MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 387 



commercial avocations at that place, foreigners are constantly exposed to the 



most ignominious surveillance and restrictions. 



The lofty tone which the Chinese usually assume in treating with our mer- 

 chants is well known. The following is an amusing specimen. It is the 

 language addressed by the Viceroy to our Committee in 1830 : 



" ' The celestial Empire benevolently nourishes, righteously rectifies, and 

 gloriously magnifies a vast forbearance. How is it possible that for driblets 

 of men in a pett)' — petty barbarian factory, troops should be moved to exter- 

 minate ! ! [szc.]' But the said Chief, and others, could not explain this in- 

 tention (in the Hong Merchants' threat); they stupidly listen to the teaching 

 of traitorous persons, and forthwith presumed, in opposition to inhibitions, 

 to order guns and arms to be brought up, and arrayed them at the door of 

 their factory. This is still more wild and erroneous. Only try to think — 

 if indeed the said foreigners had among them an illegality of a verj' important 

 nature — I, the Governor, would instantly fly to report to the Emperor, arid the 

 Government troops would gather together like clouds, exterminate them, and 

 leave a perfect vacuum ! ! ' " 



We have only space for the following extracts. Mr. Matheson says. The 

 Chinese, notwithstanding their blustering and bombast in their disputes with 

 the British, are deficient in courage : 



" The Chinese will at one moment adopt language pregnant with direful 

 import, and at the next, if encountered by even a show of serious resistance, 

 sink into the most ignominious submission, and resort to ridiculous subter- 

 fuges, in order to escape from the consequences of their own folly and auda- 

 city. 'I have always entertained but one opinion,' says that shrewd and 

 candid observer, Mr. Holman, ' in reference to our connection with, and 

 policy towards China. We have treated them with too much forbearance ; 

 they have all the braggart, as well as all the recreant qualities of cowardice 

 in their nature. If we were to make a decided demonstration of hostility, we 

 should speedily obtain all that we require at their hands. A few British men- 

 of-war would shatter the flimsy armaments of China with as much facility as 

 our presence, even in slight numbers, and without power, keeps their vaga- 

 bond multitudes in check, in the suburbs of Canton.' And again — ' They are 

 uniformly overbearing and insulting to all those who happen to be in their 

 power, but cringing and abject to those who exhibit a determination to resist 

 them.' 



" The Emperor of China has, in truth, neither the inclination nor the 

 power to resort to hostile measures, in order to destroy our trade, or banish 

 us from his territories, if he saw us disposed to offer a serious resistance. He 

 is far too sensible of our importance — of his weakness, and our strength, — 

 even in spite of the artful and iniquitous means adopted by the local autho- 

 rities to keep him in the dark as to the real state of his relations with this 

 country, by forbidding, intercepting, and falsifying all our attempted commu- 

 nications. It is to further such mischievous purposes as these that they 

 forbid our acquisition of their language, and deny us access to the higher and 

 supreme authorities. The wide-spreading corruption and utter imbecility 

 existing in his empire, — the general poverty of his people, — are too painfully 

 apparent to the Court at Pekin to admit of its sanctioning a breach, and resort 

 to extreme measures, with so powerful a nation as the British. It is as much 

 as they can do to conceal ' the rottenness in the state of Denmark ' behind a 

 glaring grandiloquence. A glimpse of one or two of our men-of-war sta- 

 tioned off the north-eastern coast of China, would send a thrill of consterna- 

 tion through the whole empire, and do more to incline the Chinese to listen 

 to the dictates of reason and justice than centuries of 'temporising' and 

 submi8sion to insult and oppression. Experience ought by this time to have 

 shown us that it is a foolish and useless policy to attempt to gain the confi- 

 dence of the Chinese by exhibiting, as was constantly enjoined by the East 



