When Mr. Lay commenced the operation of the new Customs Service at Canton (October 14, 1859), the United States Consul (O. H. Perry) objected to Mr. Lay's regulations, or rather to certain threats of penalties contained in their original edition, as an illegal interference with the American river-steamers. Those regulations were, however, at once revised, approved by the British and American Ministers and sullenly submitted to by the mercantile communities of Canton and Hongkong. The seizure by the new Customs Office of the Portuguese S.S. Shamrock (November, 1859), on a charge of smuggling, renewed the excitement. So great was the general antipathy prevailing in Hongkong against this Chinese Customs Service (from the control of which, however, the junk trade of Hongkong remained exempt), that the forcible and unlawful resistance which the captain of the barque Chin Chin offered to seizure by the foreign Customs Officers in Swatow (March, 1860) was unhesitatingly justified by a Hongkong jury, although a native employee of the Customs was killed in the mêlée. Shortly after the Hongkong Chamber of Commerce had been established, a special meeting (August 2, 1861) took the whole subject of the Tientsin Treaty and the new Inspectorate of Customs into consideration, and eventually memorialized H.M. Minister at Peking who soon after (October 30, 1861) issued regulations regarding transit dues, exemption certificates and coast trade, which conceded the main points for which the Chamber of Commerce had contended.
Local Post Office regulations also attracted the watchful eye of the Chamber. Some transitory excitement was caused by proceedings taken (September, 1862) against the master of the American S.S. Firecracker, who was fined for detaining a portion of the mail brought on by him from Mauritius. More serious was the attempt made by Sir H. Robinson (early in 1863) to secure the sanction of the Legislative Council for a Bill intended to give to the Post Office the right, not only to compel vessels of all nationalities to carry mails without compensation, but also to search and detain any vessel on account of contraband letters. The Chamber stoutly resisted this Bill as an interference
