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all difficulties and risks and distance, was, under the Treaty of Nanking, to be offered him at his own door, without any difficulty or risks whatever. Come had he not borrowed his enthusiasm from parties on the spot who ought to have known better — We must presume that and that then the spot he spoke forth all inducement to carry his more precious stuffs out of China was cut off.
I have observed throughout upon the bold promises stated upon Colony by previous Superintendants; but I pray Your Excellency not to suppose for a moment that I utter one word in disparagement of these functionaries — I am not sure that they were at all to blame for the gigantic views which they propounded. They must have found those views upon the representations of the local merchants, and relied upon their great experience for their validity — an instance. Sir Henry Pottinger dropping into the busy world of China from the quiet retirement of Scinde, could never have ventured upon such a stupendous promise as that of clothing these hills "with a population equal to that of Ancient Rome".
And wrote from the mouths of experienced men, who manifested their faith in the prospects of the settlement by the price they paid for its soil, and the profuseness of their outlay in improving it. The event has proved that both parties were mistaken; and the simple process was this — that the Merchants were carried away by their enthusiasm and they carried the plenipotentiaries with them. Neither is it difficult to be accounted for. Cooped up in Canton for so many years, witnessing daily instances of local oppression and extortion on the part of the Mandarins, they (the Merchants) took it for granted that a British Colony, with its noble institutions of unpurchaseable and irrespective laws, had only to be founded at the mouth of Canton river, to draw down to it, as if by magic, the plundered and oppressed of every class, not merely from Canton but from all parts of this wide Empire. Hence
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