Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/136

against which certified merchandise was guaranteed by the treaty? The Chinese authorities appear to have been inclined originally to answer in the affirmative. They could not hide from themselves that, in spite of its name, likin was nothing more or less than a transit duty, and therefore not properly leviable upon goods which had obtained a certificate. The records go to show that they hesitated for some time to impose it, and that they could probably have been deterred permanently had the Treaty Powers offered resolute resistance. But that is just what the Treaty Powers did not do. There were found British officials in high places who contended that as the establishment of an imperial customs system under foreign supervision—which was one of the innovations consequent upon foreign intercourse—materially interfered with the development of native customs collectorates and thus deprived the local officials of an important source of revenue, Chinese expedients to provide compensatory income ought not to be vetoed. The British Government itself, too, adopted a view favourable to China. It read the treaties as providing that foreign produce might be placed at any specified place in the interior of the country for purposes of equal competition with similar Chinese produce, on payment of a transit duty of 2½ per cent in addition to the import duty, but that there was no provision to prevent the Chinese authorities from imposing on foreign and Chinese