If we ask how it could happen that Britons of any class came to submit to such ignominy, the only answer forthcoming is that they did it for the sake of gain. And if, further, we try to press home the responsibility to any particular quarter, there is very little doubt that the principal blame must be laid at the door of the East India Company, which ruled and monopolised the English trade with China until the expiration of their charter in 1834. The Board of Directors in Leadenhall Street demanded remittances, and cared nothing for the indignities which their distant agents might be forced to undergo in order to supply these demands. "The interests at stake were too valuable to be put at issue upon considerations of a personal nature, ... and the Court leave the vindication of the national honour to the Crown." Such was their unchanging attitude. The agents on their side, balancing the pros and cons, concluded that at any cost they must retain the favour of the omnipotent Board. By this course of procedure the prestige which would have protected British subjects from outrage was bartered away; the Chinese were induced by the subservience of the Company's officers to practise constantly increasing insolence, and small blame to them. The demeanour of the Company's representatives was that of men carrying out instructions against their better judgment. Occasionally, indeed, their judgment got the better of their instructions, and they would attempt to make a stand for their rights. A case occurred in 1831 when new restrictions on the export of silver were imposed by the Chinese authorities. Mr H. H. Lindsay, head of the Company's committee, resented the proceeding, and threatened to stop the trade. In the event, however, the committee gave way, and in token of surrender delivered the keys of their factory to a Chinese mandarin.
The process which had been consecrated by time naturally did not stop when the principal cause of it was removed. It continued uninterrupted after the monopoly of the Company had ceased. Indeed the case became much aggravated when the British agents, beginning with Lord Napier, became representatives of the Crown instead of the Company. And so little was the position understood by the authorities in Great Britain that, yielding to considerations of convenience, they appointed some of the very men whom the Chinese had been long accustomed to treat with contumely to be the representatives of the King. But the Chinese had a true presentiment of the nature of the changes which this new departure threatened. They had learned from Captain Weddell, Commodore Anson, and others what were the pretensions of the commander of a Kings ship; and then justly inferred that a King's representative would stand on a wholly different footing from a Company's superintendent. They resolved, therefore, to nip in the bud every effort to open international relations, employing to that end all the weapons which were familiar to them. The viceroy of Canton not only declined communication with the British envoy, but imprisoned him and intercepted his letters, so that a naval force was required to release him from captivity. Yet it was not malevolence but policy that guided the hand of the Chinese authorities—the settled policy of keeping foreigners at arm's-length at all costs.
The rule of conduct enjoined by the British Government on the first representatives of the Crown in China was emphatically conciliation, as in the time of the East India Company and its superintendents. They were to "cautiously abstain from all unnecessary use of menacing language, or from making any appeal for protection to our military or naval force (except in extreme cases), or to do anything to irritate the feelings or revolt the opinions or prejudices of the Chinese people." That article of the "Sign-manual Instructions to the Superintendents of Trade in China" was faithfully carried out; while the one ordering the envoy to "take up your residence at the port of Canton" could not be obeyed because the Chinese provincial authorities placed their veto on it. The conciliatory demeanour of the British representative was met by the refusal, accompanied by the grossest insults, of the Chinese to receive or acknowledge him. And not by insults only, such as perverting the phonetic rendering of his name by the substitution of characters bearing odious meanings, and by various indignities offered to his person, but by interference with his domestic servants, and even cutting off his food-supply, did they coerce him into abandoning his post at Canton. Their conduct evoked the opinion from Lord Napier, in reporting the incidents to his Government, that "the viceroy of Canton was guilty of an outrage on the British Crown calling for redress," which drew from the Duke of Wellington (February 2, 1835) the chilling comment that "it is not by force and violence that his Majesty intends to establish a commercial intercourse between his subjects and China, but by the other conciliatory measures so strongly inculcated in all the instructions which you have received." Lord Napier's despatches prove that he understood the situation perfectly. "What advantage or what point did we ever gain," he wrote, "by negotiating or humbling ourselves before these people, or rather before their Government? The records show nothing but subsequent humiliation and disgrace. What advantage or what point, again, have we ever lost that was just and reasonable, by acting with promptitude and vigour? The records again assure us that such measures have been attended with complete success." And he recommended his Government "to consult immediately on the best plan to be adopted for commanding a commercial treaty, or a treaty which shall secure the just rights and embrace the interests, public and private, of all Europeans,—not of British alone, but of all civilised people coming to trade according to the principles of international law."
Driven to death by Chinese official barbarities, and by the discouragement of his own Government, Lord Napier was succeeded first by one then by another of the East India Company's old staff, who could only maintain themselves by sinking their character as British national envoys and submitting to the indignities which the Chinese more than ever delighted in imposing on them, increasing in virulence in proportion as the resistance to them grew weaker.
The line of policy inculcated upon Lord Napier was, in fact, scrupulously followed after his death, notably by Captain Charles Elliot, the third in succession, who received the King's commission in 1836. That officer indeed went far beyond his instructions in his efforts to conciliate the Chinese; for though repeatedly ordered by Lord Palmerston to communicate with the authorities direct, and not through the Hong merchants;[3] and not to head his communications with the word "petition"; and notwithstanding his own reiterated opinion in the same sense, Captain Elliot entirely yielded to the Chinese pretensions. He communicated through the Hong merchants, and explicitly received the "commands" of the authorities with "reverence." As was natural, the more he conceded the more was exacted from him, until conciliation reached the point of exhaustion and there was nothing left to give up. Matters had nearly reached this stage when the British envoy could thus address the Governor of Canton (through the Hong merchants) in 1837: "The undersigned respectfully assures his Excellency that it is at once his duty and his anxious desire to conform in all things to the imperial pleasure." The result of this extreme humility was that Captain Elliot was forced to strike his flag at Canton and withdraw to the Portuguese settlement of Macao, on the ground that he was unable to maintain intercourse with the authorities on the conditions prescribed for him by her Majesty's Government.
