'THE SHANGHAI LAND REGULATIONS, (Daily Press.)
The community of Shanghai have for me weeks past been working themselves into a state of nervous excitement, and, as frequently happens in such cases, they have done in their fright and in haste what they may possibly repent of at leisure. Because two of the opium importing firms have removed to the French Concession, entailing a loss to the revenue of Tls. 16,000, or one-fifteenth of the total, they have decided to throw away over Tls. 80,000, or one-third of the whole revenue. This tax, called Wharfage Dues, has been collected for many years; being only one-tenth of one per cent. it was felt but lightly, and it was very easily collected. The haste to give it up, especially as by increasing almost every other tax they not quite make up half the amount, seems accountable only on the supposition that fear of other firms following the example of the Messra. Sassoon had tempora arily deprived the citizens of their reason. The firms whose action brought about this fasco objected to the tax being levied on opium on the grounds that it was raised for the purpose of maintaining the wharves and jetties, and that as the drug was transhipped on to and from the hulks and never entered the Settlement it was not liable. There was certainly some reason in this, but the Council would not listen, and by grasping at too much they have lost all, The fear that the greater portion of the mercantile community would migrate to the French Concession was, we think, groundless, as, in the first place, there is no accommodation for them there, and the amount of the Wharfage Dues would be more than lost by the deterioration of property in the other Settlements. There does not seem to have been any particular feeling against the dues, and as was pointed out by the N.-C. Daily News, "it needs little knowledge of Chinese taxation to see that the amount thus taken away from the Council goes neither to the producer nor importer of opium, but is filtered away amongst petty squeezers at up-country barriers.""
The Council have also discovered, what has been alleged before and several times refuted by their predecessors, that the Land Regulations are illegal and that they have not sufficient authority to collect any tax. Some persons, who hare thereby gained notoriety, refused to pay their taxes. But this has been done before, and on appeal the rights of the Council have been maintained by both the British and American Courts, and nothing has arisen to show that the same would not happen again. Besides it was admitted by the Chairman of the council that no one had refused to pay Wharfage Dues. We think the fears of the Council were fully answered by Mr. Kingsmill, a gentleman well versed in the history of the tlements, who contended that the original regulations arranged between the Intend ant of Circuit and the British Consul in 1845 gave a full and decided concession once for all to the ratepayers of Shanghai to manage their own internal affairs, and that so long as subsequent regulations were kept within the bounds of these first ones of 1845 that was all that was needed and the new regulations were valid. We cannot but think that our Northern friends are frightened at a ghost of their own rais" ing, and that they have made a great mise in ziving up a third of their revenue, It is to be hoped they may be able to do without the money, but we much doubt it. This much we may prophecy; that unless they are able to come to terms with their French neighbours, or succeed in amalgam mating the concessions, their troubles have not ended.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.