The Sun.
London, England, 1836-01-21 00:00:00

CHINA-CANTON.

TO THE KING'S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY

IN COUNCIL.
THE 'PETITION OF THE UNDERMENTIONED BRITISH

SUBJECTS AT CANTON.

HUMBLY SHENVETII,
That we are induced, by the extraordinary position in
which we feel ourselves placed in relation to the Chinese
Government, to petition your Majesty in Council to take
such measures as may he adapted alike to maintain the
honour of our country, and the advantages which a sane and
uninterrupted commerce with China is calculated to yield
to the revenues of Great Britain, ana to the important
classes interested in its arts and manufactures.
•

We beg humbly to represent, that at the present moment,
the Commissioners appointed by your Majesty to super-
intend the affairs of British subjects trading at Canton, are
not acknowledged by the constituted authorities of this
country, and that they are not permitted to reside within
the limits to which their jurisdiction is, by their commis-
sion, strictly confined ; while they are forbidden by their
instructions to appeal to the Imperial Government at Pe-
king, and are perfectly' powerless, to resent the indignities
offered to the late Chief Superintendent, or to compel re-
paration for the injuries done to your Majesty's subjects by
the late unprovoked stoppage of their trade.
Your petitioners are well persuaded that the powers
vested in your Majesty's Commissioners were thus restricted
with the express object of avoiding, as far as possible, all
occasion of collision with the Chinese Authorities ; while it
was hoped that, by maintaining a direct intercourse with
the principal officers of Government, instead of indirectly
communicating through the Hong merchants, a sure way
would be opened for the improvement of the present very
objectionable footing on which foreign merchants stand in
this country, and for security against the many wrongs and
inconveniences which they have had to suffer in the present
state of their commercial avocations.

Your petitioners, however, beg leave most earnestly to
submit to your Majesty in Council, their thorough convic-
tion, founded on the invariable tenor of the whole history
of foreign intercourse with China, as well as of its policy
on occasions of internal commotion, down to the present
moment, that the most unsafe of all courses that can be
followed in treating with the Chinese Government, or any
of its functionaries, is that of quiet submission to insult, or
such unresisting endurance of contemptuous or wrongful
treatment, as may compromise the honour, or bring into
question the power of our country. We cannot, therefore,
but deeply deplore that such authority to negotiate, and
such force to protect from insult, as the occasion demands,
were not entrusted to your Majesty's Commissioners, con-
fident as we are, without a shadow of doubt, that had the
requisite powers, properly sustained by an armed force,
been possessed by your Majesty's late First Commissioner,
the lamented Lord Napier, we should not HOW have to de-
plore the degraded and insecure position in which we are
placed, in consequence of the Representative of our Sove-
reign having been compelled to retire from Canton without
having authority to offer any remonstrance to the Supreme
Government, or to make a demonstration of a resolution to
obtain reparation at once, for the insults wantonly heaped
upon him by the local authorities.
Your petitioners, therefore, humbly pray that your
Majesty will be pleased to grant powers plenipotentiary to
such person of suitable rank, discretion, and diplomatic ex-
perience, as your Majesty, in your wisdom may think fit and
proper to be entrusted with such authority ; and your peti-
tioners would suggest that he be directed to proceed to a
convenient station on the east coast of China, as near to
the capital of the country as may be found most expedient,
in one of your Majesty's ships of the line, attended by a
sufficient maritime force, which we are of opinion need not
consist of more than two frigates, and three or four armed
vessels of light draft, together with a steam vessel, all fully
manned ; that he may, previously to landing, require, in
the first instance, in the name of your Majesty, ample re-
paration for the insults offered by the Governor of Kwang-
tung and Kwangse in his edicts published on the occasion
of Lord Napier's arrival at Canton, and the subsequent
humiliating conduct pursued towards his Lordship, to which
the aggravation of his illness and death may be attributed ;
as well as for the arrogant and degrading language used
towards your Majesty and our country in edicts emanating
from the local authorities, wherein your Majesty was repre-
sented as the " reverently submissive" tributary of the
Emperor of China, and your Majesty's subjects as profligate
barbarians, and that they be retracted, and never again em-
ployed by Chinese functionaries : that he may also demand
reparation for the insult offered to your Majesty's flag by
firing on your Majesty's ships of war from the forts at the
Bogue, and that remuneration shall be made to your
Majesty's subjects for the losses they have sustained by the
detention of their ships during the stoppage of their trade.

