TONQUIN.
CONFIDENTIAL.
317
No. 1.
258
[Thursday, August 6.]
SECTION
C. O.
14047
RSCR
REGE 7 AUG 36,
Sir,
Mr. Calcraft to Mr. Currie-(Received August 6.)
Office of Committee of Privy Council for Trade,
August 5, 1885.
I AM directed by the Board of Trade to acknowledge the receipt of your letters of the 28th ultimo and 1st and 3rd instant, transmitting for their consideration copies of certain correspondence respecting the Treaty of Peace concluded between France and China on the 9th June last, and asking the opinion of this Board as to whether any further instructions to Her Majesty's Chargé d'Affaires at Peking are immediately necessary in regard to the stipulations of the Treaty which affect British interests.
In reply, I am to state that the Board of Trade fully concur in the instructions given to Mr. O'Connor in the Foreign Office letter of the 23rd May last, in which it is pointed out that most-favoured nation treatment would be claimed by Her Majesty's Government under the Treaty of Tien-tsin of 1858, in respect of lower duties of goods introduced by land, and as regards any privileges or advantages given to French citizens or their commerce on the land frontier; but this Board would suggest, for the Marquis of Salisbury's consideration, that it might be advisable to direct Mr. O'Connor's attention rather more fully to the points involved in Clauses IV to VI of the Franco-Chinese Treaty, and they would therefore offer the following observations on the subject.
1. Article IV as to the rights of French subjects to pass over the frontier is nominally of a restrictive character. There is to be no such right, it is said, except on passports being obtained. But the Clause is also so worded that the Chinese authorities would be obliged to give passports on the demand of the French authorities. Under this Clause, accordingly, Frenchmen would appear to have a special and exclusive right of access to China by the Tonquin frontier, whilst no such privilege is promised to British subjects. Article IX of the Treaty of Tien-tsin no doubt gives a general right to English subjects to pass into the interior of China under passports to be issued by the Consuls, and signed by the local authorities, but unless there are English Consuls at each point of the frontier at which French subjects may pass over, which is not the case, the general stipulation in the Treaty with England would be rendered illusory. The careful mention of French subjects only, or foreigners resident in Tonquin, shows a design to exclude all others.
2. Article V is even more clearly in derogation of the rights previously given to British subjects. It states expressly that the commerce of importation and exportation will be permitted to French merchants or merchants who are under French protection, and to Chinese merchants over the frontier at certain stipulated points, and that French merchants may establish themselves at these points on the same conditions and with the same advantages as in the Treaty ports; farther, that France may establish Consuls at these places with privileges and powers identical to those of Agents of the same class at the Treaty ports. The English Treaty (Article VII) only gives the British Government power to establish Consuls at open ports or cities, while trade can only be carried on through the Treaty ports. The present Treaty, therefore, giving France and French subjects another means of access to China, confers on them a privilege and advantage not given to British subjects. To act consistently with its English Treaties, the Chinese Government should have reserved power to English subjects to trade at the same points.. and power to the English Government to establish Consuls.
3. Article VI appears even more inconsistent with our Treaties with China. It stipulates that merchandize passing over the frontier at the points to be fixed will be subject "to duties inferior to those which are stipulated for by the actual Tariff on foreign trade." This reduced Tariff is not to apply in any case to goods passing over the frontier between Tonquin and Kouang-tong, this last being a province bordering on the sea, in which there is a Treaty port; but it is to apply to the Provinces of Yunnan and Kouang-si, which are provinces more or less accessible to trade from the Treaty ports situate in the Province of Kouang-tong. Farther, this reduced Tariff "is not to have effect in the ports
[1587]
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