The Sun.
London, England, 1858-09-16 00:00:00

CONTRACT FOR STOCKINGS FOR THE ROYAL
MARINES.

Department of the Comptroller for Victualling,
Somerset-place, 14th September, MS.
THE COMMISSIONERS for EXECUTING the
-A- OFFICE of LORD HIGH ADMIRAL of the UNITED
KINGDOM of GREAT. BRITAIN and IRELAND, DO
HEREBY GIVE NOTICE, that on MONDAY, the 27th
instant, at half-past One o'Clock, they will be ready to treat
with such Persons as may be willing to Contract for supply-
ing and delivering into her Majesty's Victualling Stores at
Deptford, all such GREY WORSTED STOCKINGS for
Serjeants of the Royal Marines as shall from time to time be
demanded, under a Contract for twelve months' certain, and
further until the expiration of three months' warning.
A Pattern of the Stockings may be seen at the Royal Marine
Office, New-street, Spring-gardens, between the hours of one
and four o'clock.

The conditions of the revised contract may be seen at the
said office. No tender will be received after half-past One
o'clock on the day of treaty, nor any noticed, unless made on
the printed form provided for the purpose, and which may be
obtamed on application at the said office.
Every tender must be addressed to the Secretary of the
Admiralty, and bear in the left-hand corner the words "Ten-
der for Stockings," and must also be delivered at Somerset-
place.

THE SIGNING OF THE TREATY OF

TIEN-SIN.

(FROM A CORRESPONDENT
,OF THE TIMES.)

TIEN-SIN, RIVER PEIHO, JUNE 26.
By one of those accidents which so often occur it
so happens that the treaty of peace with China was
signed by the Ambassador of Great Britain and
the Imperial Commissioners " Kweiliang" and
" Hwa-shana" on the anniversary of the day (June
26, 1843) on which the ratifications of the treaty
of Nankin were exchanged at Hong Kong by Sir
Henry Pottinger and Keying. That once much-
lauded treaty, the first earnest effort of Great
Britain to bring this vast country and its industrious
but wrong-headed people into the general commu-
nity of nations has lasted exactly 15 yekrs ; and,
although the cheers of seamen and the " God save
the • Queen" played by our bands have to-day
sounded its requiem, it would be most unjust to say
that the treaty of Nankin was not a most able one
and highly profitable to all commercial nations, or
that it has not effected much, very much, towards
bringing China and the Chinese to understand and
appreciate in some degree the pc:over and civilisa-
tion of the West. It is, however, from an abler
pen than mine that you must learn in what respects
the treaty of Nankin fell short of the requirements
of the present day, and to what extent the present
treaty promises greater political, social, and com-
mercial advantages ; but before I proceed to give a
description of the ceremony performed to-day it is
as well to remind you that the circumstances
under which the treaty of Tien-sin has been nego-
tiated and brought to a successful issue are widely
different to those connected with the now defunct
Treaty of Nankin. In 1842 the Ministry at home
distinctly laid down for Sir Henry Pottinger the
articles of the treaty he was directed to obtain from
the Emperor of China ; they authorised him to act
upon the aggressive, and to apply any amount of
pressure until those terms were conceded, and with-
out any wish to detract from the diplomatic skill and

