yesterday a good piece of news.  The Emperor has named my friends, the Imperial Commissioners, to come down here to settle the tariff, &c.  This, I think, proves that the Emperor has made up his mind to accept the Treaty and carry it out.  I hope also that it will enable me to settle the Canton affair.

A few days later, finding that some weeks must elapse before the Imperial Commissioners could arrive, he sailed for Nagasaki, in order to turn the interval to account by endeavouring to negotiate a treaty with the Japanese Government in accordance with the instructions which he had received when leaving England.

[1] Those who remember the somewhat angry discussion which, arose
    afterwards about this delay, its causes and its consequences, may be
    struck with the fact that the subject is scarcely alluded to in any of
    the extracts here given.  The omission is intentional:  Lord Elgin’s
    friends having no desire to rate up an extinct controversy which he
    would have been the last to wish to see revived, and respecting which,
    they have nothing to add to—­as they have nothing to withdraw from—­
    what he himself stated in the House of Lords on February 21, 1860.

[2] Another article of the Treaty, though of less importance in
    itself, has been brought by recent events into so much prominence that
    it may be desirable to give in full the views of its author respecting
    it.  In his despatch of July 12, having mentioned, as one of the
    principal commercial advantages obtained by British subjects, the
    settlement of the vexed question of the transit duties, he proceeds:—­

This subject presented considerable difficulty.  As duties of octroi are levied universally in China, on native as well as foreign products, and as canals and roads are kept up at the expense of the Government, it seemed to be unreasonable to require that articles, whether of foreign or native production, by the simple process of passing into the hands of foreigners, should become entitled to the use of roads and canals toll-free, and should, moreover, be relieved altogether from charges to which they would be liable if the property of natives.  On the other hand, experience had taught us the inconvenience of leaving the amount of duties payable under the head of transit-duties altogether undetermined.  By requiring the rates of transit-duty to be published at each port; and by acquiring for the British subject the right to commute the said duties for a payment of 2-1/2 per cent. on the value of his goods (or rather, to speak more correctly, for the payment of a specific duty calculated at that rate), I hope that I have provided for the latter as effectual a guarantee against undue exactions on this head as can be obtained without an entire subversion, of the financial system of China.

CHAPTER X.