6
Inclosure 6 in No. 1.
Acting Consul-General Fox to Viceroy Yuan.
Your Excellency,
Canton, September 24, 1909. I HAVE the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch of the 17th instant, enclosing a report from the Opium Prohibition Bureau on the subject of the new regulations for the control of the raw opium trade.
As the Opium Prohibition Bureau's action in this matter directly affects the treaty rights of British merchants and agreements recently concluded between our respective Governments, it is my duty to report the matter in detail to His Majesty's Minister in Peking and ask for his instructions, on receipt of which I shall again have the honour to address you on the subject.
Two statements, however, in the bureau's report I cannot allow to pass unchallenged.
The first is that "all the opium shops (with the exception of the Ch'uan Fook Ch'eong) were carrying on business as usual, and that no dislocation had been caused to the trade of either Chinese or foreign merchants."
If your Excellency will direct the commissioner of customs to furnish your Excellency with a report of the amount of foreign opium imported into Canton during the present month, you will find it is, practically speaking, nil.
How, then, can the bureau say that there has been no dislocation of trade? In the second place, the Governor of Hong Kong's proposal, quoted in the second half of the bureau's report, referred to native, not foreign, opium. He suggested that the price of native opium should be increased in order to bring it up to a parity with foreign opium, and thus do away with the inducement to smuggle to Hong Kong.
The bureau have apparently entirely misunderstood the governor's meaning, and their comments on his proposal are therefore quite beside the point at issue.
I have, &c.
0
HARRY H. FOX.
Office or Individual.
Foreign
1909
10tor
Last Previous Paper
G
3603
Thong
Points to for straits / Cauf 12 No
MONA KONG STRAITS
136990
75
DOMESTIC.
0.0 36930
RESP Rro 1 NOV 09
Chia Trade
cher com
Prints of further
37. Shatt.
? Punts to at kong cons of with
36183 34968.
JR 12
at me 1/12.
1733-A. & E. W.-20968/27--
23000--11-09.
Next subsequent Paper
38163
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.