728951-1847-24-Jul-1847 — Page 3

*

Other steamers make trips twice a-week along the of Istria, salting the several ports till ey arrive at Pola, celebratest for its well-preserved Amphitheatre, Temple. Triumphal Arch, and other Roman Antiqui- ries The trip to Pola and back is made in two days, Fare about 93 shilling.

A third steamer starts every alternate Thursday from Trieste for Dalmatia, running to Lussia,-Zari, Schenico, pear which are the magnificent falls of Kerka.-Spalato, containing the once celebrated Pa- lace of Dincierian. so ably described by Adams, Lesina, Curzela-Ragusa and the bay of Cattaro: which last is 20 miles long and reminds visitors of the beauties of the Bosphorus.-The whole fare is about

£5. 10, out and home.

THE FRIEND OF CHINA AND HONGKONG GAZETTE.

parange in about seven hours. The renown of Venica this morning, especially as regards Chian news, for ancient objects of curiosity, wants no trumpeter; is not very clear what prompted so horoio an But there is now one of recent erection not yet gene-outburst on the part of Sir John Davis, as the rally noticed, namely: the new bridge which crossing hostilities into which he suddenly plunged without The Lagunes, connects the city with the mainland, any kind of altimatum to the Chinese authorities This bridge is about five miles long I and serves a8 4 viaduct for the railroad which, when completed, is to

The military achievement of carrying the Bogue resch Milan. This railipad is at present in full opera

forts and the defences of the Canton River in thirty tion as far as Vicenza.-Fure to Venice and back six hours with a sloop of war and a trio of meamers pbout #21.12.

having on board a "party" from a Queen's and a Native Regiment looks a very brilliant affair, and spiking of 837 pieces of cannon sounds grandly, bu when we are told that it was done in a moment of such complete unguardedness that till after the fleet was at Whampou, neither English nor Chinese st Canton knew anything about the expedition, its heroiem falls somewhat in the back ground: one is tempted to inquire into the discretion which dictated | so complete a coup de main and we cannot help asking to be shown its necessity, whatever our opinion of the skill displayed in the performance.

There is nothing establishing the necessity of an immediate military demonstration, to be glenned from the events as far as we are in possession of them. After every thing that has been done, all achieved in the way of a result is a small strip of land for warehouses-of some thirty acres it is said -and a promise to open the gates of Canton tiso years hence! Are these sech magnificent objects, as to warrant the suspension of the usual formalities of international etiquuite? If bad faith and trea- chery on the part of the Chinese are so notorious that it is necessary to overcome them, the naturally ask what has been done to secure hair faith in the present instance? They have been cely overreached, to say the best of it, no act not to be ensily forgotten by them; they have been taken onewares, and as thoroughly bullied as people need be in having their boasted defences carried by a handful of foreigners, an insult not to be easily forgiven; and we have done this to secure-a new agreement, a piece of parchment and nothing more? Sir John Davis evacuates the forts he has stormed, and which it is not likely weshall fiad so ill guarded the next time; he seizes upon his bit of paper, and while the irritated population is heaving with agita tion and the country people swarming into the city, he tells the residents to look out for squalls and prepares to return to Hongkong, leaving a single aleamer to guard our "interests.'*

Theee who may prefer a trip inland, will find at be distance of about seven hours' drive from Trieste, ane of the most splendid and extraordinary curiosities of suture.The Grotto of Adelsberg -In the same section about two hours' ride further, are situated the famous Quicksilver Mines of Idrea."

We consider that the more routes that are presented to the homeward, bound voyage the bet ter, and that a wholesome competition opposed to the P. & O. Company, by an active and enterpris ing body like the Austrian Lloyd's will have the effect of producing in the English Company greater attention to the comfort of the public, as well as greater moderation in their demands. We there fore wish the Austrian Lloyd's every success.

