the other, to deprecate any intention on the part of European Powers to bring to bear on China any account of unfriendly pressure to induce her Ruler to enter precipitately into a policy which would seriously affect her independence.
I understood from you that the Chinese Govt were fully alive to the expediency or necessity for their own interests of facilitating and encouraging intercourse with foreign nations; that they were sensible of the advantages that would result from a greater assimilation of their rules and practice to those of other nations, and from the adoption of the improvements which the industry of Europe had been so much developed & the happiness of its people so much increased: but that, with all this, they felt that any abrupt attempt to introduce new systems or ideas among a people whose knowledge of foreign nations was limited, & who had been brought up under a traditional system to which they had been accustomed and were attached, would not only produce confusion, even revolution in the country, but would tend to retard instead of promoting the progress, the necessity for which the Chinese Govt fully admitted, and were desirous to encourage.
Page