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collected. The rate now discussed was to clear the drug once and for all, no matter what part of the interior it might be carried.
I believed that foreign opium under these circumstances would fairly bear 60 taels; but an assertion being made in the course of the Conference that the Board of Revenue's estimate of opium revenue was a total of 6,000,000 taels, much of which was lost by smuggling, while 10 per cent. must be deducted for expense of collection, I felt bound to argue that, supposing this estimate correct, a li-kin of 50 taels would, in an average year, secure to China her 6,000,000 taels, the 10 per cent. cost being certainly saved, for the Customs would need no addition to the staff that now collects the Tariff duty; while, by a proper understanding with the Hong Kong Government, much opium would be made to pay duty which now never finds its way to a port.
The Grand Secretary Li, returning to Tien-tsin, no further opportunity of conferring with him presented itself for a time. The Grand Secretary Tso, as I have said, sent up his Memorial advocating an extravagant rate of li-kin, to be collected withal, indepen- dently of the foreign Inspectorate, at a number of central depôts. His colleagues at the Tsung-li Yamên did not understand his scheme, or did not approve it. In the provinces some of the authorities, on whom the work of collecting the impost would devolve, have affirmed that the scheme in question would largely increase smuggling.
The next incident in this history was the self-imposed mission of Mr. Samuel, an intelligent gentleman connected with money agencies, who had paid a visit to India apparently for the purpose of examining what seemed to him the defective system of remittances still in favour with the Indian Government in its regulation of opium sales. His inquiry into this matter completed, he came on to China to obtain information regarding the opium trade, not only with this country, but with the various markets which, so to speak, flank the line of communication. His scheme, by which, in brief, England was to become the sole possessor of all the opium in the world, and sole trader both with the Chinese and other markets, appeared to me, so far as revenue was concerned, to have much to recommend it both to England and China. To the latter not only would a fixed income be sccured, but with Hong Kong as a terminus, and no more than a fixed quota of opium saleable at that or any other of the minor markets, there would be secured a most complete protection against contraband trade in the drug.
Mr. Samuel's object, as I understood him, was to attempt the regulation of what appeared to him a faulty system of remittances where the sale of opium was concerned. He had obtained a Circular despatch from the Foreign Office, instructing Her Majesty's Consuls in China to assist him in obtaining information about the opium trade, and a private letter to myself from Sir Louis Mallet, Under-Secretary for India. He had no papers to produce except these, and certainly no kind of official position; but the Grand Secretary Li, who received Mr. Samuel, without any introduction from Consul or Minister, appears to have imagined that he was invested with official responsibility. I mention this merely because his visit was productive of a singular result to which I shall come presently. Mr. Samuel's own scheme was not viewed with disfavour by his Excellency Li, any more than by myself, to whom he communicated it a few days later. I did not immediately speak of it to the Tsung-li Yamén, for I regarded it simply as the suggestion of a private speculator, which I had, so far, no right to suppose that Her Majesty's Government would even take into consideration.
I said nothing either, for the time, of a second proposition with which Mr. Samuel acquainted me, but not as proceeding from himself. A Chinese of Canton bad consulted him in the South upon the possibility of creating a vast opium monopoly, of which Hong Kong was to be the bead-quarters. The projector of this scheme subsequently addressed himself to me, through Sir John Hennessy, Governor of Hong Kong. I gave it no sort of encouragement. Even if its Chinese sponsors have the capital they profess to have, I should regard their enterprise with extreme mistrust unless it were placed under foreign control in such proportions as would speedily disgust the native directors. If it were left to the latter, unused as the Chinese are to operations of such magnitude, should look for the same unlimited confusion that unhappily besets other branches of financial administration in this country. I am further mistaken if such a reproduction of the old Co-Hong, condemned to death by the Treaty of 1842, did not find that, should it prosper, it would, like its predecessor, be made to pay a preposterously high tee for the privilege of existing at all. Nor would the fact of its establishment in Hong Kong be the smallest security against exaction of the kind, so long as the families of the Chinese interested were resident, as they must be, in their own districts. But it is not necessary to enlarge much on this project. It has found favour neither in the provinces nor a the capital.
