Ose of the most attractive of the numerous consular reports on trade that reached us by the last mail is Mr. F.S. A. Bourne's on the trade of Tamsui; the mention of his name as the author of it is a sufficient guarantee of its interest. It is accompanied by two capital sketch maps, one of Formosa, and the other, on a larger scale, of the northern portion of the island, Liu Ming-chuan's railways, actual and contemplated, being clearly delineated thereon. All this the Foreign Office sells for fivepence halfpenny. The interest in Mr. Bourne's report lies not so much in the record of the actual trade of Tamsui during the year, as in the record of Liu Ming-chuan's improvements. There is a notice of the arrival of the Cass and the Smith, as to which Mr. Bourne is compelled' to say that "the steamers, which were built in England at a cost of £59,000 for the two, are badly suited for the purposes they were intended to serve; indeed, it is said that they cannot be made to serve profitably any purpose at all." "This, we understand, is in no way the fault of the firm through whom they were ordered, but of the Chinese requirements according to which they were designed. "'The Formosa Trading Company," Mr. Bourne goes on to say, "may be considered defunct; its failure seems only one proof amongst many that the Chinese are incapable of joint stock enterprise." Later on he returns to this subject, when writing on the Kelung coal mines. He says This is another undertaking in which the joint-stock plan has been unsuccessfully attempted by the Chinese here. In the spring of 1888 a concession was obtained from the Governor, by one 'I'sén; Ping-hsun, on behalf of a joint-stock company, to be called the Kelung and Feng-shan coal and_ timber superintendency (Feng-shan is a district in the south of the island), the capital of which was to be 600,000 taels raised from Chinese in Hongkong and Canton, to monopolise the exportation of coal and wood in the island. But although the Governor granted the concessionaires liberal powers, investing the company with an official style, the undertaking has fallen through. The prospectus printed for circulation in Hongkong and Canton is full of misrepresentations, and had the money been subscribed it would certainly have been lost." We learn that the largely increased output of the mine in 1888 was due to the energy of Mr. H. C. Matheson, a young engineer who came out from home to the Governor, and who would have done still more if he had been allowed his own way. The Governor, however, took him out of the coal mine and entrusted him with the supervision of the railway, and the coal-mine was relegated to Chinese management with its inevitable ill-success; and it is, no doubt, due to this ill-success that the Governor has handed over the mines to a foreign firm, who may be trusted to work them as they should be worked. Again, in writing on the railway, Mr. Bourne refers to the failure of Chinese joint-stock companies:—"When the sanction of the Imperial Government had been obtained, capital was raised from public funds, and by shares taken by officials and others over whom the Governor had influence. But this capital was insufficient, and the undertaking has been managed in a haud-to-mouth manner at once expensive and ineffectual. The failure of all other undertakings in the island founded on the foreign joint-stock plan, that requires, it would seem, a higher morality than the Chinese, or, perhaps, it would be fairer to say, a social organisation differently constituted from theirs, destroyed confidence and made it impossible to raise more money by public subscription. The Governor therefore prayed the Peking Government to make the railway an imperial concern, and sanction has now been obtained to its being constructed from Kelung to Chang-luo from Imperial Government funds." In answer to Mr. Bourne's sweeping condemnation of Chinese joint stock companies, the Kaiping mines and the China Merchants'
N. Ca. may be cited; but these companies were both more or less failures at first, and it is to their good fortune in securing exceptional men as managers, that their present position is due.
Mr. Bourne gives a brief list of the material improvements that Liu Mingchuan, "perhaps with more zeal than judgment", has effected in northern formosa. Steam saw-mills, under the charge of an Englishman, are cutting 800 sleepers a day for file railway; the new city of Taipeh-fu is lighted by electricity, and a brick-making machine has been imported from England; forts are being constructed at Tamsui, Kelung and the Pescadores and armed with the best Amnstrong guns; an ammunition factory and an arsenal have been built at Taipeh-fa, and are working well "under the able superintendence of a German officer"; the Governor has opened an English' school, his own sons being among the pupils; but the chief work of all is the railway, which is to run from Kelung to Twatutia, and thence south-west and south to the intended new capital of the island, New Chang-hua, and so on to Tainan-fu. In Mr, Bourne's report will be seen what unnecessary difficulties the English engineers have to contend with, owing to the conceited stupidity of the chinese general to whom Liu has entrusted the charge of the work. Disheartening the record is, for it is melancholy that Lin's good intentions should be frustrated by the incompetence of his subordinates. Mr. Bourne's closing paragraphs give us a new impression of the insurrection in the island last year, and put the Governor's character in a very favourable light. He says:—" The country people object to an impost they had not bargained for, although they are perfectly well able to pay it, the farmers and peasants of Formosa being probably
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.