of Sir Arthur's proposals as utterly impracticable, but adopted a shadow of the third by including in the Chefoo Convention (September 17, 1876) a stipulation providing that a Mixed Commission, consisting of a British Consul, a Hongkong Officer and a Chinese Official, should arrange a set of regulations calculated to benefit the revenue collection of China without interfering with the commercial interests of Hongkong. When it was rumoured later on, that Sir Brooke Robertson was to be appointed a Member of the proposed Commission, the Chamber of Commerce at once passed a unanimous resolution (February 12, 1877), protesting against such a measure as defeating the ends of justice and common fairness.
Besides harassing the junk masters and subjecting the local junk trade to severe exactions, the Customs Blockade caused a portion of the Chinese trade, formerly confined to junks, to be conducted by means of foreign-owned steamers and sailing vessels. The Hoppo at Canton, whose revenues accrue exclusively from the junk trade, found his monopoly seriously impaired by the preference which Chinese merchants now gave to the employment of foreign vessels. Accordingly he did everything in his power to counteract this movement and sought even to draw away from foreign steamers goods which for years past had always been conveyed by them. It was discovered (July, 1874), that the Hoppo had for some time charged differential duties on cotton imported in Chinese junks, lowering the duty so far below the tariff rate levied by the Foreign Maritime Customs that, even if foreign steamers had offered to carry cotton gratis, it would still have paid Chinese importers better to import the cotton by junks charging heavy freight. But the movement in favour of foreign vessels continued to spread among the Chinese. This movement, however, did not stop at giving business to foreign steamers, but Chinese merchants gradually took to purchasing steamers and working them on their own account. The starting of the first merchant steamer, Aden, under the Chinese flag (December, 1872), by a Chinese Company which would not allow foreigners to hold
