18th Feb, THe communication from our South Formosa correspondent which we print in another column, and which has been delayed in the hope that news would come that the authorities had made some amends for their outrageous cou-duct, will be read with interest and astonishment. 'I'he facts have already been mentioned by us, but not with the details that our correspondent gives. A steam launch belonging to the Anping Launch Company was lying at Takow with a cargo of dried fish which she iliad been chartered by a Chinese firm been resented to the Customs and to carry to Anping. Her manifest had
vised, and she was to start for Anping on the morning of the 13th ultimo. The evening before, the likin runners rushed on board, smashed in the deck, seized the cargo, stole everything they could find easily portable on board including the crew's clothes and portions of the launch's machinery, and drove the crew on shore. he likin deputy only justified the conduct of his men, although it was distinctly stated that the shippers to evade the payment of likin, which would indeed have been impossible, as the launch lay at the bund immediately in front of the likin office, and under the eyes of the likin, Foochow, and knew that he might come officials and runners. Meanwhile, the launch has to be laid up for two mouths at the busiest time of the year while the missing parts of her machinery are replaced from Hongkong, and the other necessary repairs effected.
Our correspondent points out that there are three modes of preventing the evasion of likin, provided by the regulations. The owners of the launch concerned are requested not to take cargo on which the likin has not been paid, and this request has never been neglected, for the foreigners in South Formosa do not, as we gather, inter-fore at all with the levying of likin on Chinese cargo owned by Chinamen, The likin deputy's second remedy, which is more official, is to have the clearance of the launch stopped by the Customs, until all likin is paid; and the third is to report the supposed evasion to the consul concerned, who will stop the departure of the launch, until the dispute is settled.
'The high-handed and utterly unjustifable action taken by the likin deputy in the present case makes it very robable that it was not the regular likin that the runners were trying to collect, but a squeeze' for themselves, and in their determination to get it they recklessly destroyed foreign property of ten or a hundred times the value of their intended extortion. 'I'he new Governor of Formosa, H.E. Shao, is probably hardly yet warm in his seat, and the present outrage is the result first of the utter neglect with which the late Governor, Liu Mingchuan, treated the south of his satrapy, and secondly of the serious. and constant neglect of British interests by Sir John Walsham, Liu Mingchuan allowed the government of South Formosa to fall into the hands of a set of unscrupulous and rapacious officials, who are utterly careless of the ruin and disaster they bring upon the country, so long as they can feather. their own nests; and H.B, Shao has apparently not yet had time to investigate their actions and grub them up, root and branch. 'They have no fear of the British Consul, because they know that he will get. no support from his Minister at Peking, however urgent his representations may be. Sir John Walsham could not act otherwise' than he does, if he were trying to: transfer British trade in South Formosa to some other flag. 'We are tired of drawing attention to the indifference of the British Minister, jand would willingly drop' the subject altogether; but not all the Ministers at Peking are as supine he is, and we must speak out when we see that his \indifference is leading to the transfer to other nationalities of trade that has been and should continue to be British.
The change in the condition of For-there was no intention on the part of mosa from a dependency of Fukien to an independent governorship, has not "been by any means an unmixed: advantage, As long as the local officials were responsible to the Viceroy at
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.