The Board of Trade to the Foreign Office dated May'19, 1869.
"My Lords entertain no doubt that the view expressed in some of the Memorials and even at one time by Sir R. Alcock himself, viz, that the payment of the transit dues ought to be held to exempt the goods upon which it has been paid from all subsequent internal taxation amd to insure the aale of the goods to their ultimate consumer with no enhancement of vast derived from taxation, save that represented by the import and transit duties, is a view which cannot be entertained by Her Majesty's Government. There is nothing in the terms of the Treaty which appears to my Lords to justify such a sweeping demand, and in view of the internal taxation to which native goods are subject in China, it would be in their opinion both unjust and inexpedient to enforce such a demand, even if it were warranted by the terms of Preaty stipulations.
All that Her Majesty's Government can aim in this respect, appears to my Lords to be, that in the Treaty ports the importer shall have the right to sell his goods in the market, after payment of the Customs duties stib: Jated, and that he shall have the right to send goods to any internal market which he may
Customs duty on importation, and the stipu-elec, fro from avy other charge than the ated transit duty; but that both at and at the internal market, when ones goods have passed out of his hands they must take their chance in common with native goods, stipulation th highest British authority, and is I thinl quite unimpeachable. The British Goverminont give the effectual guarantee to the British merchant, to which Lord Elgin refers in the passage just quoted, by protecting British property so long as it is under the Transit Pass, but at the open port or in the interior, when goods of British origin have become Chinese property, all protection ceases and they become Tiabh to the same treatment. as native goods. The Treaty provides for British owned goods passing to any city in the interior for half the tariff-duty, and this Lord Elgin thought was sufficient. protection. If it has never been fairly tried or has failed, that is a different question.
Finally, I beg to quote the latest pub-shed. opinion of Sit R. Alcock as endorsed by the Foreign Office, although I am quite aware that he has expressed a different view in despatches written at Peking.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.