TurzE weeks ago we noticed the report by Mr. F. A. Morgan, Chief Commissioner of Customs at Seoul, on the trade of Corea in 1892; we have now before us the similar report of Mr. Walter C. Hillier, the British Consul-General at Seoul. We need not concern ourselves with the statistics it contains; what is of interest in it is the full discussion in which Mr. Hillier indulges of the condition of the country viewed in the commercial light. In dealing with the cost of transport, Mr. Hillier points out that this is the chief bar to the development of the agricultural resources of the country. Transport is carried on mainly, owing to the absence of practicable roads, by pack animals, A fair day's journey for a pony carrying about 2001bs. is 30 miles, and the cost is two shillings a day, so that this item amounts approximately to between Sd. and 9d. emile per ton. It is only remarkable that in the face of this drawback the foreign trade of the country has risen to the figures given three weeks ago. We learn, moreover, that one of the highest authorities estimates the actual value of the trade at double that recorded by the Customs. There is no doubt that large quantities of goods are smuggled into the country by the Japanese fishermen who, under the Japanese and Corean Fishery Convention, are allowed to land and sell their fish at any point on the Corean coast they please. @ present system, too, of collecting duties ad valorem encourages the falsification of invoices. "'The result is that 99 out of 100 invoices are cooked' in the most open manner, and the amounts declared fall short of the actual values by at least some 20 per cent." The obvious remedy, says Mr. Hillier, is the substitution of a specific for an ad valorem tariff, which should be accompanied by a revision, the extension of the free list, and the reduction of some of the duties which are excessively high. "Duty is levied in Corea on the most trifling articles.... A single pair of boots or an article of wearing apparel is taxed even the importer of a lez of mutton (mutton being a foreign luxury) or a basket of cabbages has to declare his purchases at the Customs, and pay 5 per cent. duty on pain of confiscation of his purchase." 'I'he result of this is that a large number of Chinese and others make a living by travelling to and fro with dutiable articles in their baggage, which is duty free." As nearly 10,000 passengers—Coreans, Chinese, and Japanese—entered the treaty ports during 1892, the amount of dutiable articles brought in by them without paying duty must have been appreciable." Lastly, to the amount of foreign trade recorded by the Customs, must be added an appreciably increasing amount transacted on the Russian and Chinese frontiers.
We mentioned before the marked effect which the harvests in Corea and Japan have on the trade; another important factor is the deplorable condition of the Corean currency. Mr. Hillier gives some farther account of the mint, which is engaged in turning out, at a disproportionately large cost, a 500-cash silver piece of the same size and value as the Japanese yen, with subsidiary coins made respectively of nickel, copper, and brass, It has yet to be proved whether the people will accept this coinage. "A certain amount may, no doubt, be forced on the country in the shape of pay to officials and wages to troops, to whom the government are at present heavily in debt, but as long as Customs dues are payable in Japanese yen and Mexican dollars, of which a comparatively large amount is already in circulation, these will certainly impede the circulation of the new coins." In fact, there is no need for a Corean silver coinage at all, and the cash that have been made are useless, because there is no hole in them. " 'I'he Coreans have been accustomed for centuries to. carry their cash in a string, and considering that 15 of the new cask go to 1d, it is manifestly more convenient to carry them-in strings than loose in a bag." Mr. Hillier recommends the government to confine itself to the issue of some respectable cash, "and they should consider the money value sunk in their silver coins as one more item in the bill they have already had to pay for the purchase of experience."
Mr. Hillier gives a melancholy list of the enterprises which the King has been induced by his advisers to. put his money into, a list which he tells us is by means exhaustive, It includes "a paper manufactory, a watch factory, gardens for the cultivation of the mulberry and the breeding of silkworms, looms for weaving silk and satin fabrics, a model farm conducted on Western principles for the growth of foreign cereals and the breeding of foreign stock, a powder manufactory and arsenal," a steamer company for developing trade with non-treaty ports, foreign schools, a foreign hospital for the treatment of indigent sick, a government mint, an army drilled in the foreign fashion, a postal system, ete." All these have been failures except perhaps the foreign school, and it is impossible that they can snicoeed under Corean management. Corruption among officials is, though Mr. Hillier is too discreet to say so, so universal that no government concern can be remunerative, except for the individuals who handle the funds. Corea a splendid estate grossly mismanaged. What we wrote about it three weeks ago is confirmed by Mr. Hillier, whose concluding paragraph is
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.