Mr. J..L. Cuatwers is Secretary to the Chief: Commissioner of Customs, Corea, Mr. J. McLeavy Brown, and we-have before us his valuable and interesting " Report on the Trade of Corea in Foreign-Type Vessels for the Year 1901." Mr. Chalmers begins by saying: " The drought of 1901 was the chief influence acting on the Corean trade of the year. In the north-eastern provinces of Hamkyeng and Kangwon and the north-western provinces of Whonghai and Pyengan the rainfall was below the average and the crops were consequently poor: but the west central provinces of Kyengki and Chungchyeng, where, according to the Chemulpo Commissioner, there was only about a fifth of the average rainfall in the months of June, July, and August, were reduced by the general failure of the rice crops to a condition bordering on famine, a condition, however, which has been remedied to a great extent by the supplies received from other provinces and from abroad. In_ two provinces only, Kyengeang and South Chulla, was there an abundance of rain, and even in these favoured districts, as the Fussn Commissioner shows, there were special causes at work tending to injure crops and apart from the prohibition of rice export, to limit trade, There is no doubt that the prubibitioa of the export of rice which the Coresn Government found it necessary to put into force from the 26th of August did, in the cartier part of its duration, have the intended effort of preventing shipments which woul d otherwise have taken place, but the pric> of rice in Corea was not long in feeling the effect of the coming scarcity, and the Commissioners' reports agree in stating that the withdrawal of the prohibition on the 15th of November did not, in any degree, revive the export trade in rice, for the reason that the. price of that article was then much higher in Corea than in Japan."
With all this falling-off in the export trade, a falling-off that was accentuated by the occurrence of good harvests in Japan, " the volume of trade was greater than in any previous year, whether the foreign trade only, or the foreiga combined with the home trade, be considered." To the looker-on in China the Corean government resembles a comic opera, but there is one solid serious element in it on which the Emperor can rely, and that is the Imperial Maritime Customs, that seems to be the only bit of solid rock among the shifing sands on which authority in Corea is based. What the Emperor would do without the Customs revenue, honestly collected and strictly accounted for, it is dificult to imagine. It is satisfactory then to note in the table given: by Mr. Chalmers and covering ten years how the foreign trade of Corea has progressed, as the allowing extract shows
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.