THE LAKES, NINGPO.
The opening of the new ports, with the exception of Shanghai, was unfavourably commented upon by a section of the English press, not perhaps unwilling to score a point against the "Tory Government, which was alone answerable for the treaty of Nanking." They denounced the opening of so many ports on the ground that it would only multiply points of collision with the Chinese. Three years later the 'Times' pronounced "Amoy, Foochow, and Ningpo as good for nothing as places of trade," while Hongkong itself was equally despised as a commercial colony. Some of the journals resuscitated the idea which had been freely discussed during the years preceding the war, and advocated the acquisition in sovereignty of islands as emporia instead of ports on the mainland, and it is worthy of remark that the same idea was again revived by Mr Cobden twenty years later. "Get two other small islands," he said in 1864; "merely establish them as free ports" on the model of Hongkong. And this with a view to superseding the treaty ports on the coast, where trade had been established for twenty years.
Three of the new ports—Shanghai, Ningpo, and Amoy—were opened under Sir Henry Pottinger's auspices in 1843; Foochow in 1844. These places, distributed at approximately equal intervals along the coast-line of 1000 miles between Shanghai and Canton, were not chosen at random. They had all been at one time or another entrepots of foreign commerce with either Europe, Southern Asia, or Japan. Foochow had been many years before strongly recommended by one of the East India Company's tea-tasters as most desirable for the shipment of tea. An expedition equipped by the Company under Mr Hamilton Lindsay, who, like the other servants of the Company, was versed in the Chinese language, visited the northern coast in the chartered ship Amherst in 1832, and gained the first authentic information concerning the commercial capabilities of Shanghai. Mr Gutzlaff, who acted as secretary and coadjutor to Mr Lindsay's mission, made several adventurous voyages, including one in Chinese disguise, in a native junk, to Tientsin. Though the coast had not yet been surveyed, and navigation was in consequence somewhat dangerous, a good deal of fairly accurate information, some of it already obsolete, was by these means placed at the disposal of those who made the selection of the treaty ports. Ningpo was noted for its literary culture, for the respectability and intelligence of its inhabitants, and their friendly disposition towards foreigners. But although it was the entrepot of a flourishing coasting trade, the shallowness of its river, the want of anchorage at its embouchure, and its vicinity to Shanghai, combined to preclude the growth of foreign commerce at the port of Ningpo.
THE FIRST CONSULAR RESIDENCE AT FOOCHOW.
It was to Foochow that Mr Alcock was appointed in 1844, by Mr Davis (as he then was), who had recently succeeded Sir Henry Pottinger. The new consul, however, made his actual début at Amoy, where he was detained for four months, from November 1844 to March 1845, acting for the titular consul at that port. There he at once displayed that energy and clear-sightedness which were to become so conspicuous in his subsequent career. Two important matters had to be arranged within the period named—the evacuation of the island of Kulangsu by the British garrison and the future residence of the consul. Trifling as this last may seem, it was a matter of no small consideration in China, where, to paraphrase Polonius, the dwelling oft proclaims the man. It was one of the innumerable devices of the Chinese authorities for degrading new-comers in the eyes of the populace to force them to live, as at Canton, within a confined space or in squalid tenements. Mr Alcock knew by instinct the importance of prestige, while his Peninsular training had taught him the value of sanitation. Following these two guiding stars, he overbore the obstruction of the officials, and not only obtained a commodious site but had a house built to his own specification during his temporary incumbency of the office. That, and his general bearing towards the authorities, stamped on the Amoy consulate the impress of dignity which has never been wholly effaced. He was most fortunate, it must be allowed, in his instruments, chiefly in the interpreter whom he found at Amoy, a man, or rather a boy—for he was only sixteen—entirely after his own heart. That was Harry Parkes, one of the bravest and best of our empire-builders. It is indeed to the journals and letters of Sir Harry Parkes, edited by Mr Stanley Lane-Poole, and to notes supplied for that biography by Sir Rutherford Alcock himself in 1893, that we are chiefly indebted for the record of their joint proceedings at Amoy, Foochow, and to some extent also Shanghai, from 1844 to 1848. The consul made a favourable first impression on the young interpreter, who described him in a family letter as "tall but slimly made, standing about six feet in his boots; ... very gentlemanly in his manners and address, and exceedingly polite." It was not, however, till he reached his proper post, Foochow, that the mettle of the new consul and interpreter was seriously tested.
Foochow was of superior rank to the other two ports, being, like Canton, at once a provincial capital and the seat of a governor-general or viceroy of two provinces—namely, Fukien and Chêkiang—and possessing a Manchu garrison. The Chinese Government was believed to have been most reluctant to open Foochow as a trading port at all, which seemed reason enough for the British negotiators insisting on its being opened. Its trade was small, which perhaps rendered the port the more suitable for the experimental purpose of testing the principles which were to govern the new intercourse.