A VERY opportune little volume has just been published by the Statistical Department of the Customs, in the shape of a pocket edition of the General Tariff for the Trade of China. We do not propose to attack the great question of the propriety of charging import and export duties at all, though the philosopher constructing an ideal State would probably dispense with them altogether; for there is something intrinsically absurd in fining people for bringing things into a country, which would not de brought in unless the country wanted them, and in mulcting them for sending things out of the country, which presumably the country can spare. Import and Export duties being an easy plan of ising money, and their incidence on' individuals being of trifling weight, nearly all nations adopt them, the most enlightened nations having as few of them as possible. This enlightenment must be taken to refer to political economy, for no one would deny the gen-' eral enlightenment of the United States, which has an import tariff of portentous width and depth. The tariff of China, thanks to the good sense and intelligence of the foreigners who negotiated the treaty which established it, and to the weakness at the time of the native negotiators, is one of the most reasonable in the world, and it is applied with general reasonableness by the authorities, and in consequence it is not often that we hear of disputes arising from it between merchants and Commissioners of Customs.
smoothly does it work, that few people, except those specially interested, are aware how many changes and modifications have been made in it, since it was originally settled. The little pamphlet before us enables these changes and modifications to be seen at a glance, four styles of type being used to distinguish respectively articles on which the duties are unchanged, duty-free articles, exceptional and contraband articles, and entries based on decisions given since the publication of the iginal tariff. It would be well for people who tum to their Direetories when they want to know the duty on a particular article, to compare their standards with this book, for the compilers of Directories are not always careful to embody the latest information in their supplementary pages. The tariff here is brought up to the latest date, for we find the duty on opium put at Tls. 110, which includes the pekin, and the recent objectionable decision as to the duty to be levied on soft-wood beams and planks is also stated. There are of course some anomalies in the tariff. We find guano entered under beancake: it is true that they are both used for manure, but their origin is somewhat different. It is very obvious to anyone who runs through the existing tariff that there must before long be a revision of the list of duty-free articles. When the tariff was framed, the idea was, to admit free everything that foreigners required for their personal use and comfort, and the foreigners in China at the time were so few, and hardly here and there one Chinaman used such things, that the concession was of little importance to China, and was a great convenience to foreigners. All this is changed. Of these duty-free articles an enormous amount is imported for sale to Chinese, and ought not consistently to claim exemption from duty, if duties are to be levied at all. The absurdity results that the same articles are duty-free if of foreign manufacture, and dutiable if Chinese; which is a very topsy-tury kind of protection to native industries. We may mention another remarkable anomaly. A steamer brought out from home in pieces, put up in Hongkong, and coming up here whole, pays no duty; but if she is put up in Shanghai, thus doing an actual benefit to local industry, she has to pay duty. The Customs thus give Hongkong shipbuilders a bounty of between fe and six per cent., which they deny to the shipbuilders in the China ports, It is true that by Mr. von Brandt's celebrated Supplementary Convention of 1880, dock stores are free of duty; but this concession was whittled down by special stipulation, so as to apply only to materials actually employed for the repair of ships, materials employed' in the construction of a new ship having to pay duty as before. Sir Rutherford Alcock's unratified Convention of 1869 proposed some minor altera tions in the tariff, and Mr, Dick in the same year made some suggestions on the subject which will no doubt be taken into consideration when, if ever, the revision of China's treaties with foreign powers is undertaken. Meanwhile for nearly twenty years hardly anything has been done in the way of reform in the direction indicated by Mr. Dick. He pointed out that there were articles not very heavily taxed, but yet of such small bulk in proportion to their value, that the attempt to prevent smuggling in them costs more than the revenue protected; but as to this the Customs would probably reply that the attempts to prevent smuggling are not—except in the case of" pipina special it general, and it would be difficult to say how much of the cost of the preventive service should be charged to a particu-tide. Mr. Dick also shewed that there are many articles which yield such trifling returns, that the expense of collection is out of proportion to the revenue collected from them; and no doubt there are still articles of which this is true, although general trade has increased so much since 1869. Generally Mr. Dick found the tariff full of inconsistencies and errors, and declared that a thorough and careful revision was abso lutely necessary. In an appendix to these remarks he shews that though the Chinese is nominally a 5 per cent, it is really a 12 per cent tariff; but when we compare it with the tariffs levied by some Western countries, or, to take an instance nearer home, with the tariff arranged with Corea by Sir Harry Parkes, it seems, and is, a reasonable scale. In the Corean tariff, 5 per cent. is exceptional, 7 and 10 per cent. are very common, and a hire number of articles pay 20 percent. That the China tariff is reasonable is proved more strongly by nothing than the fact that we so seldom hear complaints against it: the little pamphlet which we have made our text is a vade-mecum for all whose business brings them in contact with it.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.