A voyage round the world in the years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV

by Baron George Anson Anson

The fire, though at last thus luckily extinguished, did great mischief during the time it continued, for it consumed a hundred shops and eleven streets full of warehouses, so that the damage amounted to an immense sum; and one of the Chinese merchants, well known to the English, whose name was Succoy, was supposed, for his own share, to have lost near two hundred thousand pounds sterling. It raged indeed with unusual violence, for in many of the warehouses there were large quantities of camphire, which greatly added to its fury, and produced a column of exceeding white flame, which blazed up into the air to such a prodigious height that it was distinctly seen on board the Centurion, though she was at least thirty miles distant.

Whilst the commodore and his people were labouring at the fire, and the terror of its becoming general still possessed the whole city, several of the most considerable Chinese merchants came to Mr. Anson to desire that he would let each of them have one of his soldiers (for such they stiled his boat's crew, from the uniformity of their dress) to guard their warehouses and dwelling-houses, which, from the known dishonesty of the populace, they feared would be pillaged in the tumult. Mr. Anson granted them this request, and all the men that he thus furnished behaved much to the satisfaction of the merchants, who afterwards highly applauded their great diligence and fidelity.

By this means, the resolution of the English in mastering the fire, and their trusty and prudent conduct where they were employed as safeguards, was the general subject of conversation amongst the Chinese. And the next morning many of the principal inhabitants waited on the commodore to thank him for his assistance, frankly owning to him that he had preserved their city from being totally consumed, as they could never have extinguished the fire of themselves. Soon after, too, a message came to the commodore from the viceroy, appointing the 30th of November for his audience, which sudden resolution of the viceroy, in a matter that had been so long agitated in vain, was also owing to the signal services performed by Mr. Anson and his people at the fire; of which the viceroy himself had been in some measure an eye-witness.

The fixing this business of the audience was on every account a circumstance with which Mr. Anson was much pleased, since he was satisfied the Chinese Government would not have determined this point without having agreed among themselves to give up their pretensions to the duties they claimed, and to grant him all he could reasonably ask. For, as they well knew the commodore's sentiments, it would have been a piece of imprudence, not consistent with their refined cunning, to have admitted him to an audience only to have contested with him. Being therefore himself perfectly easy about the result of this visit, he made the necessary preparations against the day, and engaged Mr. Flint, whom I have mentioned before, to act as interpreter in the conference: and Mr. Flint, in this affair as in all others, acquitted himself much to the commodore's satisfaction, repeating with great boldness, and doubtless with exactness, whatever was given him in charge, a part which no Chinese linguist would have performed with any tolerable fidelity.

At ten o'clock in the morning, on the day appointed, a mandarine came to the commodore to let him know that the viceroy was prepared, and expected him, on which the commodore and his retinue immediately set out. As soon as he entered the outer gate of the city, he found a guard of two hundred soldiers ready to receive him; these attended him to the great parade before the emperor's palace, where the viceroy then resided. In this parade, a body of troops, to the number of ten thousand, were drawn up under arms, who made a very fine appearance, they being all of them new cloathed for this ceremony. Mr. Anson, with his retinue, having passed through the middle of them, he was then conducted to the great hall of audience, where he found the viceroy seated under a rich canopy in the emperor's chair of state, with all his council of mandarines attending. Here there was a vacant seat prepared for the commodore, in which he was placed on his arrival. He was ranked the third in order from the viceroy, there being above him only the two chiefs of the law and of the treasury, who in the Chinese Government have precedence of all military officers. When the commodore was seated, he addressed himself to the viceroy by his interpreter, and began with reciting the various methods he had formerly taken to get an audience; adding that he imputed the delays he had met with to the insincerity of those he had employed, and that he had therefore no other means left than to send, as he had done, his own officer with a letter to the gate. On the mention of this the viceroy interrupted the interpreter, and bid him assure Mr. Anson that the first knowledge they had of his being at Canton was from that letter. Mr. Anson then proceeded, and told him that the subjects of the King of Great Britain trading to China had complained to him, the commodore, of the vexatious impositions both of the merchants and inferior custom-house officers, to which they were frequently necessitated to submit, by reason of the difficulty of getting access to the mandarines, who alone could grant them redress. That it was his, Mr. Anson's, duty, as an officer of the King of Great Britain, to lay before the viceroy these grievances of the British subjects, which he hoped the viceroy would take into consideration, and would give orders that hereafter there should be no just reason for complaint. Here Mr. Anson paused, and waited some time in expectation of an answer, but nothing being said, he asked his interpreter if he was certain the viceroy understood what he had urged; the interpreter told him he was certain it was understood, but he believed no reply would be made to it. Mr. Anson then represented to the viceroy the case of the ship Haslingfield, which, having been dismasted on the coast of China, had arrived in the river of Canton but a few days before. The people on board this vessel had been great sufferers by the fire; the captain in particular had all his goods burnt, and had lost besides, in the confusion, a chest of treasure of four thousand five hundred tahel, which was supposed to be stolen by the Chinese boatmen. Mr. Anson therefore desired that the captain might have the assistance of the government, as it was apprehended the money could never be recovered without the interposition of the mandarines. And to this request the viceroy made answer that, in settling the emperor's customs for that ship, some abatement should be made in consideration of her losses.

