It Will Be Easily Understood That At This
Particular Moment The Foreign Trade Appeared To Possess Few Advantages,
And Found Few Patrons Among The Chinese People.
In meeting this opposition Lord Napier endeavored to combine courtesy and
firmness.
He wrote courteous and argumentative letters to the mandarins,
combating their views, and insisting on his rights as a diplomatist to be
received by the officials of the empire; and at the same time he issued a
notice to the Chinese merchants which was full of threats and defiance.
"The merchants of Great Britain," he said, "wish to trade with all China
on principles of mutual benefit; they will never relax in their exertions
till they gain a point of equal importance to both countries, and the
viceroy will find it as easy to stop the current of the Canton River as to
carry into effect the insane determinations of the Hong." This notice was
naturally enough interpreted as a defiance by the viceroy, who placed the
most severe restrictions he could on the trade, sent his troops into the
foreign settlements to remove all Chinese servants, and ordered the Bogue
forts to fire on any English ship that attempted to pass. The English
merchants, alarmed at the situation, petitioned Lord Napier to allay the
storm he had raised by retiring from Canton to Macao, and, harassed in
mind and enfeebled in body, Lord Napier acquiesced in an arrangement that
stultified all his former proceedings. The Chinese were naturally
intoxicated by their triumph, which vindicated their principle that no
English merchant or emissary should be allowed to come to Canton except by
the viceroy's permit, granted only to the petition and on the guarantee of
the Hong merchants.
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Page 352 of 704
Words from 95402 to 95687
of 191255
