It is to be regretted that the arrangements of the Statistical Department of the Foreign Customs have not permitted the publication of these reports at an earlier date, The fault does not, we are well aware, lie with the Department in Shanghai, but in mistaken direction from Peking which overloaded it with a quantity of matter relating to the Vienna Exhibition—matter of interest no doubt, but which should not have been allowed to thrust aside reports having value almost directly proportionate to their early publication, As a body, the present volume of reports is scarcely up to the average and the ports of Shanghai, Hankow and Canton, three of the principal in forming an estimate of the trade of the year, do not contribute to its pages. OF the reports publi Morehead, Assistant-in-charge at Swatow, is undoubtedly the fullest and at the same time di knowledge of the course of trade, whole, the reports indicate a dept trade, and itis noteworthy that the reduction in the receipts occurs mainly in native articles. Woe have from Peking Gazettes and other sources given the true explanation of this, but we cannot but remark the strange abstention from discussion on this topic which as a general rule marks the reports. Mr, Taintor, in his Inst report, had so nearly exhausted the mercantile topics current at Newchwang, that but little was left for his successor to aay. Mr. Man does, however, give us a curious description of the flow of emigration into Manchuria, from the northern provinces of Chin:
In China proper, whatever is thought in reference to official maladministration, the respect for law and order which 90 generally prevails around the Treaty ports renders the course of trade, when once established, a relatively smooth and predeterminable affair of judgment, ut in Manchuria it is as yet otherwise. A great portion of the vast region known by this name is still somewhat in a transition atate, and the new occupants of the land, before whom the remnant of the original Tartar population is rapidly disappearing, have been left sadly in want of that strong leadership and firm control which la a safoguard of the exiled European. The human wave which, for two hundred years, has surged in this direction is, in practice, encountered by but few official barriers.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.