within, and the barbarians without, are not to be put away in a morning. The French and English barbarians, having now combined together, seized buildings on Honan, and distressed the people terribly. Committees should be organized; trade between Macao and Hong Hong cut off; the Chinese called home from the latter place; the militia made to drill, so that the rebellious barbarians may be resisted when they land. Every family will fight, and numbers must prevail. The English have enlisted a number of Hakka Chinese (the Military Train Corps), but this they will find turn to their disadvantage. Let a committee be formed, and let it apply to the high authorities to issue instructions which may be confidentially circulated."

On the 1st January, 1858, the Earl of Elgin announced that Canton had been captured, that the authorities of the city had disappeared, and that the persons of Yeh, the Viceroy, his Excellency Pih-Kwei, the Governor of the province, and the Tartar General had all been secured. The capture of Yeh was related by Mr. Loch in the following manner :—

"Military arrangements had been made for marching through the city, and capturing, if possible, Yeh, the Governor, and the Tartar General. At eight o'clock on the morning of the 4th instant, the troops from each quarter advanced into the city, proceeding directly to the house of the Governor and Tartar General, both of whom were made prisoners in their yamuns. A clue Mr. Parkes was able to obtain of Yeh's place of concealment was followed up with great skill and energy. Obtaining the assistance of 100 blue-jackets, under Captain Key's orders, he placed himself under the guidance of a liberated Chinese galley-slave, and a servant of the Governor's: these led them to the house of the Tartar Lieutenant-General. The doors were closed, but were forced open; two more gates yielded in the same way. After passing through two courts, an old man, with a mandarin cap and dress on, came forward, and said, 'I am Yeh.' He was pushed on one side, and Captain Key, hearing people escaping through a door behind, rushed forward, and saw some Chinese getting into a back street. He recognized Yeh immediately, by his likeness to a portrait Captain Bate had of him. Captain Key threw his arm round Yeh's neck, and pulled him back. Yeh exhibited great self-possession, and remained perfectly quiet while his boxes, of which the room was full, were opened and examined for papers. The Governor's house was full of valuables laying about. When taken possession of, sentries were placed in the different rooms, and, to the credit of the Marines, not an article was taken away by any of them."

Yeh, having been the prominent cause of the present hostilities, had been sent on board ship, but the Governor and the Tartar General were detained.

On the 9th January the Earl of Elgin informed the Earl of Clarendon that it had been found necessary to restore Pih-Kwei as Governor in Canton, and sent copies of a proclamation to the people of Canton, calling upon them to support him in the maintenance of order. Some days after the Governor called upon the Earl of Elgin and Baron Gros, desiring them to withdraw the troops from Canton; but the Earl of Elgin answered him, that not a soldier will be removed from the city, nor a military position evacuated, until the terms of peace are finally concluded. On the 25th the Earl of Elgin communicated that it had been resolved by the plenipontentiaries and commanders-in-chief that the blockade of the river and port of

Canton should be raised on the 10th February, that a notification to that effect should be issued, intimating that Canton and the suburbs would still remain under martial law; but that foreigners, on and after the abovementioned day, would be permitted to enter under regulations to be shortly promulgated. The Earl of Elgin also communicated that as the specie found in the Canton treasury had been seized as prize of war, and as there was no obvious mode of raising funds from the town except by resorting to forced contributions, and as it was desirable to remove from the mind of the Chinese the opinion that our principal object in making war is to extort money, he had thought it advisable that the advance required for the service in question should, in the meantime, be made from the commissariat chest, on the understanding that they will be refunded thereto, either from the indemnities exacted from the Chinese, or in such other mode as the Governments of England and France may determine.

On the 1st February the Earl of Elgin communicated that, accompanied by Mr. Parkes and his brother Commissioners, he had visited the principal prisons of Canton.

A few of the prisoners stated they were charged with no other offence than that of having had dealings with foreigners; and that they were taken to the Governor's yamun in order that they might be there examined by the Commissioners. They found no Europeans; but the evidence given by other prisoners went to prove that six European prisoners, who were very troublesome to the gaolers, had been made away with a few months ago, some by poison and others by strangulation. Many of the prisoners were in a very wretched condition, though, except in one case where the sufferers were escaped convicts who had been recaptured, they were victims rather of neglect and apparent insufficiency of nourishment than of harsh

usage.

A note having been sent on the subject to Governor Pih-Kwei, the Governor was greatly exasperated, denouncing such proceedings as an unwarranted interference in the internal affair of China.

