[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]
C.O.
[September 14 1908]
178
CHINA TRADE.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[32341]
No. 1.
SECTION 1
9 NOV 08
Mr. T. C. Taylor to Sir Edward Grey.--(Received September 17.)
Sunny Bank, Batley, Yorkshire, September 16, 1908,
Dear Sir Edward,
THANKS for your letter. I have written Mr. Hedley to call in London at the Foreign Office or House of Commons after the 12th October, and write you beforehand.
In any case, I was about to write to you once more re the Shanghae Opium, &c., Commission. The Board of Representatives of all the five or six anti-opium Societies are getting very anxious as to the appointment of the British Commissioners, and have made several communications to me lately, or rather, leading members of that Board, have done so as well as the Board. They are pleased to express their entire confidence not only in Lord Morley and yourself, but also in me, as their appointed Parliamentary representative, that no step will be left untaken to secure efficient representation of what is now the British national official view at this Conference. But they feel that so much depends upon the personnel of our representatives that they would like their views as to persons to be fully before you before it is too late.
I am therefore authorized to say that not only would Sir William Collins, M.P., be to them a satisfactory appointment, but that they would be specially gratified if the Right Honourable John Ellis, M.P., could be induced to go as one of our representatives to Shanghae. And I am also commissioned to say that Professor Caldecott, of King's College, London, would be specially acceptable to English Churchmen, and you or your colleagues who will appoint the Delegates thought fit to entertain his name; very powerful English Episcopal backing could at once be found for his name. He has taken deep interest in the opium question for many years, and is Chairman of the Church Anti-Opium Committee.
Nothing but my conviction of the extreme urgency and importance of the question would have induced me thus further to trespass upon your time and attention. This Commission's labours and conclusions will, one hopes, determine a beneficent world policy of the future.
Yours faithfully,
(Signed)
THEO. C. TAYLOR.
T. C. T.
P.S.-Of other M.P.'s, Allan Baker and Laidlaw are both likely.
[1944-1]