Tne Shanghai Taotai has issued six-character metrical proclamation, notifying the wheelbarrow coolies that beginning from the Ist of next month they must pay the extra fee of 200 cash making the cost of " licence 600 cash monthly. He threatens to visit those who resist with condign punishment. hose who do not care to pay the enhanced tax, he says, can refrain from doing sv, but in that case they cannot ply in the foreign Settlements, Thus the Taotai has tried to carry out his promise made to the last Council in April last.
Unfortunately, the Taotai has not been contented with this, but he has followed this up with a dispatch to the Consular Body asking them to direct the Municipal Council to fix a tariff of fares for wheelbarrows, so that the wheelbarrow-men may be no losers in the end by the increase in the licence fee. Any practical person will see at once that it is an impossibility to fix' such a tariff. The variety of loads and of distances the loads are taken is so great that it would be an infinite labour to make out a tariff, and if it were made out, experience shows that it would be a dead letter. Wheelbarrow-men arid jivrisha-men and sampin-men, et hoc genus one, like to haggle, and no fixed tariff would be adhered to for a day, either by a wheelbarrow-man ar his hirer. The Consuls should have seen at once that the Taotai's request was made to give himself a chance of backing out if there is any disposition on the part of the wheelbarrow-men to resist on the first of next month. We are informed that at the meeting of the Consular Body at which the. Taotai's despatch was considered, the French Consul-General, the Count de Bezaure, objected to it en toto, declaring that' no such demand should be granted: on the Settlement which he administers;
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.