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to whether a written promise given to by the Viceroy would be kept or not. Her Majesty's Minister upheld the assertion of Mr. Consul Hewlett that the promise would be broken. I ventured to express a different opinion, based upon my four or five years' business relations with the Canton authorities; and I endeavoured to justify my belief in the security of such a promise by also pointing to the fact that, having searched the records of my office for the preceding quarter of a century, I had been unable to find a single instance in which a written promise given by the Viceroy of Canton or by the Chinese Government to any of my predecessors, had been broken.
Whilst frankly expressing a different opinion from mine as to the value of an official engagement given by the Chinese, Sir Thomas Wade "did not tell me whether he thought the fugitives in question should be given up or not given up, and I understood that, when he had further considered the question, he would instruct the British Consul at Canton as to what should be done.
I am bound to admit that the miscarriage of justice that eventually occurred in the discharge of the men who, as the Acting Chief Justice said,