CO129-186 - Public Offices & Others - 1879 — Page 211

deove; a concession which, if the Chinese Government understood its financial niteredo,

it would esteem as

-profitable to itself

the foreign hader, but which unhappily

one

the

ao

во

premature mention of which would

be but too certam to alarm the Government,

I madvertently onisted all allusion to the state of the Shanghai watere

[プ

had

-entirely overlooked

Innot confess

that

your reference to

she

it until reminded of it by yourself as he

had been under the mecting broke up. impression that the obstruction adverted to

which

was the bank above Woosing,

has been the subject of so much complant and correspondence during the last 10 years. You explaned to me that it was not to

thus that

you were

directing

attention but to

banks of recent growth which threaten to contact the anchorage - space off the Settlement.

I

Irogred

207

I regret much that I shoved have left the

matter unoticed

it as soon as

I.

Yesterday I arrive in

J

whall look into

Shanghai.

come now to the Blockade, with the

case of the Colony against the Cordon of Stations and Cruisers that surround it,

vas

of Course

sufficiently familiar; but there were some

arguments advanced yesterday in support of it which I do not remember to have heard before.

I

shall endeavour to restate briefly the sum

of the Contentions put forward, whether new or old. It was contended if I understood the speakers aright, that the Proclamation of Captani Charles Elliot, then Supermitendent of Trade, which Hong Kong

was declared in 1844

by

a

free port, guaranteed to the Port certami advantages

in the enjoyment of which

the Chinese Government had for years acquiesced;

that Article 4444 of the Treaty of Trentem

which