It may be said that on the whole the chief fear of the people in the early days of British administration was not that they or their families would be slaughtered or dispossessed of their property, or personally ill-treated, but that they would be overtaxed; and the disturbances which arose at the time of the delimitation of the frontier in 1899 and 1900 were in part traceable to wild rumours as to the means to be adopted by the foreigners for the raising of revenue. It was thought, for example, that taxes were to be imposed on farmyard fowls. Taxation has been increased, as a matter of fact, under British rule. The land-tax (the principal source of revenue) has been doubled, and licence-fees and dues of various kinds have had the natural result of raising the price of certain commodities. But these unattractive features of British rule are on the whole counterbalanced, in the opinion of the majority of the people, by comparative (though by no means absolute) freedom from the petty extortions practised by official underlings in China, by the gradual development of a fairly brisk local trade, by the influx of money spent in the port by British sailors, by the facilities given by British merchant ships for the cheap and safe export of local produce, and by the useful public works undertaken by Government for direct public benefit. The amount spent on public improvements is indeed minute compared with the enormous sums devoted to these purposes in Hongkong, Singapore, and Kiaochou, yet it forms a respectable proportion of the small local revenue. That the construction of metalled roads, in particular, is heartily welcomed throughout the Territory is proved by three significant facts: in the first place the owners of arable land through which the new roads pass hardly ever make any demand for pecuniary compensation, unless they happen to be almost desperately poor; in the second place, wheeled traffic, which a few years ago would have been a ludicrous impossibility in any part of the Territory, is rapidly becoming common; and in the third place the people, on their own initiative, are extending the road-system in various localities at their own expense. It may seem almost incredible that, in one case at least, certain houses that obstructed traffic in a new village road were voluntarily pulled down by their owners and built further back: yet not only did they receive no compensation from Government, but they did not even trouble to report what they had done. Very recently a petition was received praying the Weihaiwei Government to urge the Government of Shantung to extend the Weihaiwei road-system into Chinese territory, especially to the extent of enabling cart traffic to be opened up between the port of Weihaiwei and the neighbouring district-cities of Jung-ch'êng, Wên-têng and Ning-hai. The Shantung Government has been addressed on the subject by the Commissioner of Weihaiwei, and the Governor has smiled upon the project; though as he