5
other Treaty Powers.
The Foreign Office
in reply
representatives explained, nude, that the
Treaty Powers had never yet been in agreement
on any single point dealing with Customs
administration, and that it would be quite useless
to count on progress from that quarter. In their
view, however, the Inspector General, Mr. Edwardes,
had a great opportunity of working things from the
inside, and the correct course for him to pursue
was to order his local Commissioners to remit the
direct
proceeds of the surtaxes to Provincial Governments But at present he was
wwwmianten, adopting an attitude which was
much too cautious.
In the first place, he contended
that he was unable to do anything without the
consent of the "reaty Powers, which, in view of past
history, indicated a sufficiently hopeless outlook;
and secondly, he had produced a scheme under which
all revenue would be remitted to him, and he
would re-llocate it to Provinces on
a pro rata
basis. This in the Foreign Office view was
incapable of acceptance by the Chinese since it
would make the Inspector General a virtual
Financial Dictator. On the other hand, if he
would only go a little further and order his
Commissioners to remit the proceeds, of the surtaxes
at any rate, to the Provincial Governments at whose
ports they were collected, this would go a long way
towards solving Customs difficulties. For instance,
in Canton, the first effect of such a course would be
the abolition of the Surtax Bureau on which we have
always looked with considerable misgivinga, likely
to endange the Customs Sarrica in Kwanglung.
Generally speaking, the Foreign Office were
rather