Viscount Palmerston to Queen Victoria.
CHINA
Foreign Office, 10th April 1841.
Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and has the honour to submit the accompanying letters, which he received yesterday, about the operations in China, and which have just been returned to him by Viscount Melbourne, whose letter he also transmits.6
Viscount Palmerston has felt greatly mortified and disappointed at this result of the expedition to China, and he much fears that the sequel of the negotiation, which was to follow the conclusion of these preliminary conditions, will not tend to render the arrangement less objectionable. Captain Elliot seems to have wholly disregarded the instructions which had been sent to him, and even when, by the entire success of the operations of the Fleet, he was in a condition to dictate his own terms, he seems to have agreed to very inadequate conditions.7 The amount of compensation for the opium surrendered falls short of the value of that opium, and nothing has been obtained for the expenses of the expedition, nor for the debts of the bankrupt Hong8 merchants. The securities which the plenipotentiaries were expressly ordered to obtain for British residents in China have been abandoned; and the Island of Chusan which they were specifically informed was to be retained till the whole of the pecuniary compensation should have been paid, has been hastily and discreditably evacuated. Even the cession of Hong Kong has been coupled with a condition about the payment of duties, which would render that island not a possession of the British Crown, but, like Macao, a settlement held by sufferance in the territory of the Crown of China.
Viscount Palmerston deems it his duty in laying these papers before your Majesty, to state some few of the objections which he feels to the arrangement, but the Cabinet will have to consider, as soon as they meet after the Recess, what advice they may wish humbly to tender to your Majesty upon these important matters. There is no doubt, however, that much has been accomplished, but it is very mortifying to find that other things which the plenipotentiaries were ordered to obtain, and which the force placed at their command was amply sufficient to enable them to accomplish, have not been attained.
Viscount Palmerston has sent a small map of the Canton River, which your Majesty may like to keep for future reference.
Footnote 6: Captain Elliot, after capturing the Chinese position at the mouth of Canton River, concluded a preliminary treaty with the Chinese Government, which did not satisfy the Chinese, and which was strongly disapproved of by the English Ministry, as containing no mention of the opium traffic, which had been the cause of all the difficulties; Elliot was accordingly recalled, and succeeded by Sir Henry Pottinger.
Footnote 7: They were the cession of Hong-Kong, and payment of an indemnity of 6,000,000 dollars to Great Britain, with provision for commercial facilities and collection of customs.
Footnote 8: The native Canton merchants,—Hong here probably meaning a "row of houses," a "street." Hong Kong (Hiang Kiang) means the "fragrant lagoon."