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made for them!
Under the conditions existing previous to the
introduction of the new Tariff, the Officers in charge of
these vessels were rarely, or never, obliged to resort to the
use of weapons in carrying out preventive work, and the
Customs, moreover, always discouraged the use of force in
order to avoid complications in case of wounding the junk
people. As the mere sight of these weapons on the Launches
was enough, in former days when the Tariff was light, to awe
the mugglers and they submitted to search without the slight-
est resistance, it was unnecessary to provide our Launches
with expensive modern armaments. However, the conditions
have now completely changed and the smugglers are prepared
to defy the authority of the Government by armed resistance.
Effective measures, therefore, should now be devised, as
mentioned above, in order to put a stop to this open defiance
of authority. In the first place, it will be necessary
to discard all the present obsolete armaments carried by our
Kowloon and Lappa Revenue Launches and to replace them by
effective modern weapons - and this, naturally, will entail
considerable expense. In the second place, it will be
necessary to give full authority to officers in charge of
such vessels actively to deal with smugglers who offer armed
resistance to our vessels in the performance of their duty
that is, to fire on them!
The Inspector General also considers that further
investigation will probably indicate that it is necessary to
provide one or two additional vessels, better armed and better
protected