23rd July. In his Report on the State of Trade at the Treaty Ports of China Mr, Brenan mentions that: "In Foochow the import trade is wholly in the hands of Chinese, but as a matter affecting the prosperity of the port, the British mercantile community complains, that although under the treaty of 1842 it is the city of Foochow that is open to foreign trade, the Chinese officials, for purposes of taxation, treat Foochow as outside the limits of the port. All merchandise after paying import duties at the Custom-house is further taxed on its way to the city or suburbs." The question at Foochow should have been settled long before this by the Consuls there or the Ministers at Peking; meanwhile it is being used as a precedent by the Chinese in an important question that is now before the Foreign Ministers at Peking.
The Chinese are endeavouring to insist that foreigners shall not be allowed to have business offices in the native cities of Hangchow and Soochow; they say that they have provided Settlements outside the walls of the cities, and foreigners must be content with those settlements. Of course, they would like, if they could, to restore the old Canton days, when foreigners were strictly confined within the four walls of the factories; but as this is now happily impossible, they are throwing, after the mauner of Chinese officials, as many obstacles as they can in the way of foreign trade at the new ports, The position taken up by the United States authorities is that when a port is opened by treaty to foreign trade, it is not meant that the foreign concession is the only part that is
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.