5.
foreign control of this revenue or its expenditure. I do not therefore see why announcement of with- drawal of His Majesty's Covernment's support of 1900 agreement contemplated in paragraph 4 of your telegram No. 381 could be regarded as a liberal gesture.
454
Since threat of Sun Yat Sen in (? 1923) (see annual report of that year) there has not been any further attempt on the part of independent military leader or province to interfere with meritime customs nor to my knowledge have there been any other com- plaints by Chiness of inequity of existing system of custody and control whereby surplus after all the prior foreign obligations have been met has been hypothecated by mandate of central government for service of internal loan nor has any claim been put forward for distribution of surplus among provinces. The only real grievance provincial authorities have in respect of existing system of collection and distribution is that proceeds of transit pass fees levied by customs in lieu of likin go to central government instead of to them and this is precisely what we hope to be able to remedy, see conference telegram No. 31. If central government is to be maintained at all
must be able to count on fixed state of revenues and why should His Majesty's Government promote process of disintegration by facili tating seizure by provinces of revenues which are definitely allocated to the state under the consti- tution? So far from saving customs administration
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