Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 47

24

Letter from B. J. Bettelheim.

JAN.

the report that we had introduced ourselves here as messengers from the English government. Sir Thomas Cochrane himself, when here, was capable of believing it on mere hearsay, without any further proof; and I think it but fair to show he was too credulous. I do not deny that suspicious Japanese officers may entertain such thoughts, and in fact, they can scarcely come to any other view in the matter, judging from their own slavish laws, which forbid any one to leave the country without their knowledge and consent. Yet it is not my fault, nor Sir Thomas' fault, that government here still retains the same suspicion after all he has said against it and us.

He spoke of the king of Lewchew (to use the words of his own secretary), as an independent sovereign. Would any one style so, with all his sympathy for monarchical dignity, this headman of a few insignificant coral rocks, disputed too by Japan and China? On even him the Sovereign of England (as if the latter had acknowledged, or were, or desired to be, in treaty with this would-be miniature sovereign) would not put the disgrace of sending a person like me.

Sir Thomas, without giving me the slightest information of what this government had said, save that he sent his secretary to tell me what he (Sir T.) had said; without confronting me with them; yea, even without inviting me to a conference, which, as his secretary told me happened to turn exclusively upon our stay here, believed that I had thrown myself upon this island as an official ambassador, who, of course, in that case had done so without insisting upon the right of having an English adıniral's broadside at his installation. Leaving myself out of the question, I wish that ambassadors could be intro- duced without the stunning credentials of a man-of-war. Far from considering this a disgrace, I should think it the greatest mark of hon- or paid to any nation, whose official agents were received on their mere word. But this aside. I need only refer, in the present case to my Chinese interpreter, now in his own country, and who of course knows all about our mysteries, for evidence; let him be examined, whether at any time we even hinted at our being official emissaries. Having been robbed of nearly all my cash, and publicly beaten at Lewchew, I thought it not only allowable, but even my duty, to threaten that would bring the matter before the English government. This was English right, and beyond this I did not presume. But as our difficul- ties had not begun till after Sir Thomas left, there was no occasion on our part for English protection; so that this government could not at the time of the admiral's visit, produce any proof whatever, not even a distorted intimation or allusion on my part to the assumption of a