Proceedings at the City of Canton, and the Return of the Centurion to England.
When the commodore arrived at Canton, he was visited by the principal Chinese merchants, who affected to appear very much pleased that he had met with no obstruction in getting thither, and who thence pretended to conclude that the viceroy was satisfied about the former mistake, the reality of which they still insisted on; they added, that as soon as the viceroy should be informed that Mr Anson was at Canton (which they promised should be done the next morning,) they were persuaded a day would be immediately appointed for the visit, which was the principal business that had brought the commodore thither.
The next day the merchants returned to Mr Anson, and told him that the viceroy was then so fully employed in preparing his dispatches for Pekin, that there was no getting admittance to him for some days, but that they had engaged one of the officers of his court to give them information as soon as he should be at leisure, when they proposed to notify Mr Anson's arrival, and to endeavour to fix the day of audience. The commodore was by this time too well acquainted with their artifices not to perceive that this was a falsehood; and had he consulted only his own judgment, he would have applied directly to the viceroy by other hands: But the Chinese merchants had so far prepossessed the supercargoes of our ships with chimerical fears, that they were extremely apprehensive of being embroiled with the government, and of suffering in their interest, if those measures were taken, which appeared to Mr Anson at that time to be the most prudential; and, therefore, lest the malice and double-dealing of the Chinese might have given rise to some sinister incident, which would be afterwards charged on him, he resolved to continue passive as long as it should appear that he lost no time by thus suspending his own opinion. With this view, he promised not to take any immediate step for getting admittance to the viceroy, provided the Chinese with whom he contracted for provisions would let him see that his bread was baked, his meat salted, and his stores prepared with the utmost dispatch; but if by the time when all was in readiness to be shipped off (which it was supposed would be in about forty days,) the merchants should not have procured the viceroy's permission, then, the commodore proposed to apply for himself. These were the terms Mr Anson thought proper to offer, to quiet the uneasiness of the supercargoes, and, notwithstanding the apparent equity of the conditions, many difficulties and objections were urged; nor would the Chinese agree to them till the commodore had consented to pay for every article he bespoke before it was put in hand. However, at last, the contract being past, it was some satisfaction to the commodore to be certain that his preparations were now going on, and being himself on the spot, he took care to hasten them as much as possible.
During this interval, in which the stores and provisions were getting ready, the merchants continually entertained Mr Anson with accounts of their various endeavours to get a license from the viceroy, and their frequent disappointments, which to him was now a matter of amusement, as he was fully satisfied there was not one word of truth in any thing they said. But when all was completed, and wanted only to be shipped, which was about the 24th of November, at which time too the N.E. monsoon was set in, he then resolved to apply himself to the viceroy to demand an audience, as he was persuaded that, without this ceremony, the procuring a permission to send his stores on board would meet with great difficulty. On the 24th of November, therefore, Mr Anson sent one of his officers to the Mandarine, who commanded the guard of the principal gate of the city of Canton, with a letter directed to the viceroy. When this letter was delivered to the mandarine, he received the officer who brought it very civilly, and took down the contents of it in Chinese, and promised that the viceroy should be immediately acquainted with it; but told the officer it was not necessary for him to wait for an answer, because a message would be sent to the commodore himself.
