One of the senior members of the Legation, of which I am provisionally the chief, with immediate reference to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and I deemed it my duty at once to submit my views to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
It was a statement of my views respecting the larger questions at issue, which were sufficiently plain from the correspondence forwarded to me by Her Majesty's Government, and my objections to the course pursued by the Colonial Government in the discussion of these questions with Mr. Robertson's cooperation. I considered it my duty, I say, to write in the above sense to Earl Russell, and I should not have felt satisfied had I written to him without at the same time communicating with yourself.
Thank you.
[Sir Thomas Francis Wade to Sir Robert Hart]
Pekin. Sept. 17. 1865
In your despatch No. 137 of the 11th ultimo, I am in receipt of your despatch No. 8.
I should wish for some more exact information regarding the case to which I referred in despatch No. 2013 of the 19th July.
I enclose an extract from Mr. Mercer's Memorandum on the subject.
I may repeat my regret that you did not forward the dispatch handed to you for Mr. Mercer by the Canton Governor. Whatever may be the current opinions on the inexpediency of direct communication between a Colony and the Chinese Authorities, I cannot admit that, so long as the latter are content to correspond with the Colony, there is ground for a Consul considering himself relieved from all further interference.
I believe that it will in the end be found best for both parties that communications on international questions should pass through duly appointed international agents; but if the Chinese and the Colony choose on most occasions to do a sort of business direct, this does not...
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