Now to come to the result of Mr. Samuel's mission, as it was regarded by his
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Excellency Li. The Grand Secretary was forthwith urged, as I bave since learned, by his foreign advisers, at once to use Mr. Samuel's supposed mission as a precedent, and to dispatch, independently, an Agent to India. An intelligent Chinese officer, by name Ma Kieh-chung, formerly attached to the Chinese Legation in Paris, was the Agent chosen, a gentleman of whose fitness for the purpose, let me say, I am fully satisfied. Had the Grand Secretary, with whom my relations are most friendly, applied to me, should have had the greatest pleasure in giving his Agent letters to the Viceroy of India.
I
Ma-taotai returned well pleased with his reception. His prescribed object had heen not only to obtain information regarding the opium trade, with a view to the regulation of the revenue derivable from it, but also to souad the Indian Government upon the practi- cability of gradually extinguishing its interest in the traffic.
I have stated above that it is my intention separately to submit to your Lordship The last-mentioned some remarks the moral aspect of the opium question.
upon proposition belongs properly to this, and I shall here refer to it no farther than by observing that I am not impugning the sincerity of a Chinese stateman's condemnation of opium-smoking, when I say that the proposal thus submitted to the Government of India did not emanate primarily, I am convinced, from a Chinese statesman at all. I do not, in the least, quarrel with the foreign adviser of the Chinese for suggesting such a measure, but I have my own reasons for believing that this was entirely the suggestion of a foreigo adviser.
Meanwhile, although not dropped in casual discussion on either side, final agreement as to the extent or method of the taxation of Tariff-paid opium was not materially approached, and in August 1881 J instructed the Assistant Chinese Secretary, Mr. Hillier, then on his way home, to visit the Grand Secretary Li and other chiefs of provincial Governments to ascertain confidentially their views on this and other subjects. I was satisfied that they would entertain no doubt of my earnest desire to arrive at an under- standing that might be considered fair to both sides.
I do not propose here to say more of the opinions elicited from these high officers than that they were, with one exception, opposed to monopoly, whether in Chinese hands alone or otherwise. To some association of foreigners with Chinese appeared especially dangerous. The general feeling was in favour of collection of Tariff duty and li-kin the abnormal taxation, together. The Grand Secretary Li, whose larger experience makes him a more flexible financier than some of his colleagues, was not hostile to monopoly, but, on the whole, inclined to a system of joint collection, could but a rate of li-kin in his opinion, sufficiently high be agreed to. He expressed some anxiety to have a farther conference with me.
I was unable to leave Peking during the month of September, but, in October, as I was proceeding to Shanghae, I had an interview near Tien-tsin with his Excellency, when he was on his way to attend the coffin of the late Empress Dowager, and it was agreed that we should together attempt to conclude something definite as soon as we could again
meet.
To this end I spent nearly the whole month of December here at Tient-tsin, and before leaving, I laid before his Excellency the draft of a note to the Prince of Kung, in which I reviewed all the propositions that had been submitted to either party, or con- sidered by both; and requested His Imperial Highness to acquaint me, for the information of Her Majesty's Government, which of these various schemes (some ten or more) had the preference of the Government of China.
It will have to be I inclose copies of my correspondence with the Prince of Kung. considered in detail. I shall not, therefore, attempt any analysis of it.
Before any first note was sent in, however; indeed, before I left Tien-tsin, 1 had ascertained that the Tsung-li Yamên would not look with favour upon any of the schemes that might give their fiscal arrangements the air of a commercial transaction: such, for instance, as the scheme-one of those submitted to the Grand Secretary, by which the cost of opium was to be secured to the Indian Government and revenue at a high rate of taxation to the Government of China by an Agency in India. This had been very sensibly considered by the Grand Secretary, who had gone so far as to consult me upon the appointment, in the event of such an Agency being authorized, of a certain able foreigner of my acquaintance to watch the interests of China in India. I readily promised him my vote. Failing the acceptance of anything similar, his Excellency, as my note to the Prince of Kung states, was either for doubling the Tariff duty, which would thus become 60 taels a picul, and leaving the li-kin to be collected, as in time past, by native Collectorates, or for collection of a uniform rate of li-kin at the same time as the present Tariff duty of 30 tacis. The Tsung-li Yamên, as shown in the Prince of Kung's reply, pronounces