372  THE  CHINESE  EMPIRE
of  communication  with  the  territorial  officials  and  with
foreign  Post  Offices  established  in  his  district.  He  is  the
responsible  head  of  the  district,  and  its  working  and  personnel
are  subject  to  his  authority.  All  this  adds  no  small  amount
to  the  already  extended  work  and  responsibility  of  that
Jack-of-all-trades,  the  Commissioner  of  Customs.
Nor  is  this  all.  The  many  departments  of  work  which
devolve  on  the  Customs  in  China  trench  so  often  on  matters
outside  even  the  extended  sphere  of  the  Customs  Service,
that  it  is  naturally  and  inevitably  brought  into  touch  with
questions  even  more  remote  ;  where  the  foreign  merchant
has  so  privileged  a  position,  and  the  relations  between
foreign  and  Chinese  are  so  complicated  and  have  so  many
ramifications,  it  would  be  difficult  to  define  the  exact  limits
of  a  Customs  establishment  working  on  and  in  a  situation
characterised  by  the  principles  of  extraterritoriality.  To
exemplify  this  by  action  taken  by  the  Inspector  General
would  be  to  give  a  resumé  of  the  foreign  relations  of  China
for  forty  years,  and  it  will  be  enough  to  refer  to  matters,
purely  local,  in  which  the  Commissioner  of  a  port  may  b e
called  upon  to  intervene.  The  first  recorded  intervention
was  national  rather  than  local,  and  constituted  the  several
Commissioners  the  intermediaries  for  paying  to  the  British
and  French  Governments  the  quarterly  instalments  of  the
indemnities  due  under  the  treaties  of  1858  and  i860  ;  the
“  ist  quarter  ”  for  this  purpose  began  on  October  1,  i860,
and  the  successive  quarterly  reports  and  returns  to  the
Chinese  Government  are  still  numbered  from  that  date,
the  184th  quarter  ending  on  September  30,  1906.  Folio#'
ing  this  precedent  the  Customs  have  often,  both  generally
through  the  Inspector  General  and  locally  through  th e
Commissioner,  been  made  the  financial  and  disbursing  age^
for  the  payment  of  indemnities  or  of  principal  and  interet
of  loans.  One  such  instance  will  suffice.  In  1895
Canton  authorities  issued  an  internal  loan  of  Tis.5,000,00 o »
the  prospectus  and  bonds  stipulating  that  the  bonds,  *
bearer,  should  be  countersigned  by  the  Commissioner  0
Customs  at  Canton  ;  the  proceeds  of  the  loan  be  receia