This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government)
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[August 12 27903
OPIUM.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[31720]
No. 1.
SECTION 2
RECE
RFGF25 UG 1
(No. 301.) Sir,
Sir J. Jordan to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received August 12.)
Peking, July 26, 1911.
AS my telegraphic reports will have shown you, there has been a series of attempts lately on the part of the provincial authorities, notably of the Viceroy at Canton, to evade the terms of the new opiun agreement and to revive the restrictions and abuses which it was the main object of that agreement to remove.
propose in the present despatch to confine myself to a brief review of the Canton incident and of the steps which have been taken to make the central Government and the Viceroy realise that they cannot violate the agreement with impunity.
On the 4th instant the consul-general at Canton informed me by telegraph that the Viceroy had officially communicated to him a proposal for compelling opiumi boilers to mix an anti-opium medicine with raw opium. The cost of the medicine was to be 50 cents. for each ounce of raw opium, and purchase was to be made compulsory from a syndicate which had received a monopoly of its sale. As the whole scheme seemed to be a transparent device for imposing an additional tax upon raw opium in contravention of the spirit of the recent agreement, I telegraphed at once a lengthy statement of my views to Mr. Jamieson, and instructed him to lose no time in seeing the Viceroy and impressing upon his Excellency the gravity of the step he was about to take. Action of this kind would, it was pointed out, come with a very bad grace at a moment when the Canton Government was receiving our sympathy and support in repressing revolutionary movements, and the Viceroy might, in any case, rest assured that we were determined to resist with the utmost vigour any attempt on his part to revive the malpractices of the past.
On the 7th July I handed the Wai-wu Pu the memorandum, a copy of which is enclosed, and protested in the strongest terms against the Viceroy's action, of which they professed to have no knowledge, and which they made little or no attempt to justify. I made it very clear that so long as the Chinese Government failed to enforce the 7th article of the agreement relating to the withdrawal of restrictions they need not expect me to entertain any request for the enforcement of the prohibition by provinces as provided for in the 3rd article.
On the 8th July Mr. Jamieson telegraphed that after an hour's discussion the Viceroy still contended that his proposal did not infringe the agreement, although he promised to talk the matter over with the Opium Prohibition Bureau and let Mr. Jamieson have a definite answer in a few days-an answer for which His Majesty's consul-general is still waiting.
On the 11th July the Wai-wu Pu forwarded me a copy of the Viceroy's telegraphic report (Enclosure 2).* and sought to justify his Excellency's action on the ground that the medicine was to be mixed with the prepared opium and that the whole transaction related to the retail trade.
In my reply, dated the 13th July, copy of which is also enclosed,* I pointed out that the agreement was expressly made to secure the removal of the provincial restrictions and that the consolidated duty had been raised to a figure which left no possible excuse for any further taxation of the kind that had been illegally imposed at Canton.
I denied the Viceroy's right to legislate under the agreement, and emphasised the fact that the power of regulating the retail trade in the drug was vested exclusively in the Chinese Government, to whom I appealed for a fair interpretation of the instrument they had so recently signed.
On the 17th July Mr. Jamieson telegraphed that the Viceroy had taken no action, and that the regulations, which were unanimously opposed by the trade, had nominally come into force on the previous day.
In my temporary absence at the hills, Mr. Loraine, on the 18th July, addressed in my naine a further protest to the Wai-wu Pu, copy of which forms Enclosure 4 in this
* Not printed.
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