Pho following despatch from Six'Thomas Wade to Eat! Granville is one of the papers on Opium presented to Parliament My Lord,—My telegram will have prepared your Lordship for a final Iteport from me upon the question of opium taxation.
'T must begin with a recapitulation of its history.
discussion of this question now, as trust, drawing toa close, dates, it may be assid, from the signature of the Chefoo Agreement in 1876. Believing that the exemption of our imports from the abuormal taxation known as the li-kin, within the area of freedom claimed by me under the British Treaty, would prove next to impossible, so long as li-kin Collectorates for the taxation of native trade existed, I consented, if the Chinese Government would open certain ports and places of call ug, to move Her Majesty's Government to' ignore the collection of Zekin beyond the limits of the foreign port settlements as already defined; or, where these had been undefined, beyond auch limits as should be accepted by our own and other Governmente.
The Treaties of some of these, it should ted, were read as considerably ex-ug the aren of exemption from taxa-jand of the port so far claimed by me. fo return to our own Treaty, the transit duty remaining in force, imports would, as heretofore, claim to be cleared at the option of the owner to any ink centre by the payment of a half Tariff duty.
My proposal to exclude the li-kin Collec-torales from the foreign settlements was suggested, not only by the complaint that their levy of li-kin upon foreign imports was in violation of Treaty, but by the fact that when levying likin which they were entitled to lery within the settlements, they or were liable to come into coll police mai by the port communities. The levies of the Collectorate Executive, on the one part, would not always be within the bounds of thole authority; on the other part, the taxed were ready enough to avail themselves of the protection from the taxgatherer, which an appeal to the settlement police might secure then his was notably the case in the matter The Chinese Government had Gotlectorate to tax it in the settlement, of purchaser, but the attempt of th li-kir
i for instance, had been more than once resisted, appeal being made to our Consul or to our Suprrme Court. If the Chinese Government, ment required were now to withdraw Collectorates from the settlements, it would the revenue due to it on opium ing in duty bound to guarantee it agai that loss, I agreed to move Hor Majesty's Goverumient to consent to the levy of the opium li-kin and Tariff together; the action of the native li-kin Collectorate being by that of the Foreign Custo: ce legalization of the opium trade by the Treaty of 1858, collected the Tariff duty of 30 tacle per picul upon the drug.
The rate of li-kin varied at different ports, and I considered it desirable that the ould, if possible, be uniform. The Grand Secretary Li, however, would not accept a lower rate than GO taels at every port, and it was accordingly agreed that if the joint collection were assented to bj government the rates should, as in time past, be regulated by the requirements of the several provinces, The arrangement I undertook to recommend regarding the general import trade did not commend itself to several of my colleagues, the Representatives of Treaty Powers then in Peking, and they requested their respective Governments to deprecate its ratification. On the other hand, the Government -of India became seriously alarmed at what appeared to threaten opium with a weight of unlimited taxation.
I have no right to be surprised at the impression produced upon the Government of India. Lhe missionary world received the same impression; and, consistently with ita professed belief that the trade in foreign opium is chief among the obstacles in the way of the teacher of religion, was 8 much delighted as the Government of Indin was dismayed.
I shall not pause here to consider the moralist view of the question. {hope to submit to your Lordship elsewhere some arks upon this subject. Fur the moment I keep to its material side, I believe that in reality the Government of Indi need have no fear for its revenue. Thi country is a vast opium-producing and opium-smoking region. The wealthier smoker prefers the Indian drug because it is the best. The Chinese Government, although by no means wholly insincere in its condemnation of both production and consumption, derives a large revenue from both native and foreign opium. The tax-ion of the latter might have been, certainly would have been, raised in some instances, but doubt extremely that it would have so risen as to jeopardize the revenue of {ndia, However, the Government of India thought otherwise, and ithas consequently been my endeavour to substitute for the arrangement contemplated by the Chefoo Agreement some other that might be considered fair to the Chinese Government and injurious to our own interests, Tt was to this and that I paid a visit to India on my way back hero in 1878-79, and have conversed, very informally, it is true, with various members of the Government upon the subject, I submitted my own views to Lord Lytton, then Viceroy, in a letter copy of which forwarded on my return to the Marquis of Salisbury, then my chief.
inclose " duplicate of that letter, from which it will be seen that, while incline on the whole toa concession of rate of li-kin, I begged that I feee to ascertain which proposition might be regarded by the Chinese as the more acceptable, On my arrival at tientsin, in the sum. mer of 1879, I again discussed the matter the Grand Secretary Li, the negotine for of the Chefoo Agri not long in discovering most in favour was the joint collection of Tariff and a uniform rate of li-kin by the foreign Customs Inspectorate. My estimate of the uniform rate, however, was still considered too low. From the data in my potseasion (soo p. 7 of my letter to Lord lytton), I argued that the Zekin collected, taking port with port, did not average much more than 30 taels per picul, and that, considering the small amount of pekin, that'can be made sure of once the drug emerges from the port area, a 40 taal rate would be liberal, I was prepared for ai invitation to recommend Her Mujosy's Government to go as far as 50 taols, But we did not reach this point, The Grand Secretary, acting, I thought, under instructions from Poking, suddenly became, to all appearance, indifferent to further prosecution of the negotiations Thad hardly returned to Peking when my colleague the Minister of Germa the revision of whose Treaty was still in complete, invited me as Doyen to call together all the Representatives of Iroaty Powers for a Conference upon the inland taxation of trade, import and export. We were also to consider other questions affecting-our Treaty relations with China, but the question of trade is that to which alone it is necessary to refer at this moment, I had myself made it a condition with the Tsung-li Yamen, before I took on me to declare the Yunnan affair closed in 1876, that the foreign Representatives should bs invited to take up the whole of these quostions, The Yamen did issue its Circular note, but without result; and I was to a certain extent in a position of disadvantage vis-d-vis the Yamen, as it was thus enabled to contend that every condition: affecting trade that I had required of the Chinese Government, in the Chefoo Agreement, had been satisfied, while on our side nothing had been done. Nor would it admit that Her Majesty's Government was in any way hampered by the objection of foreign Governments to the commercial clauses of the Agreement. The Minister of Germany had demanded removal of the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.