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Farm any longer.
The fact remains that to all
intents and purposes he was the Farmer, and he
admitted this fact in the witness box this Spring
when he was the defendant in a libel action brought
against him by one of the Macau officials in charge
of Opium.
The conditions on which he was awarded the
lest contract are not really known as the Macau
Government when challenged on the point by an
unofficial member of the Leal Senado, refused on
the 1st October 1924 to produce the contract or give
ny details about the farm whatsoever. In 1925
however in the Budget speech it was officially
stated that the conditions were at that time and for
the ensuing period $7,000 per chest payable by the
Farmer to the Government for opium obtained direct from India, end $3,000 per chest for opium of Indian
origin obtained from elsewhere. It will be showm
hereafter that this ste tement was not correct.
2. The Books. The Books examined purported to
The
be the cash books in Chinese for the three years
1924 to 1925, 1925 to 1926 and 1926 to 1927.
entries especially on the debit side, are not contemporaneous with the payments made and recorded under the dates, for instance three separate transactions in opium are recorded together under the date 11th February 1926, although the opium reached
Macau in 1925 and 1924. There are other entries which
show that the items have not been entered in the
proper sequence. It appears however that receipts for opium sold are in regular sequence and copied from a daily sales book, but here it must be noted that a
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