[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.
OPIUM.
CONFIDENTIAL
[13873]
No. 1.
14857
RECP
YER PAY !!
[April 13.]
SECTION 1.
Sir,
India Office to Foreign Office. (Received April 13.)
India Office, April 13, 1911. I AM directed by the Secretary of State for India in Council to acknowledge the receipt of your letter dated the 31st March, 1911, on the subject of the representations made by the China Association with regard to the opiam regulations issued by the Canton local authorities.
I am to say that apparently the regulations have not yet actually been put into force. This is stated in Consul-General Jamieson's letter of the 9th February, 1911, to Sir J. Jordan, which formed an enclosure of the latter's despatch dated the 28th February, 1911, to Sir Edward Grey.
In view of the slow progress and doubtful result of the negotiations with the Chinese Government, Viscount Morley is disposed to think that it might be prudent to inform the China Association briefly that the regulations are not as yet in force, and that they may be withdrawn, if the negotiations now in progress are brought to a successful issue.
Lord Morley agrees that the opportunity might be taken to intimate to the China Association that His Majesty's Government find it increasingly difficult, in the face of the genuine movement against opium in China and the widespread sympathy which that movement has excited in other countries, to stand out for the literal observance of treaties made in very different circumstances when China was a consenting party to a policy of unlimited domestic production, and unlimited import, of the drug.
I have, &c.
[1978 -1
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R. RITCHIE,
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