THE ORIENTAL HERALD. No. 64.-APRIL, 1829.-VOL. 21. AMERICAN EXPORT TRADE TO CHINA. THE curious details of the overland trade in British manufactures, carried on by Russian merchants, on the confines of China, must have startled those of our readers who are new to the commercial wants and capacities of the Celestial Empire. Situated at a distance of 6,598 versts from St. Petersburg, Kiatka, lately a small and insignificant village in Tartary, has grown into a large and flourishing town. On the route to this forced and most expensive mart, the peasantry of Siberia subsist on the profits earned by their cattle in the transport of merchandise; and while British manufactures are excluded from the port of Canton, they are forced, by the preference of the Russian tariff, into disproportioned competition with the industry of Holland and Silesia. What clearer evidence can be adduced of the falsehood of the statements by which the servants of the East India Company have so long contrived to palm on the credulity of the country, the belief that the Chinese are unwilling or unable to purchase articles of British manufacture? How can it be true that their export of woollens to Canton has annually been a losing adventure, if, charged with double duties, with the freight to the Gulf of Finland, and the carriage of 5,000 miles through countries where there are neither roads nor inhabitants, they still afford a remunerating price at Kiatka? What tradesman will believe that cotton goods, in ready demand at 9s. a yard on the northern boundary, would, at 3s., be unsaleable at Canton? Those only who are acquainted with the unwieldy, cumbrous, expensive system of factories and establishments, of freights, and outfits, and dock-rates, which the Company call their trade,' will be able to reconcile this flagrant discrepancy between their official accounts and the Russian statistics. The truth is, that these expenses are of a nature and extent totally inconsistent with commercial profit; their export trade to China is a mere trick, a fraud upon the Government and the country; a niggard, miserable, parsimonious affectation of encouraging the trade and manufactures of Great Britain, while in reality they wring from the pockets of the people, by means of their tea monopoly, above the fair and reasonable profit, an Oriental Herald, Vol. 21. 409245 B |