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insupported tale, taken upon himself to question, or in any way dispute the clear right of confiscation which the Chinese Government proposed to exercise. What my little Kwok-a-Cheong or any of his friends and partizans may think is of very Consequence, and to me a matter of absolute indifference, but I hold it to be of the highest importance that all who are entrusted by Her Majesty's Government with the Conduct of our relations with the Government of China, should act in strict accordance with Treaty Stipulations, and show the same respect for the rights of the Chinese that we require for our own.
In this case, I would have been entitled to require detailed and satisfactory proof of the actual employment of this ship for some time previous to the voyage during which she was seized in the same way. I should treat a man brought before me charged with being in a house where he had no right to be in the middle of the night, so should I have treated this ship found four miles up a river leading to a Treaty Port. The presumption is that the man and the ship were, the one in the house, the other in the river, for an unlawful purpose, and the onus of disproving this presumption lies on the accused.
Unless there had been distinct evidence in this case, and never was produced that I