Among the documents found in the possession of the Imperial Commissioner Yeh, at the time of his capture, were the originals of the treaties of China with Great Britain, France, and the United States. Also the following memorial, detailing the peculiarities of the receptions of the barbarian envoys of different nations:

"The slave Kiying, upon his knees, presents a supplementary memorial to the throne.

"The particulars of his administration of the business of the barbarian states and management of barbarian envoys, according to circumstances, in his receptions of them,† have formed the subject of different memorials from your slave.

"The supplementary conditions of trade having been also negotiated by him, he has had the honour to submit the articles containing these to the sacred glance of your Majesty, who has commissioned the Board (of Revenue) to examine and report upon them; all which is upon record. He calls to mind, however, that it was in the seventh moon of the twentysecond year (August, 1852), that the English barbarians were pacified. The Americans and French have successively followed in the summer and autumn of this year (1844). In this period of three years barbarian Receptions of them as inferiors in rank.

* Lit. riding and reining.

matters have been affected by many conditions of change; and, in proportion as these have been various in character, has it become necessary to shift ground, and to adopt alterations in the means by which they were to be conciliated and held within range.* They must be dealt with justly, of course, and their feelings thus appealed to; but, to keep them in hand, stratagem (or diplomacy) is requisite. In some instances a direction must be given them, but without explanation of the reason why. In some, their restlessness can only be neutralized by demonstrations which disarm (lit. dissolve) their suspicions. In some they have to be pleased and moved to gratitude, by concession of intercourse, on a footing of equality; and, in some, before a result can be brought about, their falsity has to be blinked; nor must an estimate (of their facts) be pressed too far.

"Bred and born in the foreign regions beyond (its boundary), there is much in the administration of the Celestial Dynasty that is not perfectly comprehensible to the barbarians; and they are continually putting forced constructions on things of which it is difficult to explain to them the real nature. Thus the promulgation of the imperial decrees (lit. silken sounds) devolves on the members of the Great Council; but the barbarians respect them as being the autograph reply of your Majesty; and were they given to understand positively that (the decrees) are not in the handwriting of your Majesty at all (so far from respecting them), there would, on the contrary, be nothing in which their confidence would be secure.

"The meal which the barbarians eat together they call the ta-tsan (dinner). It is a practice they delight in to assemble a number of people, at a great entertainment, at which they eat and drink together. When your slave has conferred favour upon (has given a dinner to) the barbarians at the Bogue or Macao, their chiefs and leaders have come to the number of from ten to twenty or thirty; and when, in process of time, your slave has chanced to go to barbarian residences ‡ or barbarian ships, they have, in their turn, seated themselves round in attendance upon him, striving who should be foremost in offering him meat and drink. To gain their goodwill he could not do otherwise than share their cup and spoon.

"Another point, it is the wont of the barbarians to make much of their women. Whenever their visitor is a person of distinction, the wife is sure to come out to receive him. In the case of the American barbarian Parker, and the French barbarian Sagréné, for instance, both of these have brought their foreign wives with them, and when your slave has gone to their barbarian residences on business, these foreign women have suddenly appeared and saluted him. Your slave was confounded § and ill at ease, while they, on the contrary, were greatly delighted at the honour done them. The truth is, as this shows, that it is not possible to regulate the customs of the Western States by the ceremonial of China; and to break out in rebuke, while it would do nothing towards their enlightenment (lit. to cleave their dulness), might chance to give rise to suspicion and ill-feeling. Again, ever since amicable relations with them commenced, the different

Conciliated, lit. pacified, as a person, or an animal, that is wild, and comforted; kept within range, lit. tethered.

The word used by our Canton servants for dinner, the great meal.

The word "lau," loft or story, is not that applied to the dwelling-houses of Chinese. The mandarins use it especially when speaking to their own people of our houses.

§ "Confounded," almost awe-stricken, as Confucius is described to have been in the presence of his ruler.

barbarians have been received on something of a footing of equality; once such intercourse is no longer a novelty, it becomes more than ever a duty to keep them off and to shut them out.

"To this end, on every occasion that a treaty has been negotiated with a barbarian State, your slave has directed Kwang An-tung, the Commissioner of Finance, to desire its envoy to take notice that a high officer of China, administering foreign affairs, is never at liberty to give or receive anything on his private account; that as to presents, he would be obliged peremptorily to decline them; were they to be accepted and the fact concealed, the ordinances of the Celestial Dynasty on the subject are very stringent, and to say nothing of the injury he would inflict on the dignity of his office, it would be hard (for the offender) to escape the penalty of the law.

