Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/140

said above the certainty will be at once apparent that a great discrepancy exists between the sum shown in the official returns and the sum actually collected by officials.

The foreign trade of China contributes a large amount to the State's income, and this appears to be the sole item of revenue that flows into the imperial Exchequer without leakage en route. Originally the latter statement could not have been made it became true only from the time when the business of collecting the customs duties was entrusted to foreigners. That arrangement had its beginnings, not in any deliberate choice on the part of the Chinese authorities, but in circumstances over which they exercised no control; namely, the occupation of the native city of Shanghai by the Taeping rebels (1853-1855). During the resulting interval of disturbance the task of collecting the duties was temporarily entrusted to three foreign officials deputed at first by the consuls of England, France, and America, and appointed subsequently by the Viceroy at Nanking, who held the post of Imperial Commissioner for Foreign Trade. Things remained thus until the conclusion of the Tientsin Treaty in 1858, the operations of the foreign collectorate being confined to the single port of Shanghai. But at that date, the Chinese Government having contracted new liability for war indemnities, and having agreed to pay them out of the customs duties, the machinery for collecting