sir,
C 32396
60
China Association,
RECP REG 1 OCT 09
159, CANNON STREET,
LONDON, E.C. 29th Sept, 1909.
19
The General Committee gather with extreme disappointment, from the enclosed telegram, that the Treasury is still unwill- ing to accept as an Imperial charge the maintenance of a British Post Office at Tientsin.
Representing as it does the interests of Hongkong as well as the British Communities at the Treaty Ports, the China Association cannot but repeat the expression of its sympathy with the objection of the Colonial Government to be saddled
with the cost, or any portion of the cost, of maintaining Post Offices at the Treaty Ports.
The proposal is of course, an outcome of the claim that
a British Post Office at Tientsin is a necessity of Imperial prestige so long as Germany, France, Japan etc. maintain Post Offices under their respective flags, and represents probably an attempt to reconcile that admission with the novel proposit-
ion that a Municipality may be required to provide its own Postal machinery out of its own Postal receipts, in disregard of the revenue which may be accruing to the Imperial Post Office from Postal matter despatched to its address.
An attempt to apply this proposition to Shanghai has elicited the natural reply that an International Settlement
H.M. Under Secretary of State,
for the Colonies,
Colonial Office,
Downing Straet,
S.V.