[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.