The Sun.
London, England, 1860-11-14 00:00:00

THE WAR 1N CHINA.

(From the Gazette of last Eveninj.)
FOREIGN OFFICE; Nov. 13.
A despatch, dated Tientsin, September 8, 1860,
of which the following is an extract, has, with its
enclosures, been this day received at the Foreign
Office from the Earl of-Elgin, her Majesty's High
Commissioner and Plenipotentiary in China :
In pursuance of an arrangement previously made,
Messrs. Wade and Parkes waited, by my desire, on
the Imperial Commissioners on the 6th inst., with
a draft of the Convention which, it was under-
stood, was to have been signed on the Bth. The
Commissioners, who had already been unofficially
apprised of•its, terms, made little objection to any
portion ofit, except the clause providing that of
the total indemnity of eight million taels declared
to be due by China to Great Britain, one million
should be paid before. Tien-tsin was evacuated by
the British troops. After some conversation, how-
ever, in which they betrayed manifest signs of un-
easiness, they announced to my secretaries that
they could not stipulate that the Convention should
take effect without previous ratification, and that
so far from being ready to sign it on the Bth inst.,
they could not do so at all until it had been sub-
mitted to the Emperor for his approval.
This intimation led to a discussion respecting
the extent of the powers held by Kweiliang and
his colleagues.
It is not very easy to apprehend the precise
import of the phraseology employed in Imperial
decrees on subjects of this nature. It was very
obvious, however, from what passed during the
course of this discussion, that Kweiliang either
had not, or did not, at this particular moment
wish it to be supposed that he had powers
equal to those which he held when he made
a treaty with me in 1858 ; although in the first
communication which I received from him
announcing his appointment, the title which he
assumed,' and the language which he employed,
were calculated to convey the opposite impression.
It was impossible to attribute this departure
from a precedent so recently established, and esta-
blished in the person of Kweiliang himself, to any-
thing but a deliberate design to create delay which
might throw us into the winter, and thereby ex,
tricate the Pekin Government from its present em-
barrassments. To check this policy by an act of
vigour was manifestly indispensable, unless we in-
tended to forfeit all the advantages secured by our
advance to this point; and I accordingly resolved,
with Baron Gros' concurrence, to intimate to the
Imperial Commissioners, that, in consequence of
the want of good faith exhibited by them in as-
suming the title of Plenipotentiaries, when they
could not exercise the authority which it implied,
and of the delays which the alleged necessity of
constant reference to Pekin would occasion, I had
determined to proceed at once to Tangchou, and
to enter into no further communications with
them until I should have reached that place.
Inclosure No. 2 in this despatch is a copy of the
letter in which I conveyed to them this determina-
tion, and inclosure No. 1 is a copy of the report,
in which Messrs. Wade and Parkes narrates what
passed at the interview to which I have been re-
ferring.

My letter to the Imperial Commissioners pro.
duced a reply, of which inclosure No. 3 is a copy.
But although civilly worded and abounding in
promise, their reply was, in fact, an admission of
the charge that they had been hitherto negotiating
under false pretences. Inclosure No. 4is a copy
of my answer, and simply states that I adhere to
the resolution communicated to them in my former
despatch.
With the infelicity which so often characterises
the proceedings of Chinese negotiators in such
cases,•the Imperial Commissioners betrayed their
want of candour in this matter, on the day sue•
ceeding that on which Major-General Sir IL Napier
reached this place with the 2d division of the force
under Sir Hope Grant's command. The army was,
therefore, in the best possible condition for a
movement in advance, and I officially apprised the
Commander-in-Chief, who has been throughout
fully cognisant of the course of the negotiations in
which I have been engaged, of the cause of my
desire to proceed to Tangchou, in a letter of which
the copy forms inclosure No. 5 of this despatch.

(Inclosure No. 1, in the Earl of Elgin's despatch of
the Bth of September, 1860.)
Memorandum of an interview between the As-
sistant Imperial Commissioners, Hangki, and
Messrs. Wade and Parkes.
TIENTSIN, Sept. 7, 1860.
Under instructions from his Excellency the Earl
of Elgin, who had communicated his wishes to that
effect to the Commissioners in a despatch of the
same date, we proceeded about half-past four on
the afternoon of the 6th instant to the yamun of
the salt commissioner, in which the Imperial Com-
missioner Kweiliang is staying, and at which it
had been arranged we should meet the Assistant
Commissioner Hangki, to deliver to the latter the
draft of a convention, on signature of which Lord
Elgin promised in his earlier despatch of the 29th
of August, to call on the Commanders-in-Chief to
desist from further hostilities.
The substance of this convention had been made
fully known to the Commissioners so early as the
3d instant, and a draft of the whole convention,
with the exception of one article, was non-officially
handed to Hang-ki on the evening of the sth inst. ;
and it was then distinctly understood, after he had
read it over, that the preliminary interview with
the Ambassador should take place on the 7th, and
the convention be signed on the Bth instant. The
single article to be added, as we then told Hangki,
concerned the troops, the distribution of which, in
the south, was not yet absolutely decided ; but
we repeated what he already knew, that the mo-
ment the one million taels, stipulated for in the
convention, was paid, the force would be with-
drawn from Tien-tsin. the article, as it now
stands, was of course added to the draft officially
handed to him last evening.
The condition affecting the movements of the
troops, however, seemed comparatively of little
interest. His grand difficulty, to all appearance,
was the payment of the money demanded. He
had suggested some verbal changes and omissions
in the despatch already in his hands, but nothing
that would not have admitted of modification
without compromising any principle.
When now reading over the preamble, however,
he was reminded that before signature the powers
of the Plenipotentiaries would have to be pro-
duced, that is to say, on the part of the Chinese.
The Imperial decree, describing more or less the
nature of the case, requiring the appointment of
Imperial Commissioners, and defining their autho-
rity to deal with such case. He did not seem much
disturbed by this remark, but presently on coming
io the article which provides for the immediate
operativeness of the convention, " without the
formality of a ratification," he said that these
words could not be inserted by any Chinese in a
treaty, and that, in fact, without first receiving the
approval of the Emperor, the Commissioners could
not sign the convention at all.
This induced us to remark that the two Com-
missioners, Kweiliang and Hang-Fuh, have each
of them in their titles the words pien-i-hing-sz,
implying power to act as the occasion shall demand,
and we went on to inquire what words describing
the question they were charged to dispose of had
accompanied such other words as invested them