The Sun.
London, England, 1841-12-18 00:00:00

j :eta in China, with an crder fur the government of
British subjects within the Chinese diminions. 2.
Creating a Court of Justice for the purposes therein
mentioned. 3. Imposing duties on the ships and goods
of British subjects trading to China, for the purposes
therein mentioned ; that is, of derraying the expenses
of the establishment. The order for the imposition of
duties was afterwards rescinded, and the order for
the constitution of a Court of Justice was sus-
pended for further consideration. The Chief Super-
intendent, Lord Napier, was instructed to announce his
arrival at Canton by letter to the Viceroy. The Superin-
tendents were instructed to take up their residence
at' the port of Canton, and to discharge the duties of
their commission within the river or port of Canton, or
at any other place within the river or port, or at any
other place thereafter to be designated by an order in
Council, and no' elsewhere.
One of the most remarkable circumstances attending
all these transactions is, that in giving these instruc
tions to the superintendents to take np their residence
at Canton, and to the chief superintendent to announce
his arrival by letter to the Viceroy, they appear not to
have been aware of the 'possibility of any objection to
this course of proceeding on the part of the Chinese.
Accordingly on his arrival in China, ;After organizing
the board of superintendents at Macao, Lord Napier with
his colleagues and the secretary of the commission pro-
ceeded immediately to Canton.
You have in the first despatch from Lord Napier to
Lord Palmerston, the primitive and efficient cause of
the present war between Great Britain and China. It
was in the attempt to execute two points of the instruc-
tions to the superintendents.-1. That the chief super-
intendent should announce his arrival at. Canton, by
letter, to the Viceroy, and the other, that the superin-
tendents should take up their residences at Canton.
Lord Napier, with the open-hearted and inconsiderate
boldness of a British sailor, attempted to execute
these points of instructions to the letter, with-
out for an instal. t conceiving that each of them
was in direct conflict with the vital and fun-
damental laws of the Celestial Empire. This
ignorance was very natural, and very excusable in
a Captain of the British navy, Lut how it came to
be shared by the Privy Council and the Secretary of State
of the British Empire is more unaccountable. The instruc-
tions were explicit and. positive. Had there been the re-
motest suspicion
.at. the time when they were prepared,
that their execution would meet with resistance by the Chi-
nese authorities, it could not have failed to be noticed in
them, with directions how the superintendents were to pro-
ceed in such an event. Until then the official protector of
British commercial interest in China had been a supercargo
of the East India Company, denominated by the Chinese a
Towpan, whose representations or remonstrances in behalf
of British subjects to the Governor of the two provinces,
Kwang-tung and Kwang-see, were always presented in the
form of petitioas, and always communicated through the
medium of Hong merchants, without obtaining or claiming
direct access to the Chinese dignitary himself. That this
mode of communication was to cease from the time of
the expiration of the exclusive privilege of the East India
Company, was equally • well known to the British and
Chinese Governments, and in the controversy which im-
mediately followed this first collision between Lord Na-
pier and the Governor o' Canton, the latter once and
again asserts that ample warning had been given to the
British merchants that when, by the expiration of the
privilege of the East India Company, the functions of the
Towpan would be superseded, some suitable messenger
must be substituted to settle with the Hong merchants
those trifling and insignificant concerns of commerce
which it was.far beneath the dignity of the Government
of the Celestial Empire to provide for or to notice.
But I am already trespassing upon your patience—a
brief and summary notice of the sequel is all that your
time will at present allow. The proud and generous
British noble mariner persisted in his determination to
hold direct communication with the Governor of the two
provinces, Loo, and to continue his residence at Canton
till ha was obliged to call for an armed force from the
British frigate in which he had performed his passage
into Canton for the protection of his person from as-
sault by the armed force of the Governor ; who, on
his own part issued edict after edict against the
barbarian eye, laboriously vib Napier, who had come
by sea more than ten thousand miles to the flowery
land of the Celestial Empire, for what purpose the
chief of the two-eyed peacock feather could not tell,
but against all reason, and ignorant of all dignities, pre-
tending to correspond with the Viceroy of the two pro-
vinces of Kwang-tung and Kwan-see, upon matters of
trade, by letter instead of by petition, and to assume the
functions which for a century and some tens of years had
always been performed in all humility by a Towpan, pe-
titioning through the medium of the Hong merchants,
who attempted for several days to negotiate a compromise
between the Governor and. the Noble Lord Superin-
tendent without success, till at length an edict was issued
by the Governor, which suspended the British trade.
The British commerce in China was prostrated at a
blew, and the only alternative left to Lord Napier was
to retire under numerous insults and indignities to Macao,
where, on the 13th day of October, 1834, he died of cha-
grin and a broken heart.
And hero we might pause—my brethren of the Massa-
chusetts illistorical Society—do I hear you inquire what
has all this to do with the opium question, or the taking of
Canton ? These, I answer, are but incidents in that
movement of mind on this globe of earth, of which the
war between Great Britain and China is now the leading
star. Of the four questions which I have proposed this
evening to discuss, we have not even reached the con-
clusion of the first.

The justice of the cause between the two parties. Which
has the righteous cause ? You will perhaps be sur-
prised to hear mi. answer, Britain—Britain has therighte-
ous cause. But to prove it, I have been obliged to show
that the opium question is not the cause of the war :
my demonstration is not yet complete. The cause of the
war is the Ko-tort !—the arrogant and insupportable pre-
tensions of China, that she will hold commercial inter-
course with the rest of mankind not upon terms of equal
reciprocity, but upon the insulting and degrading forms
of relation between lord and vassal. The melancholy
catastrophe with w Ilia I am obliged to close, the death
of the gallant Napier, was the first bitter fruit of the
struggle against that insulting and senseless preten-
sion of China. Might I, in the flight of time,
be permitted again to address you, I should pursue
the course of the inquiry through the four ques-
tions with which I have begun. But the solution
of them all is involved in the germinating element
of the first, the justice of the cause. This I have
sought in the natural rights of man. With reference to the
last of my four questions—what are the duties of the Go-
vernment and the people of the United States resulting
from the existing war between Great Britain and China?
I leave to your meditations the last event of that war,.
which the winds have brought to our ears—the ransom of
Canton. When we remember the scornful refusal from
the gates of Canton, in July, 1834, of Mr. Astell, bearing
the letter of peace and friendship from Lord Napier to
the Governor of the two Provinces, and the contemptuous
refusal to receive the letter itself, and compare it with the
ransom of that same city in June, 1841, we trace the
whole line of connection between cause and effect. May
we not draw from it a monitory lesson, written upon a
beam of phosphoric light, of preparation for war and pre-
servation of peace.