(From the Madras Crescent, June 2) Later intelligence from Hongkong than that possessed by us, having been received by the Spec tator, we have republished what appeared in that journal of yesterday inviting attention to the just strictures on the conduct of Sir John Davis by de China Wail After a most unwise and pro- filless attack on the Chinese forte, and the commis sion of hostilities on a friendly nation; without declaration of war, and destitute of any pretext that could have sanctioned the measure: after un- necessarily exciting the Chinese to increased hatred to the British name at Capton his Excellency determined to abandon the English ad actually residents in that city to the tender mercies of the eurnged populace, with one captain, one lieutenant, one sergeant, one corporal, and three privates !-in order to drill the merchants into soldiers, and or pinize them and their defences against the appre

irritated hended attacks of a million of people

people, against them by his own wantonness and evil po ley and he was persunded only by the strong remonstrances of the merchants to leave the light company of the Royal Irish behind for their pro-

Tection,

and envo

Thus for the present, has terroinated the Rudi "brastic colonelling of her Majesty's representative broker in tea, the er derart company's

henewphom a more unfit per. charge of the national honour and inte have been found equally injurious

repose — he was wrong a state of metro

in

61 Rand

san to tar

rest could

brooking Chinese olence so long, and wrong in is attempts to check it without due provocation and with unequal means wrong in his advance

upon Canton, and, wron

his retreat he bus

the laughing stock of his own countrymen, and has fired the tram which most again involve us in hostilities with Chine in which we have

dly more ho in become angressors, under noorable circumstances than when we assumed war in support of opium smuggling into the Celes.

tal Empire.

These are remarks that must suggest themselves to every one, for they arise naturally out of the narrative before us, fragmentary as it is.

The mi litary intervention,-absurd, when we consider how little it has gained,-will be very mischievous in disturbing the monetary relations with China, already in anything but a healthy condition, and if we may permit ourselves to predict any good result. ing from this affair, it is the certain recall of Sir John Davis Lord Palmerston never forgives a blunderer, and any dim illusions that the Governor of Hongkong might have entertained of exchanging the bloody hand for the coronet, the baronetcy for a barony, we think they will be effectually dispelled on the summons to put his house in oriler. The Singapore Free Press assigns, on the authority of some English papers, Mr Crawford as his succes- sor at Hongkong.

(From the Times, April 23.) On the committee which is now inquiring into our relations with Chine will devolve the duty of prosecuting an examination far more minate in its details, and more important in its consequences, than generally falls to the lot of a Parliamentary body. If the complaints which have been muttered indis inctly and occasionally for the last two or three years, but which have at last assumed the form of a public and general petition to the House of Com mons, are not false, lokow, and unsubstantial, then it will be for the members of that committee to pronounce that the treaty of Nankin, purchased as it was at a great outlay of treasure and of blood, has been wholly barren of its expected fruits; and that to English commerce and to English negotiation not only the generat seaboard of Ching but even the city of Canton is as much a forbidden scene as if Gough had never conquered nor Pottinger ego tiated. If, on the other hand, these complaints are proved to be unreasonable and unjust, then it will tribunal to assert that the unani- be for the same

nous testimony of British merchants and supercar- goes trading to Chion has been given in favour of a factitious grievance, to the discredit of an ho. poured and popular diplomatist.

display of humitation as was in Council we hold it in

as was in design, it has been practically fruitless. We know less of Canton now than ever. We are further off than var from penetrating behind the I did the propilen mysterious veil which separates celestial from

if we had been among thos "Iarbarian" Our positing in Chine is like that of

called for a sermon frien some savage from the South Sea whom a je

jealous

Wednesday, our last. Should bar policy had admitted to a quarantine at Blackwall,

the sacred Seer who but forbade to land on the Custo.n-house quay or Lord, Your new moons and your traverse the streets of London. Or, to put the case

my soul bath ther are a more pointedly. Suppose-imagination may for weary to bear them The tr an instant conceive such an hypothesis-suppose

and calling of sumablier, Ic that, by some accident or other, the Tahitians had is intratty evert the solemn settin got possession of the Isle of Dogs-that they had a

