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and with Your Lordship's approval, to
send one or more
of the cadets to
study, not, as hitherto, during the
whole of their period
their period of three
"years",
at Canton, but during a portion of
that time at Peking, where, (as
throughout the far greater part of China), the Mandarin dialect is ... used by all classes of the population, and where it is learned by the Attaches and Student-Interpreters of the British and of the other Foreign Legations.
I should have added
to the reasons given in the above-mentioned despatch that attention has been drawn by some
of Her
-Majesty's Consuls in China to the significant fact that, as one consequence of the prevailing ignorance of the Mandarin dialect among the officers
of this Government, the titles applied to the Queen in the Chinese portion of the Hongkong Government Gazette,
in former years have sometimes, been derogatory to the Crown, and such as the Chinese employ only with respect to the Tributary Princes of Korea, Annam