CO129-018 - Others - 1846 — Page 82

House o Common Admiralty

Agent

word of T

B

Foreig "Office

appointments, were such acceptance found to be attended with mischievous and embarrassing

results. The tendency can scarcely be otherwise in China, where British subjects, being by - Treaty freed from the jurisdiction of the Country in which they reside, should be made as amenable as possible to their own

Consuls. But Mr Matheson as Danish Consul might consider himself "as a Co-ordinate authority with M. Consul Macgregor, and this assumption, however groundless, might increase the disposition of the rich opium merchants,. already sufficiently inflated and independent, to set at nought the laws and authorities of __

their own

Country. The very individe

The very individual in-

question is a systematic opponent of the Colonial

government of Hongkong,

local Papers, and

maintains one

of the

through the agency of Dr.

employed

Bowring, whose son is

in the mercantile

house, has everted a secret influence at home.

A

30

an

I presume that within this Colony exequatur from Her. Majesty's government would be indispensable to any person

as a Consul

for a Foreign State; but that at the Chinese. Ports British subjects may deem themselves at liberty to accept foreign appointments, in the - absence of a prohibitory order in bouncil.

and

e of

The second point refers to the employment, by British subjects, of vessels under Foreign flags. From the circumstance of Danish Swedish ships being chiefly occupied as - carriers they have already been made use by the English opium traders to evade the prohibition against trading to the norther and of 32° of Latitude. Were such fraudulent facilities combined with the assumed authority and immunities of a Foreign

Consul, the resulto

might be highly inconvenient, and Mr.

Matheson, as Danish Consul, with a number

of Danish ships in his employ, would certainly

be