26th Jan.
Ir is always satisfactory to see the vernacular papers discussing in a liberal way matters affecting the administration of the empire. The Hupao under its present management is read in a large number of the yamens throughout the eighteen provinces, and no doubt some useful consideration will be given to its leading article on Saturday last, advocating the gradual abolition of the so-called lithia stations, which it boldly declares—the fact being only too well known—are a great source of oppression to the people. The article begins in the most approved form by reviewing the history of the establishment of these offices for the collection of revenue. Their establishment, it reminds its readers, dates back to the time of the Taiping rebellion, when the government had an acute struggle for existence, and every possible source from which funds could be derived had to be utilised to enable it to carry on the war against the rebel Wangs and their followers. The likin then was essentially a war tax, and should have been abolished when the rebellion was put down, and it is a piece of irony that the British, by whose aid the rebellion was finally suppressed, should be the chief sufferers from this tax. But blessed as we still are with the income tax which was equally originally a temporary impost, but which no Chancellor of the Exchequer has been able, if willing, to remove, we are not in a position to twit the Chinese with continuing permanently a tax which was intended when instituted to be only temporary. After the restoration of peace, says the Hupao, the likin stations were not abolished, as was expected or perhaps more accurately hoped, but on the contrary they constantly increased in number, while the regulations they enforced were made constantly more irksome and oppressive to traders. The oppression exercised leads, as is nearly always the case, to the demoralization of its victims, who have to resort to all kinds of artifices to evade the regulations as much as possible, "and some of the more influential ones pass their goods through in foreigners' names, by which means the tax they have to pay is reduced." Herein lies, we may remark in a parenthesis, one of the objections the officials have to the extension of foreign influence in the interior. As an illustration of the injury done tothe people by theexistenceof these likin stations, the Hupao mentions a memorial to the Throne by H.E. ling, when he was Governor of this province, in which he characterised the exactions of the likin officials as being worse than the extortions and robberies of thieves and bandits. We have often pointed out how plain spoken high officials often are in their memorials to the Throne, and how the reformer who would attack the whole official system in China will find © complete armoury ready to his hand in the Peking Gazette. 'The arms may be "old and rusty," like those offered to Geraint by Enid's father, but there are plenty of them. The Hupao goes on to describe some of the various and innumerable ways in which exactions are practised at the likin' stations, and the success of which paves the way of the petty officials to rauk and fortune. he writer then holds up as an example to be imitated the system on which the collection of customs is managed in foreign countries, and points with sincere approval at the way in which the Imperial Maritime Customs is conducted in China, whose methods, it says, are acknowledged by all the native traders to be entirely admirable.
As a remedy to the evils of the present system the Hupao suggests—while not going as far as to propose the impracticable step of abolishing likin altogether—that the small likin stations should be abolished, and in place of a number of small offices there should be—we presume in each province or perhaps prefecture—one general office where through passes should be issued, so that traders might be freed from the everlasting persecution of having to pay duty at every little station on the route their goods retaking. In fact, the Zupao would have the system now applied to opium and to foreign-owned cargo under transit pass, extended to cargo of all kinds. This would undoubtedly be a great amelioration as far as the trader is concerned, and a great gain to the revenue, for the smaller the sums in which a certain amount of likin is collected, the more sticks to the fingers of the collectors and the less reaches the treasury. While again, the smaller and more numerous these sums, the more opportunities there are to squeeze the payers of likin, and these are opportunities which are rarely neglected. The country as well as the people, the writer adds, would be benefitted if this reform could be effected, and the high officials, who know the injuries that are wrought by the present system, should devote themselves to effecting it, Any literary essay in Chinese must be fortified by at least one pertinent quotation from the classics, and a Chinese journalist of any position must conform to this rule so the writer recalls that "when the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.