28rd April. Att who read the very interesting account published in our calamus yesterday morning of the negotiations for the second Chinese indemnity loan must have risen from its perusal with a deep-drawn sign of relief at the thought of the danger to our prestige in China which was only just averted by the firmness of Lord Salisbury and the patience and energy of the Peking agent of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, on whose shoulders fell all the detail work and the ultimate responibility. So wear were we to seeing the Imperial Maritime Customs handed over to French control, that a French Deputy Inspector-General was actually appointed, a man with no qualifications for the post, and whose assumption of the chief control of the service—for had his appointment been i ratified, Sir Robert Hart would, we i know, have resigned—would have been almost as unwelcome to the existing French members of the service as to their colleagues of other nationalities.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.