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Rh one time a third gigantic scheme on foot. Li Hung-chang memorialized the Throne on the subject of opium and dispatched (August 8, 1881) the Taotai Ma Kien-chung on a secret mission to the Viceroy of India, to ascertain how far the Indian Government would be willing to meet his proposal that India should year by year gradually reduce its opium production, whilst China would make good from year to year the deficit of Indian opium revenue, on a sliding scale which was to terminate after a certain period, when the whole area, originally devoted to opium plantations, would have been gradually brought under cereal cultivation, thus preventing any serious injury to the revenues of India. In direct connection with this scheme of the Viceroy, there was a further project, devised in Hongkong by Mr. Ho Amei, but contemptuously rejected by Sir John. Mr. Ho Amei proposed to start in Hongkong, under the sanction and control of the Chinese Government, a Company with a capital of twenty million dollars, for the purpose of purchasing all the opium required for Chinese consumption sent from India and then distributing it to the various ports. It was supposed that this scheme would make smuggling impossible, do away with the necessity for the numerous existing Li-kin stations and put a stop to the prevailing evasion and misappropriation of Li-kin duties in China. But the whole scheme failed because the Indian Government declined the Viceroy's proposal. An equally unsatisfactory result had the project of Mr. Ho Amei, to start at Aberdeen salt-pans to manufacture sea salt for exclusive consumption in the Colony. Ignoring the fact that salt is an Imperial monopoly in China, and that therefore the manufacture of salt in Hongkong would give an immense stimulus to the existing forced contraband trade in salt, to the injury of Chinese revenue and in violation of the friendly relations between the two countries, the Chamber of Commerce (March 10, 1881) viewed the proposed manufacture of salt in opposition to the Governor's views as an enterprise as legitimate as that of refining sugar. Sir John would not