152
10°
lee.p.25
ffice print.
23608/98.
po.78.79 of
Ffice print.
27900/98.
pp.86 to 88,print. 27516/
(p.92′ print).
7361/99 sec (p.104 prin.).
8816/ sec (p.14 print.)
In 38603/00.
officer of the Chinese Customs should be allowed to
exercise his functions within British jurisdiction.
Sir Cecil Smith thought the duty on opium might be
collected, on behalf of China, by Hong Kong officers.
We wrote to Foreign Office, saying that they
would probably agree that the grant to Chinese autho-
rities of permission to exercise any customs jurisdic-
tion within the Colony or to maintain Chinese customs houses would be highly undesirable; and we suggested
the adoption of Sir 0.Smith's proposal, as the least
objectionable course. We pressed for the removal of customs houses and officers from the leased territory,
and even from the immediate vicinity of the Colony,
and for a removal of the revenue "blockade."
Foreign Offics agreed, and embodied practi-
cally the whole of our proposals in a despatch to Sir C.Macdonald. We also wrote to Sir H.Blake, who had by
this time gone out to his Goverment to much the same
effect.
The Yamen protested, and Sir C.Macdonald sta-
ted that in his opinion they would have strong reason
to complain if they were forced to remove all their
stations completely off our territory. We were firm,
however, and only allowed three stations on the is-
lands to remain until October, pending re-organization of the local Customs service, and the building of new
stations elsewhere.
The Chinese gave in: and the outcome of Sir
Cecil Smith's proposal was that after the negotiations
of which an account is given in the minutes on and the precis in 35328/00, frdinance 27 of 1900 was
passed,