After these preliminaries shall have beel'a conceded (as your
petitioners have no doubt they will be), and not till then,
your petitioners humbly suggest that it will be expedient
for your Majesty's Plenipotentiary to propose the appoint-
ment of Commissioners on the part of the Chinese Govern-
ment, to adjust with him, on shore, such measures as may
be deemed most effectual to the prevention of future occa-
sion of complaint and misunderstanding, and for the pro-
motion and extension of the trade generally, to the mutual
advantage of both countries. Your petitioners believe, that
if these matters shall be fairly represented, so as to do
away with all reasonable objection, and the favourable in-
clination of the Chinese Commissioners be gained, there will
be found little disposition on the part of the Supreme Go-
vernment to withhold its assent, and every desirable object
will thus have been attained.
Your petitioners would humbly entreat your Majesty's
favourable view of these suggestions, in the confidence that
they may be acted upon, not only with every prospect of
success, but without the slightest danger to the existing
commercial intercourse, inascutich, as even with a force not
exceeding that which we have proposed should be placed at
the disposal of your Majesty's Plenipotentiary, there would
be no difficulty, should proceedings of a compulsory nature
be required, in putting a stop to the greater part of the
external and internal commerce of the Chinese empire ;
in intercepting its revenues in their progress to the capital,
and in taking possession of all the armed vessels of the
country. Such measures would not only be sufficient to
evince both the power and spirit of Great Britain to resent
insult, but would enable your Majesty's Plenipotentiary to
secure indemnity for any injury that might, in the first in.
stance, be offered to the persons or property of your
Majesty's subjects ; and would speedily induce the Chinese
Government to submit to just and reasonable terms. We
are, at the same time, confident that resort even to such
measures As these, so far from being likely
to lead to more
serious warfare, an issue which both our interests and in-
clinations alike prompt us to deprecate, would be the surest
course for avoiding the danger of such a collision.
Your petitioners beg to submit that the mere restoration
of the liberty once possessed of trading to Amoy, Ningpo,
and Chusan, would be followed by the most beneficial con-
sequences, not merely in the more extended field thereby
opened for commercial enterprise, but in the rivalry which
would be excited as formerly, in the officers of Government
at these several ports, to attract the resort of foreign mer-
chants, and thus extend their own opportunities of acquiring
emoluments from the trade.
With respect, however, to this point, or any other of com-
mercial interest. that it would be expedient to make the sub-
ject of negotiation, your petitioners would humbly suggest
that your Majesty's Minister in China should be instructed
to put himself in communication with the merchants of
Canton, qualified, as they must be in a certain degree by
their experience and observation, to point out in what
respect the benefits that might be reaped under a well re-
gulated system of commercial intercourse are curtailed or
lost, in consequence of the restrictions to which the trade is
at present subjected, and the arbitrary and irregular exac-
tions to which it is exposed either directly, or not less
severely because indirectly, through the medium of the very
limited number of merchants licensed to deal with foreigners.
As as instance of the latter, your petitioners may state the
fact, that the whole expense of the immense preparations
lately made by the local government to oppose the ex-
pected advance towards Canton of your Majesty's frigates
after they had passed the Bogue, has been extorted from
the Hong merchants ; and as but a few of them are really
in a solvent state, they have no other means of meeting
this demand, but by combining to tax both the import and
export trade.
We would further humbly, but urgently, submit, that
as we cannot but trace the disabilities and restrictions under
which our commerce now labours, to a long acquiescence
in the arrogant assumption of supremacy over the monarchs
and people of other countries, claimed by the Emperor of
China for himself and his subjects, we are forced to con-
clude that no essentially beneficial result can be expected
to arise out of negotiations in which such pretensions are
not decidedly repelled. We most seriously apprehend, in-
deed, that the least concession or waiving of this point
under preSent circumstances, could not fail to leave us as
much as ever subject to a repetition of the injuries of
which we have now to complain.
We would, therefore, humbly beseech your Majesty not
to be induced by a paternal regard for your subjects trad-
ing to this remote empire, to leave it to the discretion of
any future representative of your Majesty, as was permitted
in the case of the embassy of Lord Amherst, to swerve in
tbo smallest degree from a direct course of calm and dis-
passionate, but determined ukaintenance of the true rank
of your Majesty's empire in the scale of nations, well as-
sured os we feel, that any descent from such just position,
would be attended with worse consequences than if past
events were to remain unnoticed, and we were to be left
for the future to conduct our concerns with the Chinese
functionaries, each as he best may.*
It would ill become your Majesty's petiticesTors to point
to any individual as more competent tIOn another to un-
dertake the office of placing 9,a a secure and advantageous