And now the commodore having dispatched the business with which the officers of the East India Company had entrusted him, he entered on his own affairs, acquainting the viceroy that the proper season was already set in for returning to Europe, and that he wanted only a licence to ship off his provisions and stores, which were all ready; and that as soon as this should be granted him, and he should have gotten his necessaries on board, he intended to leave the river of Canton and to make the best of his way for England. The viceroy replied to this that the licence should be immediately issued, and that everything should be ordered on board the following day. And finding that Mr. Anson had nothing farther to insist on, the viceroy continued the conversation for some time, acknowledging in very civil terms how much the Chinese were obliged to him for his signal services at the fire, and owning that he had saved the city from being destroyed: then observing that the Centurion had been a good while on their coast, he closed his discourse by wishing the commodore a prosperous voyage to Europe, after which the commodore, thanking him for his civility and assistance, took his leave.

As soon as the commodore was out of the hall of audience, he was much pressed to go into a neighbouring apartment, where there was an entertainment provided; but finding, on enquiry, that the viceroy himself was not to be present, he declined the invitation and departed, attended in the same manner as at his arrival, only on his leaving the city he was saluted with three guns, which are as many as in that country are ever fired on any ceremony. Thus the commodore, to his great joy, at last finished this troublesome affair, which, for the preceding four months, had given him much disquietude. Indeed he was highly pleased with procuring a licence for the shipping off his stores and provisions, as thereby he was enabled to return to Great Britain with the first of the monsoons, and to prevent all intelligence of his being expected: but this, though a very important point, was not the circumstance which gave him the greatest satisfaction, for he was more particularly attentive to the authentic precedent established on this occasion, by which his Majesty's ships of war are for the future exempted from all demands of duty in any of the ports of China.

In pursuance of the promises of the viceroy, the provisions were begun to be sent on board the day succeeding the audience, and four days after, the commodore embarked at Canton for the Centurion. And now all the preparations for putting to sea were pursued with so much vigilance, and were so soon compleated, that the 7th of December the Centurion and her prize unmoored and stood down the river, passing through the Bocca Tigris on the 10th. On this occasion I must observe that the Chinese had taken care to man the two forts on each side of that passage with as many men as they could well contain, the greatest part of them armed with pikes and matchlock musquets. These garrisons affected to shew themselves as much as possible to the ships, and were doubtless intended to induce Mr. Anson to think more reverently than he had hitherto done of the Chinese military power. For this purpose they were equipped with extraordinary parade, having a great number of colours exposed to view; and on the castle in particular there was laid considerable heaps of large stones, and a soldier of unusual size, dressed in very sightly armour, stalked about on the parapet with a battle-ax in his hand, endeavouring to put on as important and martial an air as possible, though some of the observers on board the Centurion shrewdly suspected, from the appearance of his armour, that instead of steel it was composed only of a particular kind of glittering paper.

The Centurion and her prize being now without the river of Canton, and consequently upon the point of leaving the Chinese jurisdiction, I beg leave, before I quit all mention of the Chinese affairs, to subjoin a few remarks on the disposition and genius of that celebrated people. And though it may be supposed that observations made at Canton only, a place situated in a corner of the empire, are very imperfect materials on which to found any general conclusions, yet as those who have had opportunities of examining the inner parts of the country have been evidently influenced by very ridiculous prepossessions, and as the transactions of Mr. Anson with the regency of Canton were of an uncommon nature, in which many circumstances occurred different perhaps from any which have happened before, I hope the following reflections, many of them drawn from these incidents, will not be altogether unacceptable to the reader.

That the Chinese are a very ingenious and industrious people is sufficiently evinced from the great number of curious manufactures which are established amongst them, and which are eagerly sought for by the most distant nations; but though skill in the handicraft art seems to be the most valuable qualification of this people, yet their talents therein are but of a second-rate kind, for they are much outdone by the Japanese in those manufactures which are common to both countries, and they are in numerous instances incapable of rivalling the mechanic dexterity of the Europeans. Indeed, their principal excellency seems to be imitation, and they accordingly labour under that poverty of genius which constantly attends all servile imitators. This is most conspicuous in works which require great truth and accuracy, as in clocks, watches, fire-arms, etc., for in all these, though they can copy the different parts, and can form some resemblance of the whole, yet they never could arrive at such a justness in their fabric as was necessary to produce the desired effect. If we pass from those employed in manufactures to artists of a superior class, as painters, statuaries, etc., in these matters they seem to be still more defective; their painters, though very numerous and in great esteem, rarely succeeding in the drawing or colouring of human figures, or in the grouping of large compositions; and though in flowers and birds their performances are much more admired, yet even in these some part of the merit is rather to be imputed to the native brightness and excellency of the colours than to the skill of the painter, since it is very unusual to see the light and shade justly and naturally handled, or to find that ease and grace in the drawing which are to be met with in the works of European artists. In short, there is a stiffness and minuteness in most of the Chinese productions which are extremely displeasing: and it may perhaps be truly asserted that these defects in their arts are entirely owing to the peculiar turn of the people, amongst whom nothing great or spirited is to be met with.