10
14. If any retailers of prepared opium venture to act in contravention of these Regulations and try to force the hands of the officials by refusing to do business, the ringleader will be sent to the Magistrate and severely punished, while the shop will be sealed up and men sent to sell the opium in it from the official shed for boiling opium.
15. All shops selling prepared opium must pack it in boxes and seal up the place where the lid opens with their numbered permit. Over this, again, must be pasted the official label, clearly stating the date of sale.
Whenever a small quantity of opium is taken out for sale, the label used will be marked with a cross and stamped with a small date-stamp to prevent the label being used a second time.
16. When prepared opium is exchanged for opium ash, a label must be duly affixed as before. Shops dealing in second-band opium and using the ash for a second boiling must pay for their licence three-tenths of the licence fee ("pfai fei"). A different form of duplicate certificate will be issued to them. Such shops shall not be allowed to sell Patna or Malwa. If they do so they shall be sealed up.
17. Small opium divans shall only be allowed to retail opium for consumption on the premises; they shall not be allowed to sell prepared opium. Every month they shall make a payment in proportion to the number of their lamps. These shops shall be of three classes: the first class shall pay 6 dollars, the second 4 dollars, and the third 2 dollars per month. If they do not report the full number of their lamps, they shall on detection be fined; and if they refuse to pay the fine, their shops shall be sealed up.
18. It is forbidden to add anything in writing on the label or certificate, or to obliterate or change what has been written, for the purpose of using them a second time. Any one caught practising cheating or malpractice of any sort will incur a regulation fine of fifty times the amount. If any one ventures to make a counterfeit label or certificate, the proprietor of the shop concerned will be arrested and punished and his shop will be sealed up and confiscated.
19. This Office will establish a body of secret service agents, issuing to them a brass medal, numbered, to be carried on their person, and also a certificate as proof. But these agents must not practise extortion.
If any person pretends to be a secret service agent and has no medal or certificate, it is open to any one to go to the nearest police-station and report him, when he will be arrested and tried.
20. As soon as these draft Regulations have been elaborated and put into printed form, they will be issued to every prepared-opium shop, that they may all conform with them. Any merchant or other person desiring to come to this Office to read the Regulations will also be made a present of a copy.
11
Indeed, I believe before the Agreement was ratified the point had been raised at Peking, and the Tsung-li Yamen, while givings assurance that the further li-kin levied in the interior should be of limited amount, clearly asserted their right to exact it.
(No. 41.) Sir,
I have, &c.
(Signed) CHAL. ALABASTER.
Inclosure 10 in No. 1.
Consul Scott to Mr. Baz-Ironside.
Canton, October 14, 1899. I HAVE the honour to inform you that certain Chinese merchants, calling themselves the Yung An Tang, have now farmed the tax upon boiled opium for an annual payment of 120,000 taels, to be paid to the Chinese authorities. The farm commenced on the 10th September. They do not propose to increase the tax, which will still remain at its former figure of 3 candareens for every tael weight of opium boiled. All they are attempting to do is to prevent, as far as possible, the evasion of the tax, collecting about 60
per cent. of the amount actually due, instead of only 30 per cent., as was the case when the tax was levied by the officials. They expressly state that they will not raise any objection so long as the quantity reported as sold does not differ materially from the quantity actually sold.
This new departure has naturally provoked a good deal of opposition. There are 600 opium shops in Canton and Honam, about half of which have accepted the new régime. The rest of the shops resisted, and attempted to force the farmers to fix for each shop the amount to be taxed monthly, taking into consideration the small amount taxed under the old régime. This was, of course, refused, and the agitators threatened to stop business, began to subscribe funds for organized resistance, and committed acts of aggression upon opium-shop keepers who refused to identify themselves with the movement, to the no small alarm of the latter.
The farmers thereupon petitioned the authorities, and proclamations were accordingly issued by the Reorganization Board and the Nanhai and P'anyü Magistrates, directing the opium shops to continue to carry on their business, and to report the true amount of opium to be taxed; also warning them that, in case of any strike, disturbance, or aggression committed upon other shops, it would rest with the farmers to report the offenders to the authorities for punishment.
I have, &c.
(Signed)
B. C. GEORGE SCOTT.
Inclosure 9 in No. 1.
Inclosure 11 in No. 1.
(No. 56.) Sir,
Consul Alabaster to Sir J. Walsham,
Canton, October 10, 1887.
I HAVE the honour to submit for your Excellency's consideration a question that has been put to me, whether a tax levied on prepared opium of 3 tael cents per tael weight is not in contravention of the understanding of the new Opium Convention, under which it is argued all li-kin, at the port of entry at least, is commuted for the 80 taels paid on clearance at the custom-house.
I have promised to submit the subject to your Excellency, but I have informed the applicant that personally I am unable to raise the question with the Chinese authorities before doing so, for although it would appear that when agreeing that the sum of 80 taels per chest li-kin should be paid on importation, in addition to the 30 taels import duty, Her Majesty's Government never contemplated that a further sum of some 30 taels li-kin should be levied on the drug before it reaches the pipes of the consumers, still, the terms of the Agreement merely give the merchant the right to bring the drug into the market at the port or carry it into the interior in sealed packages; and when it has reached its destination or has been removed from these packages, there is no provision exempting it from further taxation when retailed.
Your Excellency,
Prince Ch'ing to Sir E. Satow.
K. H. xxx. 4th 30th (June 3, 1904). ON the 31st May the Board received a telegram from the Viceroy of Canton to the effect that licences for the sale of prepared opium had formerly been in operation in that province for many years, and that in 1902 it was altered to a system for calculating the amount of prepared opium from the raw drug, the administration of the prepared opium certificates being intrusted to merchants, but this system was abolished in consequence of instructions from the Board. The revenue derived from the licences for the sale of prepared opium was thus entirely lost, and the Commissioners and the Board now request that the system may be re-established, the levy being collected only from the prepared drug. This would in no way affect the Chefoo Convention.
The Viceroy has already authorized the establishment of a Board for experimental working.
We have the honour to observe that the question of additional taxation on prepared opium in Canton Province formed the subject of a despatch from Mr. Townley to the Board in the sixth moon of last year (August 1903). From the above telegram from the Viceroy it appears that it is proposed to adopt the plan formerly in force in the province for the collection of a tax on licences for the sale of prepared opium in order to avoid the
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