American trade with England to centre on Lands End or one of the Scilly Islands, while every port between Liverpool and London is open direct to American shipping.
But the Sponsors of Hongkong must have expected this or nothing. They must have expected the best produce of China to be brought down here, stored, prepared and shipped here, after being bartered for British manufactures or the yield of British India.
How did they expect the islands to become a grand emporium of Eastern Asia, another Carthage destined to supersede Canton? In brief, they must have expected the silk of Soochow to be brought here, carted here for the opium of Bengal and Malwa; and the teas of the Bohea hills for the products of the looms of Lancashire and Yorkshire.
Else there was no shadow of ground for their predictions! There was this or nothing to carry out the magnificent promises staked upon the settlement.
I respectfully put it to Your Excellency, whether you ever conceived it possible that the silks and teas could have been brought down to this place, or even to Chusan, or to any outside settlement we had taken up; or in short, that they could have been sent out of the country under circumstances entrusted to the rudest boatmen that ever stemmed a tide.
The idea that the native grower or native merchant would risk sending their goods to such a colony is preposterous; and in further associating the fate of Christian with Hongkong, and viewing it as shut out from all share in the China trade equally with Hongkong, I maintain that the very same difficulties which cut off the trade from Hongkong under the Treaty of Nanking must have equally cut it off.
Page 320
was removed and the content was reflowed accordingly. The text was also formatted into proper paragraphs. Some minor spacing issues were corrected. The original word count and order were preserved exactly. The final output is in HTML format using
for paragraphs. No markdown or code fences were included.