To the Editor of: he Norra-Cuina Dany News."
Sim,—Tho letter from Mr. Arnold Foster published in your issue of to-day is Jacking in that accuracy which the public has e right to expect from those who pose as its instructors and claim to be entitled to correct others. Mr. Foster says "all the (Philippine) Commissioners have done is to quote at length in inverted commas a leading article that appeared in the 'N.-C. D. N. for the 25th April, 1900. This article is a review of the Shanghai Trade Reports of Messrs Rocher and Hippisley which apparently had just been issued. Mr. Clenuell may be right as to his criticism of the facts it gives, but if he jis, the only 'Commissioners' who are responsiblo*for what he calls a mare's nest' are Commissioners Rocher and Hip-bisley." Mr. Foster says the article lay before him as he wrote. Possibly, but one wonders whether he ever read it; and, if be did, how he could commit himself to such to an uawarrauted statement. The only reference I find in the article to the Trade Reports of Mr. Rocher and myself is the statement that we gave "it as our opinion that the sale of morphia ought to be specially restricted." This is true, but the proposal was not "just" made, as Mr. Foster gives us to understand. It was in 1894 and 1895 that I recommended that the trade in morphia should be placed under proper control or that a practically prohibitive duty should be levied on the drug; and in 1896 that Mr. Rocher endorsed and emphasised these rocommendations.
The remainder of the article deals, not with the trade of Shanghai, but with that of Amoy, Swatow, and Kiukiang, extracts from the reports for various years from those ports dealing with the steady increase in the use of morphia, and statistics regarding the import of opium and the export, chiefly, of tea. What then does Mr. Foster mean by describing the article as "a review of the Shanghai Trade Reports?" Is he so little acquainted with the Customs Annual Reports on Trade that he is unaware that it is the Commissioner at each port who is responsible for the published analysis of the trade at his port for th year? It is, however, the writer of the article alone, not any Commissioner of Customs, who is responsible for the discovery that the growth or fall of trade at any port can be measured by increased or decreased indulgence there in the opium habit, and that the ruin of the China tea trade is duo solely to such indulgence. They are too well acquainted with the many complex and ey ing influences which affect trade gor to commit themselves to such tion; and the ruin of the tea trade they have attributed to very different causes, or they would not have been as persistent they have been in urging upon the Government the desirability of promoting improved methods of cultivating the plant and of preparing the leaf, Mr. Foster cays: "No one knows better than a British Consul that her 'a British Royal Commission nor a Philippine Commission can go behind figures and facts published by the responsible authorities of a foreign Customs service, especially when they relate to the returns of trade as it was five years before." The so-called "facts" in the article, so far they relate to any relation betwoon trade generally and indulgence in the opium habit, are admittedly not supplied by the Customs service; the statistics are supposed to be. It is not, however, to any statistics published by the Customs that Mr, Clennell takes exception, but to the deductions drawn from them by the writer of the article. Indeed it is to these statistics that he appeals in order to show how untenable those deductions are. As to whether these latter were deserving of being perpetuated in serious official document, opinions may differ; that their claim to acceptance has not been improved by Mr. Foster's inaccurate championship, there can be no doubt.
Tam, ete, Aurnep E, Hreister.
19th May.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.