revision of the Treaty of Tientsin, in Blue Book No. 5 of 1871.
In regard to the protection we are entitled to, I go, in some respects, farther than the Memorialists. I think that the whole of the police required for the security of the foreign community at any port should be paid for Ohinese. In the present condition of China, none but foreign police would be effective. I would have the Chinese Government support one just as it now supports a revenue establishment formed of foreigners; with-this difference,—that, while it is essential that the revenue force continue as it now is, subordinate only to the Superintendent of Customs, who is by Treaty exclusively responsible for the protection of the revenue, the police force should be made, by a common understanding, as much the constabulary of the foreign Consuls as of the Chinese Government which pays it. It would be, in short, precisely what the so-called munici-al police of shai is at. this moment, wut paid by the Chinese Government instead of by the foreign merchant, and referring itself primarily to the Consuls or the Chinese officials, instead of to a committee of land-renters, or any other nonofficial or quasi-municipal body.
On the other hand, I do not think that the Chinese Government should contribute, or be called on to oblige its subjects to contribute, to the making or maintaining of foreign roads, foreign drainage, lighting, or other requirements of foreign civilization. My remarks point more particularly tothe condition of things at Shanghai, where the conservancy of the so-called all] British and American concessions is, I admit, right well cared for by the committee of land-renters known as the Municipal Council. The Chinese Government is, I think, bound to maintain all wharves, jetties, or like constructions essential to the merchant for purposes of shipping or landing; it is withal to the advantage of the revenue that they be maintained; but the quasi-municipal expenses of the com-european town or city, should no more be munity, the proper, that is, toa held to form ground of claim for assistance from the Chinese Government than the consumption by the same community of its wine and tobacco. At Shanghai especially, the quasi-municipal expenses are swollen by the great extent of- land held by the foreign community, land acquired not merely to furnish building sites for the residences or warehouses of the foreigner, but for the erection of buildings to be let to Chinese. The speculation has in iany instances proved unprofitable hence the quasi-municipal taxation of the Chinese sub-tenantry.
Very few ports, if any, will ever have occasion for a force as considerable as that now maintained at Shanghai; many ports will contrive, as they have heretofore contrived, to dispense with any; but, wherever a force is needed, it should be paid for by the Chinese Government, and this not only because the persons and property of the foreigners are by Treaty entitled to adequate protection at its hands, but because its delegation of a function so i wrtant even to the olticial of a foreign tate is, in the interest of its independence, step in the wrong direction, while the assumption of the same function by a committee of land-rentersis, I venture to think, very misleading to the foreign community at large; less to British subjects than to foreigners of other nationalities, but more or Jess to all.
I would speak with all fairness of the so-called Municipal Council of Shanghai, which, for the so-called British and American concessions, is composed of men of various nations; if it was at one time overlavish, it is now, I believe, making an honest effort to retrench, and no one who visits Shanghai will deny that the foreign town administered by it is in a condition that does credit to its application of its funds; but the pretensions of the French, which, in reality, go the length of consti-tating the so-called "Concession Frangaise" a territory of the French Government, are wholly ascribable in the first instance to the attitude assumed, and the language held, in 1863-64, by the quasi-municipal body administering the settlements not French; the talk about free ports, charters, and the like impossibility Istand, I fear, alone in my estimate of the mischief to be apprehended in time to come, from the continuance of a position so untenable as that of the French at Shanghai; but, with the views I hold, I cannot insist too earnestly upon the expediency of attempting its modification: and no means to that end appear to me 30 Promising a" the aubsiitation of 8 police force, paid and primarily wielded by the Chinese Government, for that now paid, by, and responsible to, the land-renters re-Ghinese Government maintain a police for resented by the Municipal Council. If the all beside the French, the French will hardly continue to maintain their present gendarmerie, which, I may observe, is far rather the police of their Consul-General than of their Conseil Municipal; and the whole foreign region being brought under the action of one police body, paid and belonging to the government of the country, fusion of the French and other nationalities may be looked for, which will never be possible so long as the French claim the right, as at present, to ignore all Consular authority but their own, in any part of China which becomes a Concession Fran-ise." The adoption of their term "concession" for what is really a '"délimitation," in plain English a factory ground, has been most unfortunate.
"I beg to close these remarks by observing, emphatically, that no one is more averse than myself to a discussion with the uch upon that local assumption of sovereigaty in which I see so much evil. I am. fully aware of the peril of alarming their susceptibility; but I am most anxious to see the evil neutralized, and the measure I suggest would, as I have argued, do
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.