S.0.377.
Home Office,
Whitehall,
S.W.1.
66.
50
30th August, 1927.
My dear Paskin,
Many thanks for your letter of yesterday (30049/27) about
Mà cao. By all means let us discuss it with the Foreign Office
and the India Office if you think it desirable, but there are two
reasons at least that seem to me to make Clementi's proposal impossible.
the In the first place there is the statement in his telegram that 120
Zaty D chests of Indian opium are additional to the 420 chests of Persian
opium. In other words the annual requirements of Macao under the
new regime are chests. In his despatch of the 22nd July,
Clementi himself says that thesuppa Mesitha 120 chests a year should
be sufficient for Macao needs. (It rather looks as if the Governor
of Macao had succeeded in hoodwinking Clementi). The second reason
is that the supply of Indian opium to Macao is not going to enable
the Governor of Macao, as Clementi seems to think, to control the
consumption of opium in Macao any more than the Government of Hong Kong
has been able to control the consumption of opium in that Colony.
Clementi's assumption that consumption is being controlled in Hong Kong
and could be effectively controlled in Macao is rather astonishing in
the light of the history of the last few years. The only purpose of supplying the Indian opium to Macao would be to keep up the Government
revenues of Macao by enabling that Government to hold its own in the
opium business against the purveyors of the smugled article.
could the British Government possibly justify such action?
Perhaps we could have the talk this afternoon, as our
Conference about the Straits Settlements ought not to take very
How
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