1812
Adams Lecture on the War with China
for the constitution of a court of justice was suspended for further consideration. The chief superintendent lord Napier was instructed to announce his arrival at Canton, by letter to the viceroy. The superintendents were instructed to take up their residence at the port of Canton, and to discharge the duties of their commission within the river or port of Canton, or at any other place within that river or port, or at any other place thereafter to be designated by an order in council, and not elsewhere.
One of the most remarkable circumstances attending all these transactions is, that in giving these instructions to the superintendents to take up their residence at Canton, and to the cheif superintendent to announce his arrival by letter to the viceroy, they appear not to have been aware of the possibility of any ob- jection to this course of proceeding on the part of the Chinese. Accordingly, on his arrival in China, after organizing the board of superintendents at Macao, lord Napier with his colleagues and the secretary of the commission proceed. ed immediately to Canton. For the scenes which ensued of dramatic interest, partaking at once of tragedy and farce, recourse may be had to the official dispatch of the clueť superintendent to his Britannic majesty's secretary of state. In obedience to his majesty's commands (says lord Napier in his letter of 9th August 1834, to lord Palinerston) conveyed to me by your lordship, of the date of the 23d of January last, desiring ine to announce my arrival at Canton by letter to the viceroy, which being rendered into Chinese by the Rev. Dr. Mor. rison, the Chinese secretary and interpreter, was carried to the city gates by Mr. Astell, (the secretary to the commission) accompanied by a deputation of gentlemen from the establishment.'
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[For lord Napier's account of this transaction, sec pages 26 and 27 of this vol.] You have now, in this portion of the narrative of the first dispatch from lord Napier to lord Palmerston, the primitive and efficient cause of the present war between Great Britain and China. It was in the attempt to execute two points of the instructions to the superintendent. That the chief superintendent should announce his arrival at Canton, by letter to the viceroy, and the other, that the superintendents should take up their residence at Canton. Lord Napier, with the open-hearted and inconsiderate boldness of a British sailor, attempted to execute these points of his instructions to the letter, without for an instant con- ceiving that each of them was in direct conflict with the vital and funda. inental laws of the celestial empire. This ignorance was very natural and very excusable in a captain of the British navy, but how it came to be shared by the council and the secretary of state of the British empire, is more unaccountablc. The instructions were explicit and positive. Had there been the remotest suspi. cion at the time when they were prepared, that their execution would meet with resistance by the Chinese authorities, it could not have failed to be noticed in thein, with directions how the superintendents were to proceed in such an event. Until then the official protector of British commercial interests in China, had been a supercargo of the East India Company, denominated by the Chinese a táipán, whose representations or remonstrances in behalf of British subjects to the go- vernor of the two provinces, Kwángtung and Kwángsí, were always presented in the form of petitions, and always communicated through the medium of the hong-merchants, without obtaining or claiming direct access to the Chinese dig- nitary himself. That this mode of communication was to ccase from the time of the expiration of the exclusive privileges of the East India Company, was