From the “North China Herald.”

It is fortunate that Free-trade is no longer in the category of experiments, nor a dubious problem yet to be solved, as the busy activity of our port during the last four months, at the very dullest season in its very partial application here, amply attests.

So we would fain persuade ourselves that our very humble and persevering labours will not prove wholly valueless in exposing, as a fiscal blunder, the enormous impost levied in Great Britain on our staple export. We hold it as absolutely certain, that a reduction of the Tea duty to one shilling per pound, an article which is now of such vital necessity to so large a portion of Europe and America, would be only a fit compliment to that immortal legislation which has relieved our beloved country from the great incubus of the Corn-laws. Further, we are quite satisfied, from the concurrent success of the reductions of duty on Sugar and Coffee, and in the rates of Postage, that the reduction of the Tea duty to one shilling per pound, would lead to such an extended consumption of that article as would, within five years, realise the full amount of five millions and a half pounds sterling of annual revenue, or the same sum which Great Britain now obtains from tea.