that I have chosen-1 cay for Governor of their own race there that the law is,

Boal it to bow down bu under his superintendence, administered most strin-

and to spread sackcloth gently against then, and most favourably for us—

Wilt thou call da Umt we had mada engagements which we enforced as far as they suited us, but broke when they did no snit us; but that they were bound by the Governor of the Isle of Dogs to fulfil every letter of the com pact on their side that we got them to promise that they would not traffic with any small combina. ton of English merchants, whilst at the same time we forbad any English marchants, except a smail clique of monopoliste, to trade with them, then, in addition, suppose that we extorted from their Go- vernor the promise that no Tahitian should sell opium or whisky (or any other article that might be denounced), but allowed our own people both to sell it and buy it of all other foreigners-that we connived at a British monopoly of it in the said Isle of Dogs, and allowed it to be brought to London by British, and not Tahitian vessels, all this would, mutatis mutandis, nearly describe the coadition of our own countrymen at Hongkong and Canton respectively. But we may go further-Suppose, besides, that we induced our Tahitian Governor to make and enforce such laws in his own little Isle of Dogs as, if carried out against our own fellor. subjects trading thither, must infallibly disgust and drive them away; and then, by way of climax, always made a point of his charging upon his own people, and punishing them for the commencement of every brawl that arose between them and the Betliah; or of his discouraging their even going ashore for more than a few hours, except where there was a Tahitian consul to protect them, and of his withdrawing his protection whenever they were. through ignorance of national customs or topogra |phy, insulted and aggrieved by their hostile neigh. bours. This ladicrous inverlion of the rights of conquered and conquerore would fakuly potray the relatins, as they are now represented to us, of Chi. | nese and Englishmen in a consiry of which we once believed that we bad stormed the natworks by our arms, and might win the citadel by our traffic.

the Lord ? Is not this the fast ibat to lose the band of wickedness, ko burdens, to let the aforest break

every joke? Ja il sot to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that the bug the poor that r out to my house, when faga sest the paced that then cover him, and that thu hiis not thye from thise ows Hesh

The peculiar calamity which this solemn last was, according to the notions of Mr Plampire, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the made azes, to avert, consisted of two tomgaaraly of load, and scarcity of employment The direct and inevi table operation of the fist was to increase both these elements of evil.

The English, under the Pottinger treaty, pro. mised to cease from trading with the Hong mer. chants; but the Chinese Giverament has for bidden any others than those to ima la with the English. Virtully, therefore, the monopoly continens, and all its evils are visited on us. Whateret the demand in the market, or the cost of production, she prine of tea and other native produce depend upon the caprice of an irresponsible combinaign. There is no such thing as free trade in China-it is not wanted, nor understood. Any change that we may make in our import duties will do good only to these few but powerful middlemen. There ja no reciprocity; there is no countervailing easement for the admission of British goods. The Pollinger treaty is herein guilty of a serious omission. Whilst il established a fair and moderate tarif of Customs' at Canton it was silent on the subject of transi: duties. These are the duties which press upon the His wares escape a Customs' English merchant daly, but are subject to a tax on their transit into the interior; a tex of which no notice was taken in the treaty of 1913, and of which mention is first made in a circular issued on the 20th of February, 1844. The nature of this tax, and the proportions which it is respectively levied on certain articles, for example, colton goods and cotton gern, leave us little room to doubt but that it is an instrament of protection, and that while we were bustling in the cause of free trade here, our foreign diplomacy, at the end of a triumphant campaigo, was folled by the combined ingenuity of Chinese manufacturers

and Ministers

Oo the whole, then, it is made to appear, with too fair a show of probability, that the treaty of Nankin, has not given that impulse to our com merce which was so fondly anticipated bere; that the provisions of that trefty have by the scrupe

Far better would it have been for our national character, bad we forcibly retained Chusan till the treaty of Pakin had been fairly carried out, by the free admission of Englishmen into the city of Canton; than that, after enduring the non fulfilment of the agreement ever since it was signed, we should have safoolishly attempted the sudden and violent enforce ment of it, without success, or any other result than that of incensing the Emperor, and aggravat- ing the bad feelings of his people. Instead of such An act being received na arising from a desire to enforce the terms of the treaty-it will be looked upon by continental Europe as designed to create a pretext for a new war, by which moner and ter

For our own parts, we confess that more à prioriousness and good faith which they display, provid sitory may be acquired from an unequal antagonist contemplation of the subject would induce us to

ed a crafty people with a weapon to turn against whom, because we have experienced his weakness believe that the grievance is not imaginary, nor the ourselves; that our soldiers and sailors are not free from insult and assault on shores which they might have annexed to the British empire, whist in that and which alone of our conquests we have chosen to retain, trade has decayed, property has been depreciated, the respectable Chinese driver away in disgust, and the majesty of British power is strong only against the subjects of the British Crown. Bach according to complaints both numerous BIR f respectacle is our present relation to 20 empire whose fores napolity lensies the mysterious day potism of medieval boxes, and the inbus stable exclusiveness of ancient Sparia.

