286
Adams Lecture on the War with China.
MAY,
being admitted to the presence of the emperor, or passing a single hour at Peking. A Dutch embassy, instituted shortly after the failure of that of lord Macartney's, fared no better, although the embassador submitted with a good grace to the prostration of the kotow. A philosophical republican may smile at the distinction by which a British nobleman saw no objection to delivering his credentials on the bended knee, but could not bring his stomach to the attitude of entire prostration. In the discussion which arose between lord Amherst and the celestials, on this question, the Chinese to a man, insisted inflexibly that lord Macartney had per- formed the kotow, and Kiáking, the successor of Kienlung, who had been present at the reception of lord Macartney, personally pledged himself that he had seen his lordship in that attitude. Against the testimony to the fact of the im. perial witness in person, it may well be conjectured how impossible it was for the British noble to maintain his position, which was, after all, of small moment. The bended knee, no less than the full length prostration to the ground, is a syınbol of homage from an inferior to a superior, and if not equally humiliating to the performer, it is only because he has been made familiar by practice with one and not with the other. In Europe, the bended knce is exclusively appropriated to the relations of sovereign and subject, and no representative of any sovereign in Christendom ever bends the knee in presenting his credentials to another. But the personal prostration of the embassador before the emperor, was in the Chi- nese principle of exactions, symbolical not only of the acknowledgment of sub. jection, but of the fundamental law of the empire, prohibiting all official inter- course upon a footing of equality between the government of China, and the government of any other nation. All are included under the general denomina- tion of outside barbarians, and the commercial intercourse with the maritime or navigating nations is maintained through the exclusive monopoly of the hong- merchants.
It has been seen how the British government and nation had accommodated themselves to this self-arrogating system of the Chinese. It was by establishing a monopoly on their part adapted to the monopoly of the Chinese system. The exclusive right of trading with China was granted to the East India Company, and all the commerce of British subjects with the celestial empire was transacted by means of commissioned supercargoes, appointed by those merchant princes, without diplomatic character, and without direct intercourse weth any officer of the Chinese government.
But on the expiration and removal of the East India Company's charter in 1833, the exclusive right of trading with China was discontinued, and thenceforth the quasi-political intercourse between the two nations, transacted by mere commercial agents of the East India Company ceased, and in the third and fourth year of the reign of William IV., an act of parliament was made and passed, 'to regulate the trade to China and India. In pursuance of the powers conferred upon the crown by this act, the sailor-king issued three orders in council. 1.-Constitu- ting and appointing William-Jolin, lord Napier, W. Henry Chichcley Plowden, and John Francis Davis, 'superintendents of the trade of British subjects in China,' with an order for the government of British subjects within the Chinese dominions. 2.-Creating a court of justice for the purposes therein mentioned. 3.-Impos. ing duties on the ships and goods of British subjects trading to China, for the purposes therein mentioned, that is, of defraying the expenses of the establishment. The order for the imposition of duties was afterwards rescinded, and the order
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