:
122
3.
Mr. Levy added that the Kwong Yun
General Office is a mercantile firm which has dealt in
Opium for some time past; that the effect of these regula-
-tions is to give that firm a monopoly of the Opium Trade
in the Kuangtung Province; that consequently the large
stocks of Raw Opium held in this Colony by British Merchants
will be rendered quite unsaleable and that enormous losses,
estimated at several millions of dollars, will thus be
inflicted on British Opium Merchants.
4.
Mr. Levy took great exception to
the attitude adopted by Mr. J. W. Jamieson, His Britannic
Majesty's Consul-General at Canton, in this matter. Mr.
Jamieson's views are set out in his Despatch of the 8th.
instant to His Britannic Majesty's Chargé d'Affaires at
Peking, of which I enclose a copy, and may be summed up in
the statement that "by treaty we have no grounds of
protest unless taxation is differential", i.e. unless a
discrimination is made in favour of native opium as against
foreign opium. The Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce
maintain on the contrary that the grant of a monopoly
forms a breach of Treaties, especially Articles 2, 3, 5 and
7 of the British Chefoo Agreement, 1885, and Article 14
My
Rondlosure
나.
of the French Treaty,
1858.
5.