18.12.
Last Ten Years, from 1832 to 1841
407
immediate and vigorous measures on the part of her majesty's government will as suddenly and completely restore the wise and liberal party to the ascendant in the emperor's councils, as it was lately cast out. At all events, the time has arrived when her majesty's government must consent to the rapid growth of relaxation, or restriction, concerning foreign intercourse; the more sinister of which policy has prevailed for the moment, and is actually in harshest operation, In my own humble opinion, the Chinese government is utterly without the spring of power to jerk back (if I may so have it) to the accomplishment of the present reactive purposes; in my mind, they can lead only to a safe setting aside by her majesty's prompt, powerful, and measured intervention, or to discreditable, but not less certain, overthrow, by the movements of lawless men on the coasts.
"Thus profoundly impressed, (and my practical opportunities of judging are so favorable, as to go far to compensate my inability to search such subjects with the needful spirit,) I cannot but express the anxious hope that her majesty's go- vernment will find it easier, more just to itself, and more considerate to this ent- pire, to adjust the effects of the rash but impotent proceedings which cmanale from the actual councils of the emperor, than to remedy, at some little later period, evils of a different and far more difficult nature. It has sometimes occur. red to me, that the uneasy temper of the Nepaulese and Burmese courts, parti- cularly on the subject of the residence of political agents, is not entirely uncon- nected with Chinese suggestion; neither can I dismiss from my mind the surmise, that the increasing indisposition of the Chinese to the foreign trade by the sea. shore, may find some explanation in the existence of an establishment at Peking, which I need not advert to particularly; but whence the notion, that safer and more extensive commerce and intercourse might be carried on by the land fron. tier would arise more naturally, than any suggestions favorable to the British government, or to the protection of British trade.
"April 17th, 1839.
“The correspondence will inform your lordship that our close captivity still continues: the servants, however, are coming back gradually: and I collect from a letter of Mr. Johnston's, dated on the 15th instant, that about one half of the opium surrendered will be delivered to the officers of the Chinese government to- morrow evening.
44
April 22d, 1839. The interruption of my
"Our confinement still continues. communications with Mr. Johnston, at the Bocca Tigris, prevents me from know. ing whether the one half of the opium be actually surrendered. But I have no doubt that must be the case, and indeed his excellency's late communication con. tains an avowal that he does not mean to keep his pledge in respect to the open- ing of the intercourse. No circumstance shall disturb my determination to let him fill the measure of his responsibility. For I well know that remonstranco from a man in my present situation to a high Chinese officer, determined to be false and perfidious, can serve no other purpose than to furnish him with adroit turns in plausible palliation of his own conduct.
Appeals to reason or justice are out of the question; complaint would be unbecoming; and we would only ring the language of warning or indignation to his own advantage. The necessary reply to all this violation of truth and right is a blow, and that it consists neither with my power nor authority to inflict. when I am in a convenient situation for placing the real hearings of circum.
But