Ly the extracts from the Peking Gazette publish in another page there was a long memorial from Tan Chiung, Superintendent of Mines in Yunnan, asking for funds. Twenty years ago Yunnan was regarded by foreigners as a mysterious country of fabulous mineral wealth, which would make China the richest nation in the world, if she would consent to the resources of the province being developed by western scientific methods. 'I'he Mahommedan rebellion, the journeys of Margary and of Grosvenor, and the subsequent travels of a succession of British representatives in Western China, have toned down our conceptions of the wealth of Yiimnan, but we are still far from knowing all its possibilities. We learn, however, from the memorial before us that the copper mines of Tung-chuan and Chao-tung, old mines which have been re-opened after ten years' disuse, are very promising. The Superintendent's reports are not very definite; the shafts, he owns are some of them flooded, and ventilation is bad; the position of the seams is very uncertain, and nothing definite is known of their richness or extent; in fact there is hardly as much information as promoters at home would think necessary to inveigle the British public into a wild-cat gold mine in the Transvaal. The mines must be rich, however, and worked without any very great difficulty, for notwithstanding their inaccessibility, the difficulty of transport, and the scarcity of labour in the mountains, there are at the present moment twelve thousand piculs of ore lying at the mouth of the mines, and the present daily output amounts to three thousand piculs which, if it is correct, shews that the industry is a pretty extensive one. Smelting furnaces are already in opera tion, and the memorialist expects, if he can manage the transport, to be able to send from ten to twenty thousand piculs of copper to Peking this year.
then refers to some other mines in the Yung-shan district, but as to these he merely tells us that they are being people These are the grounds on which worked with great enthusiasm by the
it. an Chiung asks for money, and presuming his statements to be true, the request would be a very reasonable one, even supposing he wanted the money to open the mines and start the industry. That, with a government anxious to develop its mineral resources, to provide itself with a supply of metal which it urgently needs for its coinage, and at the same time find employment for the people in a frequently turbulent province, would be one of the most natural things in the world; precautions of course being taken to make sure that the reports of the official who asked for the money were honest, and that the money would not be misapplied. But after all Mr. 'I'an Chiung's earnest demand is not for capital to develop the mines, on which there might be a certain risk, at which the government might possibly hesitate in times like the present; what he is begging for is payment for the copper already shipped to the government. The mines have been worked so far, and the copper produced, by means of the capital und by a syndicate of merchants, whose enthusiasm, no doubt, has been excited by means well known to provincial authorities. They have so firmly established the industry that the memorialist "feels himself justified in asserting that the supply of copper will go on increasing year by year an that the former embarrassment will not occur again." But they now appear to have come to the end of the tether of their resources, and the memorialist asks to be paid for what they have produced in order that they may continue production. The happy-go-lucky, pay-as-little-as-you-can system on which the finances of China are administered illustrated in his complaint that while the Board of Revenue appropriated—Tls. 500,000, all he has been able to ie, told certain provinces to pay hitn—
extract from these provinces is something under Tls. 150,000; this—as he plaintively adds—would only be sufficient to purchase something over ten thousand piculs of copper, which is much less "it is quite unreasonable that the than the quantity to be paid for, and
syndicate should be called upon to advance the remainder without receiving payment." The Emperor quite agrees with the memorialist, and orders the Board of Revenue "to assign him a rullion taels from some certain source to be forwarded to the province within the specified time to meet the urgent requirements of the case and we can only hope that Mr. an Chiung will tell us, through the Gazette, before long, how much of this million taels he has received, and how soon after his demand he has received it, It appears that he is not going to ship any more copper until he gets st any rate some of it. The ordinary observer who did not: know China well would think that the first task of a government would be to reform such a disorganised system of finance as this memorial shews.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.