"The barbarian envoys have had the sense to attend to this; but in their interviews with him, they have sometimes offered your slave foreign wine, perfumery, and other like matters, of very small value. Their intention being more or less good, he could not well have rejected them altogether and to their face, but he has confined himself to bestowing on them snuffbottles, purses, and such things as are carried on the person; thereby putting in evidence the (Chinese) principle of giving much, although but little has been received. Again, on the application of the Italians, English, Americans, and French, your slave has presented them with a copy of his insignificant portrait. To come to their governments,† though every State has one, there are rulers, male or female, holding office permanently, or for the time being. With the English barbarians, for instance, the ruler is a female; with the Americans and French, a male. The English and French ruler reigns for life: the American is elected by his countrymen, and is changed once in four years; and, when he retires from his throne, he takes rank with the people (the non-official classes).

"Their official designations are also different in the case of each nation. (To represent these), for the most part, they appropriate (lit. filch) Chinese characters, boastfully affecting a style to which they have no claim, and assuming the airs of a great power. That they should conceive that they thereby do honour to their rulers is no concern of ours, while, if the forms observed towards the dependencies (of China) were to be prescribed as the rule in their case, they would certainly not consent, as they neither accept (the Chinese) computation of time, nor receive your Majesty's patent (of royalty) to fall back to the rank of Cochin China or Lewchew.§ And with people so uncivilized as they are, blindly unintelligent in styles and modes of address, a tenacity of forms in official correspondence, such as would duly place the superior above and the inferior below, would be the cause of a fierce altercation (lit. a rising of the tongue and a blistering of the lips); the only course in that case would be to affect to be deaf to it (lit. to be as though the ear-loppet stopped the ear); personal intercourse would then become impossible, and not only this, but an incompatibility of relations would immediately follow, of anything but advantage, certainly,

* Thus, according to the second of the Confucian books, should it be between the ruler and the nobles dependent on him.

† Lit. their sovereign seniors.

Lit. the first and last moons of the year as computed by China, who issues her calendar to Corea, if not to her other dependencies.

§ The Sovereigns of Corea, Lewchew, and Cochin China, are invested by a Chinese envoy, and receive a patent from the Emperor as their Suzerain.

to the essential question of conciliation. Instead, therefore, of a contest about unsubstantial names which can produce no tangible result, (it has been held) better to disregard these minor details in order to the success of an important policy.

"Such are the expedients and modifications which, after close attention to barbarian affairs, a calculation of the exigencies of the period, and a careful estimate of the merits of the question as being trivial or of importance, admitting of delay or demanding despatch, it has been found unavoidable to adopt. Your slave has not ventured to intrude them one by one upon the sacred intelligence, partly because they were in themselves of small significance, partly because there was no time* (so to report them). The barbarian business being now on the whole (lit. in the rough) concluded, as in duty bound he states them detailedly, one and all, in this supplementary despatch, which he respectfully presents to your Majesty." Reply in the vermilion pencil:-"It was the only proper arrangement to have made. We understand the whole question."

On the 12th February, the Earl of Elgin sent to the Earl of Clarendon copy of a despatch he had sent to the Prime Minister or Senior Secretary of State of the Emperor of China, and of a communication to the GovernorGeneral of the Two Kiang and the Governor of Kiang-su. In this despatch the Earl of Elgin referred to the negotiations which had been opened with Commissioner Yeh, prior to the occupation of Canton, and to the disregard of the demands then made. He declared that it was the intention of Great Britain and France to continue to occupy the city of Canton militarily till all the differences between the two countries were settled. And having stated that he possessed full powers to conclude on behalf of England such treaties as might obviate future misunderstandings, he expressed his desire ́that the Emperor of China would appoint a plenipotentiary with powers equally extensive to enter upon such negotiation. Upon the merit of such negotiations, Lord Elgin said:

"Notwithstanding the unquestionable benefits which have accrued under the existing treaties between Great Britain and China, to the latter country more especially, in the increase of the imperial revenues from the duties of customs, and in the enhanced value which the competition of foreigners has given to the products of the industry of the Chinese people, experience has shown that in some important particulars they are defective, and require amendment. It is probable, for example, that if Pekin, the seat of the Imperial Government, had been accessible to foreign ministers, according to the practice which obtains universally among the great nations of the West, the calamities which have lately taken place at Canton might have been averted.

"Again, if foreigners were permitted to circulate in the empire under regulations which would give sufficient security for their good behaviour, such occurrences as the barbarous murder of the French missionary in Kwang-si, which has led to consequences so serious, would probably be prevented. The spontaneous growth of an unrecognized trade at ports of the empire not opened by treaty, and from which, therefore, the imperial treasury derives no benefit, proves how vain is the attempt to confine the foreign trade to the few ports named in the existing treaties. Wherefore, indeed, should the industrious and loyal subjects of the Emperor of China

He had to act at once.