The story of the first decade of the maritime customs was told clearly, briefly, and modestly in a monograph which Mr Hart prepared for Mr Bruce in 1864, published as a Blue Book of thirteen pages (No. 1, 1865). Up to the date of the Tientsin treaty of 1858 the operations of the foreign collectorate were confined to the single port of Shanghai, the inspectors holding the appointment from the governor-general at Nanking, who was Imperial Commissioner for Foreign Trade. The new treaty gave the foreign Powers an interest in the Chinese customs which they did not possess before, because the war indemnities were to be paid by instalments out of the collections of duty, so that during the time when these payments were being made the maintenance of the machinery for collecting the duties was a matter of international concern. The new treaty also provided for a uniform system of duty collection for all the trading-ports; and then the institution assumed an imperial and dropped its provincial character, the inspector-general receiving his commission from the Central Government.
Considering that the mission of the foreign customs was to subvert time-honoured native systems, it was received with surprising graciousness at most of the trading centres. The first port to which the new system was extended was Canton, the leader in welcoming its advent there being the _hoppo_, the one functionary in the empire whose privileges seemed to be most directly threatened by the new-comer. By one of those anomalies which are so common and yet so inexplicable in Chinese affairs, arrangements for opening the office in Canton were carried on without interruption during the hostilities of 1859. Patience, tact, and resolution were nevertheless required to overcome the innumerable difficulties of detail incidental to substituting rigorous inspection and remorseless collection for the chaos of unaccountability which had previously reigned unchallenged. A very few years, however, served to reduce all obstruction, and to bring trader and official, foreigner and Chinese, into working harmony.
For the first time in history a true account was rendered to the Imperial Government, accompanied by a substantial revenue on which it could depend. Naturally the agency, though foreign, which yielded such tangible fruit, commended itself to the statesmen of the capital, who frankly recognised, as did the provincial authorities themselves, that the result obtained was wholly beyond the competence of any native organisation. Though, therefore, the customs service was essentially of a provisional, stop-gap character, it had on that very account a surer guarantee of permanence than could have been derived from any paper covenant by which the Chinese Government could have been bound, for that would have provoked disputation and evasion. The spasmodic attempt to formalise the service on a basis of international obligation which was made in 1898 was perhaps the first thing that really imperilled its constitution. In its origin, indeed, the foreign customs had been international, the three treaty Powers being each represented on the inspectorate; but with the expansion in 1858 this character was abandoned, and the customs became a purely Chinese concern operated by foreign employees, the staff being selected from among all nations indiscriminately, according to personal merit.