FOOTNOTES:
[1] He dropped the "John" so early in life that he was never known by it.
[2] The only valuable consideration he received for these labours was bestowed some years later, when his entry into the service of the Foreign Office was ante-dated to 1840, so as to include the period of the Peninsular commissions.
[3] These were a syndicate appointed by the Chinese Government to conduct the foreign trade and be responsible to the Government for the proceedings of the foreign merchants.
[4] Bits of Old China. Kegan Paul.
[5] When he visited Macao later in the year 1839—after the events—there were public demonstrations in his honour, whether prompted by public respect for his despotic power or approval of the use he had just made of it, or merely a recognition of his previously established reputation, may very well remain an open question.
[6] Possibly, however, this was but a specimen of the hyperbolic diction which is habitual with the Chinese. An official will threaten his servant with instant decapitation for a trifling offence, meaning nothing whatever thereby.
[7] As in its commutation for the surrender of slave property, so now the British Government inflicted serious injustice on the owners of the opium. Captain Elliot's drafts on the Treasury were dishonoured, he having had no authority to draw, and the merchants had to wait four years for a most inadequate payment.
[8] "By the treaty of 1703," wrote Sir Anders Ljunstedt, the last chief of the Swedish Company's factory, "Portugal placed herself, as it were, under the protection of Great Britain. This Power never failed to render her ally the assistance she stood in need of either in Europe or her ultramarine dominions." The English had defended Macao against the French in 1803.
[9] Europe in Asia. Luzac & Co.
[10] Commodore Senhouse, who succeeded temporarily to the command, was so mortified by the course of diplomacy that his death at Hongkong in the month of June 1841 was believed to have been hastened thereby. His dying request was that his body should be taken to Macao, for burial, as he feared that further conciliatory measures might result in Hongkong being given back to the Chinese.
[11] In a proclamation issued in 1844 it was said, "Remember how our people were persuaded not to fall upon and massacre your soldiers."
[12] It is impossible to review, however summarily, the events of that period without free reference to the officer who was during the time charged with the care of British interests in China. But no pretence is made in these pages to pass a verdict on the public record of Captain Elliot. His acts involved too many solecisms in finance, for one thing, to have escaped the attention of Parliament; but, like others who come before that tribunal, he was neither attacked on his merits nor defended on his merits. None could question the sincerity of the encomiums passed by the Duke of Wellington and Lord Melbourne on his "courage, coolness, and self-devotion"; to which might well be added a quite exceptional fearlessness of responsibility. But the first representatives of the British Crown in China were doomed to failure by the nature of their commission. The terms of their instructions were more than contradictory—they were mutually destructive. To conciliate the Chinese while opening official relations with them was to mix the ingredients of an explosive. A dilemma was, in fact, presented unwittingly by the British Government to their agents. Lord Napier impaled himself on one horn—that of claiming a diplomatic status; Captain Elliot on the other—that of gaining over the Government by conciliation; and no earthly skill could have saved either of them.
[13] This convenient term, borrowed from the French, saves many periphrases and sometimes an ambiguity. Neither "fellow-countrymen," "fellow-subjects," nor "fellow-citizens" fully expresses the relationship between an official in an extra-territorialised country and those whom he protects and governs.
[14] "Mr Lay, who has been officiating as consul for some weeks, has been located in a miserable house built on piles on a mud flat, apart from the city, and above the bridge, where the tide, as it ebbs and flows, daily sweeps up to his door; and all efforts to obtain even decent accommodation in the city, where he is entitled to demand it, or in any but this pestilent locality, have been in vain."—'Times' Correspondent, Hongkong, October 22, 1844.
[15] See this whole transaction described in his characteristic manner by De Quincey in his brochure on China, originally published in Titan, 1857.
[16] See [Appendix I.]
[17] See [Appendix II.]
[18] See [Appendix III.]
[19] See [Appendices I.], [II.], and [III.]
[20] The annual value of the whole foreign trade with China, imports and exports, is now about £70,000,000.
