In a recent issue the Courrier d Haiphong makes, unintentionally, we imagine, and in the form of a complaint against the home government, a very important admission. It is that practically the whole French colony in Tongking lives on the mother-country's contribution. to the of the colony. "The ing article in which the admission is made, is based upon an unsigned and. undated letter which is printed at full length, the writer of which says that he is persuaded that the Courrier full, uses the justice of his cause, which is the cause of the whole trade of Indo-China. The grievance which inspires the letter is th Tumour that in the future the supplies required for the forces in Tongking will be contracted for by the government in France, The rule is to apply to flour at first, but the other supplies will follow. This, says the writer, must ex-excise the most ill-omened influence on the commerce of Indo-China. As yet there is hardly any export trade, in Tongking especially; import business with the natives is gradually expanding, but it is still very restric The French merchants in Indo-China only exist, until better days come, by fur-rushing supplies to the goverment, and if this fountain is cut off, some of the merchants at any rate must transfer themselves, their labours and their unproductive capital to some other clime, for a time at least, and perhaps for a long time. This would mean eva-enation, if partial and voluntary, and the result would be disastrous from every point of view. Is it just, the writer asks, to take away this chance of making money from commercial men, who have had the pluck and enterprise to come to Tongking in the face of heavy sacrifices, and to give it to men who all this time have been coiled up snugly in their shells in France? If the Ministry want to insist on all the supplies for the forces coming from France, they are quite right, and the measures necessary to secure this would not alarm a most interesting population, which has come out to Indo-China to cultivate a field which has so far given them only a scan-
that this letter, which we have fairly return. One would have thought summarised, would have sufficiently exposed the precarious and dependant position of French commerce in Tongking, but our contemporary enlarges fully and freely on his correspondents text. He does not wonder that the merchants of Paris have been agitated by hearing that the authorities in Tongking had called for tenders for the supply of 15,000 hundredweight of American flour, and the sar same quantity of Australian flour. (He of English coal required for the navy.) It says nothing about the thousands of tons
is against every administrative principle that tenders should be asked for foreign products. But this natural disgust on the part of the merchants in Paris does not justify their taking all the bread
that Tongking merchants ought hot to tongking. ur conte) ves:
the ae of the merchants in
be slighted like this after the sacrifices they have made. Licenses to trade are very costly; clerks must be very highly paid; eve ing costs three times what it does in ce. On the other hand what little export trade there is is-in the hands of the Chinese and is done with China. The import trade with the natives is hespered by the tariff, and comprises only a few piece goods and Matches and' some Chinese. products, the whole of it not enough to pay for the food of the merchants in Tongking. But as long as the supplies for the naval and military forces are contracted for on the spot, there is enough for all the mercantile firms in the colony. The proposed change means ruin to every firm that cannot afford to live on its capital for some indeterminate time. It will bea nice encouragement to trade if half the merchants have to pack up their baggage, and be off fo some country where they can make a living. "Indo-China will find itself deprived of the elements of success; Tongking will see the gradual disappearance of the French houses that have come in such numbers, that are now keeping body and soul together on what they can make out of the govern-~ ment, while they wait for the good time coming, when there will be a sensible business to be done with the natives."
Our contemporary urges two or three other minor reasons for maintaining the present system, but the main one is that which we have just presented, and a painful exposure of the nakedness of the land it is. After all we have heard of the glorious prospects of this bright jewel in the coronet of the Republic, of the desirability of reducing the naval and military forces and the expenses they entail, it is soniewhat astonishing to be told by the organ of French commerce in Tongking, that the whole commercial fabric is based on theprofitsmade by supplying these very forces with their flour and their petit bleu. We begin to doubt whether there is any earnestness li the often expressed hopes for the early pacification of the country, and the repatriation of the troops; we do not wonder at the outcry of M. Constans and the colonists against. the suppress sion of the general budget. The Courrier and its friends must indeed have been neatly touched when they could paint their dependant position in such vivid colours. More than once of late they have declaimed against the self-seeking of politicians at home who have us the Colony as a dumping-ground for their friends and relations, where salaries could always by provided for unneces-officials; and it turns out that the levance was that the provision of salaries for these officials left so much less for the merchants of Longking to keep themselves alive on. If anything could justify the Ministry in' Paris
would be this bitter complaint of in making ° the proposed change, it our contemporary; for it shews that the keep of the naval and military forces in the colony might have been reduced by the sum necessary to keep alive the colonists whom these forces are sent to protect. M. Ferry, in the letterwepublislted recently, assured his correspondents that no party yould dare to propose the evacuation of the colony; if any party wanted to, it would find a strong argument in this article. There is no sign that the article is intended to be satirical, as might be imagined; it is evidently inspired by a genuine alarm, but we are loath to believe that it is not seriously exaggerated, The Courrier says that the object of the proposed change is to assist the trade of the mother-country, and that it is not fair, in order to do that, to ruin the trade of the colony we cannot believe that the change, even
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.