9th June, Hoxaxoxe has been. much agitated by a report that the new Viceroy at Canton, Li Han-chang, was about to raise the /likin on opium from Tls. 80 to Ts. 100 per picul, and the export of opium had gone up to about five hundred chests a yy, instead of the usual twenty-five or thirty. The opium merchants did not wait to consider that the likin of Tls. 80 per picul was fixed by the Chefoo Convention, and that it was stipulated that that payment was to free the drug from any further tax or duty whatever," and that if any further tax were imposed, the British goverament would have a right to terminate the Chefoo convention at once. The China Mait explains that a syndicate of opium merchants had offered the Viceroy to establish a protective service for the suppress sion of smuggling, and to pay him $250,000 a year, if they were allowed to levy a protective tax of Tls. 20a picul on all the opium imported into the Kuangtung province. 'I'he bait was so attractive to a man of Li Han-chang's character that he accepted the offer, the syndicate having, it is said, persuaded him that al the Chefoo convention provided was that the /ékin should not exceed T's. 80 a picul, and that he might put on this new tax of Tis, 20, if he did not call it likin, The Commissioner of Customs at. Canton, however, saw the absurdity of this at once, and persuaded the Vicero to refer the final decision to the Tsungli Yamen, Sir Robert Hart being of course informed of what Li Han-chang was being urged to do. It could not be imagined for a moment that the Peking government would consent to the pro-Besiton, and in the latest Hongkong legraph received we read that it was learnt from well-informed Chinese sources that the Viceroy had received telegraphic instructions from Peking to withdraw his proposal at once. As the Mail points out, even if the terms of the Chefoo Convention would allow the proposed impost, "the result of entrusting to a syndicate of Chinese merchants the right to levy a tax on foreign opium would lead to innumerable abuses and to daily friction with Hongkong."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.