The Secretaries then informed me that the Viceroy had submitted to the Wai Wu Pu two offers for your consideration: - firstly, China to raise a loan from the Corporation, and build the railway herself employing English engineers; the other, that the Cantonese raise the money themselves, but purchase such materials as China did not possess through the British Corporation at current market rates. The Viceroy, his Secretaries said, received no reply to this telegram which was despatched to Peking on the 3rd March, and stated that the only telegram which the Viceroy so far received from the Wai Vu Pu was the one urging the resumption of the negotiations, and dated 23rd February.
I urged the secretaries to arrange to have the negotiations resumed locally; but they represented that this could not be done, and pressed me to agree to have them conducted with Tang Shao Yi in Peking.
Subsequent to this interview, I received a letter from the Viceroy, dated the 15th instant, copy and translation of which I now beg to enclose. The Viceroy clearly indicates that he will only reopen negotiations on the basis of one of two proposals; but from the terms of his telegram of the 3rd instant to the Wai Wu Pu (copy and translation of the last sentence of which, confidentially obtained, I now also enclose), I am satisfied that he intends negotiations to be conducted only with and through Tang Shao Yi; for his secretaries gave me clearly to understand that the Viceroy's desire was to shift responsibility on to Tang, who is a Cantonese, with the hope of involving him with the people of this province, and thus saving the Viceroy the odium of having yielded.