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Ministry for Foreign Affairs, January 23rd, 1923.

Sir,

I have the honour to acknowledge receipt of Your Excellency's despatch, being Sir L. Carnegie's despatch No. 20 of January 29th, 1923.

The Note which Your Excellency addressed to Dr. Barbosa de Magalhaes on the 10th November, stating the conditions in regard to which His Majesty's Government desired to obtain the concurrence of the Government as a preliminary to the negotiation of an agreement on the importation of opium into Macao from India, in substitution of the agreement of 1913, was forwarded in due course to the Ministry for the Colonies.

I have now received from my colleague in that Ministry the particulars necessary to enable me to reply to Your Excellency's Note, and I have the honour to transmit them to you in a recapitulated form, which will, however, show His Majesty's Government the care which has been taken in the examination of their proposals.

Portugal does not in any way wish to weaken its undertaking, assumed under the Convention of 1912, to put an end gradually to the abuse of opium. It cannot, however, refrain from taking into consideration circumstances which none of the countries interested have failed to take into account in connection with their respective colonies.

The agreement of 1913 allocated to Macao for ten years five hundred chests of opium, two hundred and sixty being for home consumption and two hundred and forty for export, with power to increase the latter. By this, it was recognised that for the trade of Macao, five hundred chests were...