Prince Kung to S. Wells Williams , United States Chargé d’affaires ad interim, May 29, 1868

Prince Kung to Mr. Williams

Prince Kung, chief secretary of state for foreign affairs, herewith makes a communication:

In the month of February last your excellency and the British minister together proposed three more rules to the four which had been adopted in October, 1865, for joint investigation in cases of confiscation, and requested that the whole seven might be experimentally put in force at all the ports.

On receiving this proposal the Foreign Office took the matter into their most careful deliberation in all its bearings. The four former rules were found to require no alteration, but the three new ones have been somewhat modified to make them entirely satisfactory, and a new one has been added. They were all submitted to the inspection of the British minister in March last, who replied that, after adopting a few alterations in rule VI, he was willing to accept the whole eight as a body of rules for investigating cases of confiscation, and would direct them to be tried at the ports. The French minister also assented in the same sense.

Exact copies of these eight rules, thus amended, are now, therefore, sent to the foreign ministers at Peking; and orders have likewise been transmitted to the two superintendents of trade for the northern and southern ports, and to the inspector general of customs, enjoining their observance of them. With the inclosed copy now sent to your excellency I have to request that you will direct them to be observed by the various consuls of the United States in China.