16 Mr. Davis's Memoir concernim the Chinese. 



b 



ceasingly operating spirit of encroachment, imposition, and extortion, on 

 the part of the Chinese, requires the constant pressure of a counteracting 

 check, the firm and concentrated, though mild and judicious, opposition 

 of all the resources in one power. These resources consist in a long expe- 

 rience and thorough knowledge of the people, an intimate acquaintance 

 with their language, and an adequate (though not overweening) confidence 

 in, as well as a temperate use of, the influence arising to the Company, as a 

 body, from the value and importance of the trade. The present system, 

 namely, the establishment of a resident Factory, acting with knowledge, 

 judgment, and unanimity, and possessing the most thorough controul over 

 a numerous fleet of ships, whose commodore, captains, and officers depend 

 for character and employment on the discipline which they preserve in the 

 river among 2500 seamen, as well as on the obedience which they them- 

 selves pay to the orders of the Committee, can alone ensure the continuance 

 of a trade, whose existence depends on the entire suppression of disorder on 

 the one hand, as much as its value does on the successful opposition to 

 extortion on the other. This excellently organized system may with truth 

 be affirmed, (like most others,) gradually to have arisen out of the necessity 

 for it. Any person at all acquainted with the early history of our inter- 

 course with China, when every separate ship of the Company transacted its 

 own business, and when that intercourse in many points resembled lehat a 

 free trade "would make it, must have been struck by the endless and intole- 

 rable grievances to which we were subjected by the Chinese, and which 

 frequently reduced us to the brink of giving up the commerce altogether. 

 (See Asiatic Journal for 1822.) It is quite idle to insist that the Americans 

 are a proof of the success with which an open trade can be carried on. 

 It is too evident that they participate in a very large portion of the advan- 

 tages which our own system affords ; that they absolutely trade under our 

 wing; and that while we are constantly and successfully opposing, with 

 the united weight of our influence and address, the infliction of destructive 

 impositions on the Br-itish trade, the beneficial effects extend to foreign 

 trade in general. 



But to return from this digression. In a comparative estimate of the 

 advancement and civilization of different countries, at the present day, it 

 would not perhaps be a very difficult matter to assign to China her proper 

 place, were the comparison confined to the nations o^ Asia. There she may 

 be allowed to stand pre-eminent. Some persons, however, (and those well 