We are resolved to post into extremilles

It may be observes the China Mail, that ere long Caston will fall before a British force: but we shall be in a position to make good use of our victory. In position to hold the ince vi es arMIS until the proud spirit of an solent people a broken Jo a position to say to the Rulers of the country, if you cannot control the people, we will — Yes that time may come another war may place Canton at our disposal, when we may deem it necessary to fortify and garrison it on our own account; when for the protection of our trade with it, we may find i convenient to insist upon the surrender of all the defences up the river to be destroyed or maintained by us, as best suits our advantage. We shall no longer be crilibed, cabinet and confined to the storite and unhealthy little island of Hongkoo secure fooling upon irma, and posse city of the empire: the game of Mandris dosau may then be played with Csot

Bowery nation till British Reside Pekin, and the Son of the Sun becomes th prosioner ca

will view the agg

mediately tenting that has su Undertake

but bold third

pal

complaint precipitate. It is no new thing for Eng. shmen to lose by diplomacy what has been won by arms; nor for the treaties of our Foreign Ministers to mar their own intentions by the honesty and the rectitude of their stipulations. That simplicity

ast

Maged as the baneful virtue which generons trustfulness which two thousand SYULTZ 820 was iamented

made treaties void and wars ungainfol, might be equally condemned by us if we looked only to im- mediate results. Nimeguen, Utrecht, Aix la Cha- pelle, and Amiens, might justify us in a suspicion that Nankia may now be added to the

of interna tional compacts in which our scrupulousness had been imputed to weakness. "

akness, and our weakness in daced the perpetration of violence or the disregard of solemn promisea. If this be so we shall regret that so much time was thrown away, and, on one

મન

More

THE SOLEMN FAST.

From the Brods and Apr 30

Br a most grotesque incongruity, the fast was not observed in Ireland. Mir U bouchere inisrme as, that the poblic works were continued as unial. Thai be the calamity fell on Irelsed, is cutesquence of Irish sina, if in consequence of ang star hot the solemn fast and humiliation which was to avert the calamity, was observed in England exclusively. Ireland, the sinner and the sufferer, was sKamatot from the observancs.

But throughout England work was suspended. The manafactorer who can scarcely obtain work enough to keep his family in comfort, had cus of bis profiable days taken awer from

rentaral labourer who can only earn 8a la xix daya, was obliged to sacrifice 166 out of this mise. rable pistance, in obedience to the fametreisn of Mr Plumpere, ami the culpable weakness of Bir George Grey Take the working possektion (of it classes) of England at firelomitens, and eatį. mate the average earnings of this member as we safely may, at one shilling a day, probably a very low estimate, and we bare here 250,000, or the purchase money of 15,000 quarters of wheat wasted

ost of deference in a såde.

But this is met all. Not only were the resly indigem and suffering poor deprived of a day's sumamauce foa their wretched familes, bat those who were not pont had a day of leisure given them, which nearly all spent in feasting, and which too many spent, and were sure to spent, in drunkenness and debauchery. Thus, the fast deprived of food those who most wanted it, and caused sa increased and wasteful consumptics of k by those who did nut. It caused half the palation to wand lood, And the other half to waste it Truly we may ask.

* Is it such a fort that the Lord hath chose fest which was a decree of license to case, a decree

of starration to ethers.

Some years ago we heard of ship captain in the Arcdio Seas (indeed we knew him personally, be was very clever in his profession, but very fowlish. in his piety) who, when be feand the ice fees. closing in 23and aki vessel with frightful tapidity, and bad barely time to escape through a yet open channel, instead of calling every man on board to unite in the mat prompt and rigorous elfants to improve the critical moment, "imprared" is ia another way,-be pipai vil hands to pragers. l. stead of endeavouring to save bins and those committed to his care, he impiously wasted the precious comanis in ceiling upon God to rave him. He anticipated the example of our privy councillors; but had his ship and crew bean crushed to pieces, as we probable, would not a verdict of wilful murder" have been given against hizi io may court of Christendom!

We think the ministers have been deepts blame worthy in this matter. We regret to be chliged so frequently to speak in condemnation of their course, for, es indviduals, there are few among thein whom ye de ma most sincerely esteem and regard, but, as a baly, they hater overlooked too much the rate of a round principle and really tenacie porition. present case, we do not accuse them of fanaticisen or hypoers, but of that want of sera concientious- Dese and moral courage to sem popoar prejudices, which is at once their bane and their opprobrium.

They wid not encounter the tsants of Mr Spooner and Mr Plampire. They the perverzaly aUMOUS not to offend the public feeling, bat we fear they haveno sure, or even decently fair criterion of rha public feeling really is.

TR JOHN G

Canton, 201

185 House 1