[21] His predecessors had been governors of Fort William in Bengal.
[22] Eastern countries send to Europe half of the whole consumption of the West—China yielding 35 per cent to 40 per cent of the entire supply, Japan 12 per cent.
[23] It is worth notice that this consistent opponent of the opium trade during fifty active years should have come under the ban of the Anti-Opium Society in England when the discussion of this important question degenerated into a mere polemic.
[24] Import duty had been regularly levied on opium for a hundred years, the prohibition of importation having been decreed after 1796 (Eitel).
[25] During the last two decades important factors—such as foreign loans, armaments, and the like—have so influenced the movements of gold and silver that they bear no such simple relation to the "balance of trade" properly so called as was formerly the case.
[26] See [Appendix IV].
[27] For interesting details of the smuggling organisation which lasted up to the middle of the present century, see 'Smuggling Days and Smuggling Ways,' by the Hon. Henry N. Shore, R.N.
[28] The modern ship carries 70 to 75 per cent of dead-weight over her registered tonnage, and of weight and measurement combined about double.
[29] The American and British clippers were originally built of wood sheathed with metal. After that came trial of iron ships coated with tallow, but finally at the climax of the sailing clippers' notable races they were all of composite construction—i.e., iron frames planked with wood and sheathed with yellow metal. This type of vessel (now out of date) was the essential feature of the fastest sailing China clippers. Thereupon followed the iron and steel steamship as the permanent carrier, and the white-winged argosies were no more!
[30] Mr James MacCunn of Greenock says that all these racing clippers, which were practically the same size, carried double crews, numbering about thirty-three all told, equal to that of a 2500-tons merchantman of to-day. The Sir Lancelot, besides the shingle ballast below the tea, carried 100 tons fitted kentledge in the limbers stowed between skin and ceiling, whereby great "stiffness" was ensured—a factor of much value in beating down the China Sea against the monsoon, and at other times in "carrying on" under a heavy press of canvas.
[31] China in 1857-58. Routledge.
[32] The Fankwae at Canton.
[33] Apart from their liberality in the conduct of business, the generosity of the Chinese mercantile class, their gratitude for past favours, are so remarkable as to be incomprehensible to the Western mind. An account of them would read like a "fairy tale."
[34] The Straits of Malacca, &c. By J. Thomson.
[35] The tonnage entered and cleared for the year 1898 amounted to 17,265,780, of which one-half was under the British flag.
[36] Nomenclature alone sufficiently attests this fact—whether of the ships that carried them or of the lands they christened, as Natal, Trinidad, &c. The gigantic cross carved in the granite face of Table Mountain (it is said) by Vasco da Gama proclaimed to the wide ocean the sanctity of his mission. English adventurers were strongly imbued with the same pious spirit. Down to our own day marine policies open with the words, "In the name of God, Amen"; while the bill of lading, which within the past generation has become packed with clauses like a composite Act of Parliament—all tending to absolve the owner from responsibility as carrier—formerly began with the words, "Shipped by the grace of God," and ended with the prayer that "God would send the good ship to her desired port in safety."
[37] "Verily," writes Wingrove Cooke, "Sir John Bowring, much abused as he is both here and at home, has taken a more common-sense view of these matters than the high diplomatists of England and France."
[38] Before the conclusion of his second mission Lord Elgin's opinion of at least one of those whom at the outset he disparaged had undergone considerable modification. "Parkes," he wrote in 1860, "is one of the most remarkable men I ever met for energy, courage, and ability combined. I do not know where I could find his match."
[39] Lord Elgin protested against the use of this tabooed term, but took no exception to the statement as to his having obeyed the commands of the Imperial Commissioners.
[40] 'The Scotsman,' September 18, 1858.
[41] It seems to have been a general opinion at the time that Lord Elgin was deterred from proceeding to Peking by the protestations of his learned advisers, who declared that his doing so would "shatter the empire."
[42] Sir Hope Grant's Journal.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Vol. ii. p. 224.
[45] Peking and the Pekingese.
[46] Kunshan or Quinsan.