A draper in the Evening Courier of the 20th instant, on the trade of Chin-Kiang, contained so many fallacies, and withal was written with the air of so much authority, that a few words in reply may not be out of place. We some months ago, speaking irrespective of the question as to treaty stipulations, drew attention to the remarkable development of trade which had taken place at that port, through a practice which prevailed for some months of bringing down produce at a reasonable rate of transit duties, The fact was undeniable that, for a considerable time, Chinese produce in quantities never before heard of, did make its way to Chinkiang, and as a nataral sequence that foreign goods were sent up country in return in unwonted quantities. After some months of silence, during which he possibly imagines the facts of the case may have been forgotten, the writer in the Courier tells us, in the first instance, that there was only a tomporary spurt; and secondly, that this temporary spurt only took place because suspicions were aroused that the practice would soon be stopped. It is of course difficult to form just conclusions from what might have happened, though our contemporary seems to look upon itas the easiest thing in life; but the facts remain that, during a time when the duties on goods coming from the interior were reduced to a fair standard, articles of consumption before unheard of in the Chinkiang market came down by hundreds of boatloads, and from quar-tars which hitherto had never enjoyed a market for their produce out of their own immediate neighbourhood. It is also a fact that the people in these districts were able, coincident with sending their goods to the Chinkiang market, to purchase a very large supply of foreign piece goods, and so materially to increase the purely foreign trade of the port. We have certainly some foundation for our argument that, if such a satisfactory state of affairs were the result of a temporary alleviation, a permanent settlement of the obnoxious barrier dues would render lasting what circumstances only permitted to be temporary. Next, the writer falls into the fallacy of connecting prosperity with the foreign element alone. It seems almost hopeless to endeavour to show some men that foreign trade at a port may be in the highest state of efficiency without the direct inter. vention of foreigners themselves. Circumstances forced foreigners into the management of the transit pass system, because the Chinese Government has persistently refused to right its own subjects, and a protection for trade has to be sought by the underhand process of doing through foreigners what had better be done by the Chinese themselves. As we have often pointed out, the connection of foreigners with the trade has nothing to do with its rights or wrongs. If the laches of the Chinese Government render it advantageous for its own subjects to employ extraneous aid to carry on their trade, it cannot according to the practice of civilized nations, come into court and plead those laches in its own interest. Yet this is what the writer endeavours to do.
Again, the writer acknowledges that native exactions amount to some 80 or 40 per cent on the value of the goods. We believe that, in the case of the goods in question, they amounted to much more; so much that in the ordinary course of events they could never be laid down at Chinkiang at all. Assuming, however, that the 30 per cent or 40 per cent was the outside, we are unformed that it is not a healthy trade which requires to be "artificially fostered." We have heard of protection before, and the fostering of particular trades by artificial obstructions to competition; but we fail to conceive how reducing a tariff unheard of. elsewhere can be considered as an artificial fostering. We wonder what, in the opinion of the writer, the "natural course" of trade should be. Adam Smith and even John Stuart Mill have suffered many travesties since first they presented their works to the world, but we doubt if ever they have met with such strange perversion as this, The writer finally makes an ad misericorcham appeal for the barrier officials, whose receipts were daily becoming less. Poor barrier officials, they have our sympathy as well; so has the murderer whois going to be hanged, but what of the victims!, Is there no sympathy for the millions kept in poverty by these very same barrier officials, who are the curse of the empire. It is a very hard thing, doubtless, for a barrier official who has paid large sum for his barrier to find him. self without his ordinary gains; but it is also a hard thing that, in order to allow the said barrier official to fatten on the gains cof his office, a whole district should be kept on the verge of starvation, and every attempt at free trade or free intercourse with their fellow men be ruthlessly suppressed. We don't seek to "concuss" (?) the Chinese into an interpretation of the treaties they cannot bear, but we do desire to warn them that the present state of affairs cannot last, and that if they do not themselves endeavour to seek a remedy it will be
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.