This morning two clerks and an interpreter from the Yokohama Municipal Office entered the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank building at Yokohama and demanded the house tax, amounting to some six hundred yen. Payment being refused, they presented distraint note: went to the treasury of the bank, and took the amount.
All the papers in the matter have been transmitted to the British Minister at Tokio.—Our own correspondent. whic, 24th March.
Yhere is much discontent among the foreign residents because the Japanese Government, while agreeing to arbitrate thy house tax, neve theless insists on levying it.
Foreigners, under advics of their Representatives, have rotsed payment whereupon distraint has be-n employed to-day. The Government contends that if cannot lunger defer the execution of the law, which has already been held in abeyance for nearly three yea moreover, obedience to the law is no hardship, because the money will all be returned if the arbitration goes against Japan.
The proposition been made that the Japanese Government give a written promise to return the money if it is unsuccessful in the arbitration, or lodge the money in a bank pending the decision: but the Government has declined the former proposition, because the agreement to submit the question to arbitration includes un engagement to comply with the judgment of the arbitrator: and it has declined the latter proposition, because the Iwperial treasury is not less trustworthy than the proposed bank,—Special service.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.