17th Dec.
TLE. La Han-cana, the Viceroy of the 'I'wo Kuang, has the reputation of being of a very accumulative disposition, and Hongkong has just had a reminder of this in the shape of an advertisement headed " Reward" issued by the Piece Goods Guild at Canton, and inserted in one of the Chinese newspapers published inthe colony. It reads, the Daily Press tells us, as follows "We have already been ordered by the Viceroy of Canton to collect the piece goods' taxes, because we must offer the Chinese Government $10,000 each year. At present there are travelling merchants, who make use of the foreigners' respectability, trying to free their goods from paying the [taxes by means of transit passes} and smuggling is also springing up. We have, therefore, hardly enough money to pay the Government yearly, and this is injurious to our Guild's reputation. This is distressing. Hereafter all our people must strictly search into this. If any one arrests a smuggler and shows his smuggled property to the Guild, then the smuggler will certainly be fined ten times as much as the amount of the tax. 'I'he amount of the fine, less the proper tax, will be the reward of the informer, who is to be paid immediately upon the hearing of his information, and then the Guild will bring an action against the accused. Our people should follow this rule and must not in their greed for gain buy any smuggled goods. If any one disobeys his smuggled goods will be confiscated."
The likin levied by the Piece Goods Guild at Canton, for which they compound with the provincial government by the payment of ten thousand dollars a year, is fixed at 20 cents a piece on all cotton piece goods. The reference in the Guild's advertisement to the evasion of likin by the use of transit passes is very suggestive. For many years the transit pass system was entirely ignored by the provincial authorities in the province of Kuangtung. Looking back to the Customs Returns for the third quarter of this year, it will be seen that no passes were issued at Swatow, and only 46 at Pakhoi, where their use was confined to matches and kerosene oil. At Canton, however, they have been brought into use this year, and whereas in July-September, 1890, only 9 passes were issued, covering 1,178 piculs of Indian yarn, 20 pieces of camlets, and 20 cases of kerosene oil, this year 652 passes were issued in the quarter, covering over 14,000 pieces of cotton, nearly 20,000 piculs of Indian yarn, over 1,100 pieces of woollens, and a number of sundries, the most important being 156,000 cases of kerosene oil. Yhis rapidly extending employment of transit passes has evidently alarmed the Piece Goods Guild, and this udverfisement is the result, but there is a delightful audacity in its being publicly inserted in a Chinese newspaper in Hongkong, Arrangements for the issue of transit passes were made in Canton, Mr. Woodruff told us in his last annual report, in 1882, but up to the end of 1889 only 13 passes were issued in all. In 1890 there were 79 passes issued, and Mr, Woodruff adds that "the revival is attributed to the new taxes and a dread that if prices at the destinations in the interior are not kept down there will be competition by way of Haiphong." The result of the revival in 1890 was evidently beneficial, as, while only 79 passes were issued altogether in 1890, 1,172 passes have been issued in the first nine months of this year.
There can be no question that in Canton at any rate eternal vigilance is required to keep the foreign trade free from illegal imposts, and we have no doubt that the British consul there has had his attention drawn to the menace involved in this advertisement.
The Piece Goods Guild, of course, has to make up its agreed payment to the provincial treasury, whether the likin is evaded by the use of transit passes or not, and on the other hand the transit pass system was instituted with the very object of protecting trade from such variable and uncertain exactions, as these likins and chingfeis, of which HE. Li Han-chang is so fond: but it is a novelty that this exaction should be openly advertised in Hongkong, however distressing it may be to the Guild to see their intended victims availing themselves of a privilege secured to them by treaty, and made use of to prevent the trade being transferred to the neighbouring French colony.
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Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.