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1.
A petition, copy of which is enclosed, represented that since the commencement of his lease of the Opium Farm in March 1889, he had been carrying on the business at a heavy loss, and asked that the grant under which he held the Farm might be modified.
There was not time to investigate and deal finally with the matter before I left for England, and on my return at the end of last year I found that during my absence, a long correspondence had been going on between the Government, the Canton and Macao steamship Companies, and the Commissioner of Customs for the Kowloon District, on the subject of the great increase in the smuggling of opium into China.
Several serious collisions ...
25th Jany. 1890.
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