On this occasion Mr Anson had been under great difficulties about a proper interpreter to send with his officer, as he was well aware that none of the Chinese, usually employed as linguists, could be relied on: But he at last prevailed with Mr Flint, an English gentleman belonging to the factory, who spoke Chinese perfectly well, to accompany his officer. This person, who upon this occasion and many others was of singular service to the commodore, had been left at Canton when a youth, by the late Captain Rigby. The leaving him there to learn the Chinese language was a step taken by that captain, merely from his own persuasion of the great advantages which the East-India company might one day receive from an English interpreter; and though the utility of this measure has greatly exceeded all that was expected from it, yet I have not heard that it has been to this day imitated: But we imprudently choose (except in this single instance) to carry on the vast transactions of the port of Canton, either by the ridiculous jargon of broken English, which some few of the Chinese have learnt, or by the suspected interpretation of the linguists of other nations.[1]
Two days after the sending the above-mentioned letter, a fire broke out in the suburbs of Canton. On the first alarm, Mr Anson went thither with his officers, and his boat's crew, to assist the Chinese. When he came there, he found that it had begun in a sailor's shed, and that by the slightness of the buildings, and the awkwardness of the Chinese, it was getting head apace: But he perceived, that by pulling down some of the adjacent sheds it might easily be extinguished; and particularly observing that it was running along a wooden cornish, which would soon communicate it to a great distance, he ordered his people to begin with tearing away that cornish; this was presently attempted, and would have been soon executed; but, in the meantime, he was told, that, as there was no mandarine there to direct what was to be done, the Chinese would make him, the commodore, answerable for whatever should be pulled down by his orders. On this his people desisted; and he sent them to the English factory, to assist in securing the company's treasure and effects, as it was easy to foresee that no distance was a protection against the rage of such a fire, where so little was done to put a stop to it; for all this time the Chinese contented themselves with viewing it, and now and then holding one of their idols near it, which they seemed to expect should check its progress: However, at last, a mandarine came out of the city, attended by four or five hundred firemen: These made some feeble efforts to pull down the neighbouring houses; but by this time the fire had greatly extended itself, and was got amongst the merchants' warehouses; and the Chinese firemen, wanting both skill and spirit, were incapable of checking its violence; so that its fury increased upon them, and it was feared the whole city would be destroyed, in this general confusion the viceroy himself came thither, and the commodore was sent to, and was entreated to afford his assistance, being told that he might take any measures he should think most prudent in the present emergency. And now he went thither a second time, carrying with him about forty of his people; who, upon this occasion, exerted themselves in such a manner, as in that country was altogether without example: For they were rather animated than deterred by the flames and falling buildings, amongst which they wrought; so that it was not uncommon to see the most forward of them tumble to the ground on the roofs, and amidst the ruins of houses, which their own efforts brought down with them. By their boldness and activity the fire was soon extinguished, to the amazement of the Chinese; and the building being all on one floor, and the materials slight, the seamen, notwithstanding their daring behaviour, happily escaped with no other injuries, than some considerable bruises. The fire, though at last thus luckily extinguished, did great mischief during the time it continued; for it consumed an 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 camphor, which greatly added to its fury, and produced a column of exceeding white flame, which shot up into the air to such a prodigious height that it was plainly seen on board the Centurion, though she was 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 styled his boat's crew from the uniformity, of their dress) to guard their warehouses and dwellings-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 to the Chinese behaved greatly to the satisfaction of their employers, who afterwards highly applauded their great diligence and fidelity.
By this means, the resolution of the English at the fire, and their trustiness and punctuality elsewhere, 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 they could never have extinguished the fire of themselves, and that he had saved their city from being totally consumed. And soon after 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 all accounts, a circumstance which Mr Anson was much pleased with; as he was satisfied that 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 the refined cunning of the Chinese, to have admitted him to an audience, only to have contested with him. And therefore, being himself perfectly easy about the result of his visit, he made all necessary preparations against the day. Mr Flint, whom he engaged to act as interpreter in the conference, acquitted himself much to the commodore's satisfaction; repeating with great boldness; and doubtless with exactness, all that was given in charge, a part which no Chinese linguist would ever 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 ready to receive him; on which the commodore and his retinue immediately set out: And as soon as he entered the outer gate of the city, he found a guard of two hundred soldiers drawn up ready to attend him; these conducted 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, and made a very fine appearance, being all of them new clothed for this ceremony: And Mr Anson and 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 it order from the viceroy, there being above him only the head of the law, and of the treasury, who in the Chinese government take place 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 stopped 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 for the future 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 boat-men. 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.