Mr. Sinclair approving of the proposed settlement. Your despatch might have said that you had further remarks to make, but you had given your full approval to the arrangements as reported by Brenan. I then went on to say, premising that my remarks were a private expression of opinion only, that it seemed to me that the matter was one on which legal pressure could not well be brought to bear, and that the acceptance or rejection of terms, which I thought liberal, must be left to Mr. Stewart. There was no law, I thought, under which he could be forced to yield; and by his rejection of the terms offered him, foolish though this rejection might be, the Chinese Government practically lost nothing whatever. To this the Governor-General assented, and said that, though he perfectly understood the situation, he thought it unfortunate that the Minister could not be armed with discretionary power to control the pretensions, and, if necessary, curtail the rights of missionaries. His object in pressing for a settlement was simply to write off the case as closed. In the Têng-shan case, he went on to say, Mr. Stewart had tried to jockey the authorities, and it was this persistent jockeying on his part that had irritated all against him. His plan was to arrange surreptitiously for the purchase of land, which he bought without reference to any one but the immediate holder, and when the purchase-money had been paid he presented deeds for registration. With- out appealing in any way to the " feng shui" argument, there was no denying the fact that many Chinese objected to the crection of foreign houses in their immediate neighbourhood, and the result was that there was often an outcry when it became known that land had been quietly sold to foreign missionaries, whose ownership suggested the building of chapels or other structures against which there was a prejudice. By Chinese custom an owner of land in a populous district would be expected to consult his neighbours if he intended to build a house of peculiar construction; and if the missionaries, when they had selected a site, would ask the authorities to negotiate the purchase for them, much trouble to all parties would be avoided.
I pointed out that in the T'êng-shan case Mr. Stewart claimed that he had deeds to show the seller's title to the land, and both the Governor-General and Yeh Tao-t'ai rejoined that if he had them be should produce them. All he had shown so far were pai ch'i," without the official stamp, and these could not be held to constitute a valid
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