In connection with the opening of the Macao tea season, the China Mail draws attention to the ever-recurring tendency to overdo this article as to the prices first paid for it, It is said that the usual excess sive rates have been paid for the earlier samples and this fact might be sceepted quietly if it merely) affected those immediately concerned. The policy, however, of rushing up prices of first shipments tends materially to damage the chance of obtaining tea at anything like reasonable rates; and the same system blindly followed year after year results only in profit to the native teamen, who chuckle and laugh in their capacious sleeves at the want of "nous" and entire lack of combination displayed by the foreign buyers. The latest telegrams, referring to the last shipment of Congou for the season 1879-80, do not favour the notion that the tea brokers at Home are likely to follow in the wake of tea buyers on this side. Common Congous, which had been selling for Od. per Ib., had declined to 7}d. Such a decline, when it affects any other article in the Home market, produces corresponding caution and prudence at this end of the line; but the effect is but too frequently of a different kind in regard to tea and silk. There is every reason to believe that much of the success which has attended business during last season was owing to the combination, such as it was, organised by foreign buyers before the opening of the various tea markets in China, It is sincerely to be wished that the same course will be followed this season, with a like favourable result.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.