decision of Sir H. Pottinger, it is but fair to say thai

in Sir W. Parker and Sir Hugh Gough he was sup-
ported by two officer; singularly fitted by their
enterprise and energy to bring his demands to a
speedy concession. On the present occasion it is
very evident, from what has passed at home as well
as out here, that the Ministry—whether that of
Lord Palmerston or Lord Derby—had neither made
up their minds to be at war or at peace with China
nor did they know what demands to make or repa-
ration to insist upon. After a grand parade in
1857 of the formidable military and naval force
which was to support the negociations of Lord
Elgin as ambassador to the Court of Pekin, we see
him in the spring of 1858 anchored before the
entrance of the River Peiho with a solitary gunboa
and an old sailing frigate, besides the steam vesse
he was embarked in; and they only arrived in time,
owing, we hear, to his having assumed the respon-
sibility of giving the. Pique and Slaney orders
which ought to have emanated from their admiral ;
and when, after weeks of delay, a force did arrive,
on Lord Elgin rested not only all the responsibi-
lity of making demands which Lord Derby's Mini-
stry might in no way agree in thinking just, but
likewise of authorising acts of hostility, and then
urging and stimulating the Executive to act with
some firmness and decision in performing their part.
In 1842 it was a fair tilt between Chinese manda-
rins and Downing-street; in 1858 Lord Elgin has
had not only to contrive to keep with our sprightly
yet thin-skinned allies of France, but anxiously to
check-mate the Russian, who has no desire to see
any of us north of the latitude of the Yang-tse-
kiang as being likely to interfere with certain
annexations to come off in the Corea and Man-
chooria, and to meet the dog-in-the-manger policy of
the Americans, who know they can neither profit by
the rice and cotton of India, or the broadcloths and
hardware of England being poured into Northern
and Central China. Prior to the day on which it
had been arranged that the ceremony should take
place, a gunboat had been considerately despatched
from Tien-sin to bring up from the squadron, anchored
seven miles outside the Peiho river any officers who
might desire to be present ; and on the 28th of

June she returned, attesting by a huge freight of
some 76 officers, with 76 full-dress cases and 76
cocked hats, the readiness with which the invita-
tion had been accepted.
On the same evening sinister rumours were
whispered about Tien-sin of an Imperial decree
having just arrived forbidding the Chinese com-
.

missioners to concede some very important
demands, and that the treaty was postponed. At
a later hour these tales were traced to the yamuns,
in which dwelt the Russian and American
Plenipos—"les neutres" as our witty allies term
them—and all anxiety was at once dispelled. The
26th of June came in, as every day has done sine e
we have been in Tien-sin, with bright sunlight and
a cloudless sky overhead and a heard-baked earth
underfo'ot, through a deep crack in which rolled on
to the sea the muddy waters of the Pei-ho. Tien-
sin city, with its mud-built houses, looked as mean
and uninteresting as ever, and but for the swarms
of respectably clad Chinese who at an early hour
in the afternoon thronged the thorougfare by which
the procession was to pass it would have been hard
to say that Tien-sin cared whether peace or war
was to be the issue.

Within the British Ambassador's yamun, in and
out of which naval officers were all the day strolling,
the various secretaries and attaches were busily
copying and preparing the articles of the treaty,
while Lord Elgin was everywhere, proving that up
to the very last minute his labours had in no way
abated. Amusing bulletins were hourly flying
about the squadron, and canards without number.
About noon some wiseacre declared he had seen
the French Admiral, and that our treaty would
not be signed. Against this appalling intelligence
some sanguine visitor to the British yamun would
roundly assert that the Secretary of Legation had
been seen calmly smoking a cheroot, or that Lord
Elgin laughed heartily and rubbed his hands at
4 p.m.—two most- convincing proofs of all being
well. Then a stream, of sedan-chairs poured from
the city into the yamun, and the Chinese secretaries,
Mr. Wade and Mr. Lay, could be seen in their float-
ing residence busily comparing their manuscript-
treaty with officials deputed for that purpose by the
Imperial Commissioners. Lastly, at 6 o'clock in the

evening, just as the sun began to throw strong
shadows athwart the narrow streets, and the hot
day was succeeded by the delicious evening of this
latitude, the military guard of honour fell in on the

bank of the Pci-ho, just above the point where the

Great Canal joins the stream. The Royal Engi-
neers, under Captain Lambert, RE., the Royal
Marine Artillery of the Sampson and Furious, un-
der Lieut. Nott, and the Marines of the squadron,
commanded by Major Boyle, of the Calcutta, consti-
tuting a force of 400 men, were divided into two

bodies, preceded by a band of music ; and in the
intervening space_was arranged a long stream of 30