36o  THE  CHINESE  EMPIRE
administration,  and  that  each  Commissioner,  acting  conjointly ­
  with  his  Chinese  colleague  the  Superintendent,
looked  to  the  provincial  authorities  and  considered  local
needs,  and  was  disinclined  to  conform  without  question  to
the  leading  given  by  the  centralising  office,  the  Inspectorate
General.  The  ability  and  tact  which  he  has  shown  so
uniformly,  and  in  so  many  instances  since,  were  never  more
marked  than  in  Mr.  Hart’s  first  decade  of  office,  the  Sixties,
when  he  had  to  reconcile  the  Imperial  Government  to  a
form  of  administration  which,  though  working  in  its  interest,
was  distinctly  alien  ;  to  lead,  with  small  powers  of  compulsion, ­
  subordinates  of  marked  personality  and  of  different
nationalities  to  submit  their  judgment  to  his,  and  accept
his  instructions  for  their  guidance  ;  and  to  introduce  into
Customs  procedure  the  uniformity  and  system  which  are  the
necessary  concomitants  of  effective  administration.  During
that  decade  elementary  questions  were  vital,  and  an  unwise
settlement  could  easily  have  undermined  the  foundations
of  the  structure  he  was  erecting.  The  Chinese  Customs
collect  duty,  not  only  on  imports  from  foreign  countries,
but  also  on  exports  whether  abroad  or  to  another  Chinese
port,  and  on  re-importation  at  a  Chinese  port  collect  an
import  duty  ;  they  also  collect  tonnage  dues  on  shipping,
transit  dues  exempting  from  further  taxation  foreign  imports ­
  conveyed  inland  and  native  produce  from  inland  marts
intended  for  export  to  foreign  countries,  and,  since  1887,
likin  on  foreign  opium  ;  with  all  this  complexity  there  had
to  be  maintained  simultaneously  foreign  and  native  control,
foreign  and  native  record,  and  foreign  and  native  report.
To  introduce  simplification  into  this  complexity  was  the
task  of  the  first  ten  years,  and  among  the  questions  to  be
decided  were  :  the  regulation  of  the  coastwise  traffic  ;  the
provision  that  the  original  duty  payment  exempted  imports
from  further  tax,  instead  of  the  provincial  system  of  refund
and  repayment  on  each  reshipment  ;  the  regulation  of
the  inland  transit  trade  ;  the  compilation  and  publication
of  statistics  ;  pilotage  ;  emigration  ;  the  ton  equivalents
of  various  lasts  and  metric  and  other  tons  ;  and,  above  all,