Chester Holcombe to Prince Kung, December 6, 1878

Mr. Holcombe to Prince Kung.

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your Imperial Highness’s dispatch of the 28th ultimo in response to mine of 21st, which requested your attention to the refusal of the Chinese authorities at Chung King, in Szcnuen, to recognize certain transit passes taken out by M. A. Jenkins, an American merchant, and beg leave to express my thanks for the promptness with which your Imperial Highness ordered an inquiry into the business.

I address you again upon it from no lack of appreciation of your desire to protect the interests of my countrymen, and to secure obedience on the part of your officials to the provisions of the treaties. This case, however, is one of peculiar hardship and injustice, and I cannot refrain from requesting your Imperial Highness’s attention again to certain features of it, with the hope that you will be able to afford Mr. Jenkins some more speedy relief than seems likely to come in the ordinary course.

The transit passes in question were taken out by Mr. Jenkins upon the 27th of last July, and were sent at once to Szchuen, where the produce covered by them was shortly afterward purchased and prepared for shipment to Hankow. Upon the 4th of October Mr. Jenkins was warned not to use the passes held by him, as they would not be recognized by the tax officers at Kwei-Chow.

It thus appears that the merchandise covered by these passes has already been detained in the interior of Szchuen some three or four months, to the serious inconvenience and loss of its owner. If, now, it must further be detained until the instruction recently issued by your Imperial Highness can reach the capital of Szchuen, the viceroy can issue his orders to the delinquent local authorities for a report; until they see lit to make the report, and until these replies can reach your Imperial Highness, receive consideration by you, and fresh instructions go hence to Szchuen—if this delay must arise, then it is evident that some six or Seven months more must elapse before the merchandise can be released from detention, and further serious loss to the owner must arise, if indeed, the produce is not entirely ruined.

I freely admit that this argument on behalf of the merchant would not hold good were there reason to accuse him of any violation of the treaties or trade regulations in connection with the export of his merchandise; but the transit passes were taken out regularly, and conformed in every respect to the requirements of treaty, and no charge is made of any conduct on the part of the merchaut which would justify the detention or seizure of the goods. This detention is based on the simple assertion that because of the use of transit passes in Szchuen, the local tax office at Kwei-Chow has suffered a loss of more than two hundred thousand taels, and that if these passes are respected the officials at Kwei-Chow can collect nothing from the owner of the produce covered by them. The detention of Mr. Jenkins’s property by the official named was therefore, by his own showing, an offensive violation of a solemn treaty engagement, and of that good faith between our governments which I am sure your Imperial Highness desires zealously to maintain, and which should be faithfully respected by all classes of officials in both countries.

As there appears, therefore, from the showing of the Chung King magistrate himself, to have been absolutely no reason whatever for the detention of Mr. Jenkins’s property, I venture to place this business before your Imperial Highness again, and most earnestly to request, in the interest of good feeling between the two governments, that you will not subject my country man to further delay and loss, but will at once instruct the local authorities concerned to respect the transit passes held by him, and to allow the merchandise which they cover to be taken to its destination.

I have, &c.,