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Complaints were made as to the mode of levying local rates and taxes in advance and on the tenants themselves instead of the landlords (January, 1867). The Formosan camphor trade was seriously interfered with by illegal exactions and by monopolies claimed by the Chinese Mandarins, and Sir Richard's remonstrances proved fruitless. The Canton Customs Blockade was hampering many branches of local trade (since October, 1867) and Sir Richard appeared to be powerless to do anything more than writing protests. The Stamp Ordinance was considered to press unfairly on the European merchants and the doubts entertained at first, owing to the intricacies of its provisions and penalties, as to the question what stamps were to be affixed to or impressed upon certain documents, operated as a source of frequent perplexity and worry (November, 1867). As things went from bad to worse in 1868, merchants began to talk of the impending ruin of Hongkong and to blame Sir Richard for it. It was seriously proposed to demand the appointment of a Commission to inquire into the working of certain Ordinances injurious to the commerce of Hongkong. In the piece goods trade there were also special complaints of that mildew in cotton goods which, for many years thereafter, caused much trouble and irritation, and which was believed to be caused by fraudulent sizing (March, 1869). Sir Richard himself also had as much to worry him, as the merchants. The covert hostility of the Cantonese Authorities, encouraged by H. M. Minister in Peking, the growing displeasure with which successive Secretaries of State in Downing Street viewed his attempt at solving the gambling problem, and the local unpopularity of all his best measures, must have had a depressing effect upon Sir Richard's nervous temperament. It was tantalizing to have in the Special Fund a remedy at hand for the distressed state of the Colonial finances and yet to be forbidden to touch it. On 7th July, 1869, seeing no signs yet of the better times that were coming for Hongkong, he wrote to Earl Granville saying that 'the circumstances of the Colony in the present decline of commercial prosperity, following on the serious depression which had prevailed for