be provided at the cost of the
Communities concerned
not under local circumstances,
it was This course
a hopeful
tried for years
cars at Hiogo
and Nagasaki in Japan, and
led to much inconvenience
and complication.
It
Throne are
like an Municipalities at ports
Amoy
which could vote
annual sum;
in
any expenses
consequence
would have to
be met by subscriptions or (as
in Japan,) by a charge levied
on each letter.
The Communities.
rapidly changes; the new comers,
having experienced the
evil the charges were
levied to meet, resent them as impositions,
many refuse
471
to pay,
to receive the taxed correspondence, and
a constant irritation
is kept up.
The difficulty will be met some day, I hope, by the Chinese Government (at first, as represented, perhaps, by its foreign Customs Staff,) awaking to a
due sense
of its
national duties,
and establishing an efficient
Post Office in every open Port.
The time is perhaps hardly
ripe for that as yet, and I do not
think we can take the
initiative. The Hongkong Government
has been requested
to relieve the Imperial Government of the
care of Post Offices in China