The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-12-10 00:00:00

CHINA.

The following is a copy of a letter from Captain Elliott,
the British Superintendent at Canton, relative to the Trade
with China :

Macao, I4th June, 1839.
SIAM I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of
your letter of yesterday's date.
The meeting will permit me respectfully to remark, that I
understand an embargo to be an act of the Government of
a country prohibiting the departure of the ship and goods of
another from its ports.
Founding my replies to the first question proposed to me
on that impression, it will be obvious that the several public
notices issued by me, cannot place an embargo on British
ships and goods. Their purposes and effects remain to be
noticed. . _ .

A crisis of a nature unparalleled in point of importance
has recently supervened, in which I have found it my duty
for the general safety of the public interests under my super-
intendence, to issue certain prohibitory injunctions to Her
Majesty's subjects, and careful reflection upon the Act of
Parliament—the order in council, and all previous analagous
practice pending my intercourse with China, has carried me
to the conclusion that I have not transcended my lawful
powers in the notice in question.
I am of opinion, therefore, that the ordering of Rritish
ships and goods within the Bocca Tigris, under present cir-
cumstances, may and most probably will involve persons,
upon whom such a responsibility can be fixed, in consequences
of the most serious description.
The stringency, however, of these notices—the construction
of their language, and the liabilities of every kind to be in-
curred by the departure from their terms, must be left to the
attentive considerations of parties (if such there be.) propos-
ing to postpone public authority and general considerations to
their own views and particular interests. At all events, it is
my duty again to warn all Her Majesty's subjects, in the
most emphatic manner, that the entrance of British ships and
goods within the Bocca Tigris, in the present state of affairs,
appears to me. to be perilous in the highest degree. Beyond
this consideration of danger, too, such a measure would be
intensely humiliating and mischievous, because it practically
establishes the principle that British subjects entertain a con-
fidence in the justice and moderation of this government,
notwithstanding all that has passed—consenting for them-
selves and their countrymen to trial and condemnation by
Chinese officers, and forms of Chinese judicature, for capital,
and in future, all lesser offences. trust I shall never be
placed in the painful situation of addressing a special injunc-
tion to any of Her Majesty's subjects requiring them to de-
sist from a cruise so unworthy of their country, and so dan-
gerous to innocent men, whose lives may fall a sacrifice to
their reckless cupidity, before the certain and powerful inter-
vention of the Queen can reach these shores, and disabuse
the Chinese government of the imagination that such a state
of things will ever be tolerated.
I am conveying the plain sense of the instructions under
the sign-manual, and I declare that it is impossible of ad-
mission, at least, till our relations with this empire are ex-
tensively modified. After this exposition, it is to be concluded,
that we shall hear no more of the entrance of British ships
within the Bocca Tigris under actual circumstances.
In reply to the second question submitted to me, I beg to
say, that I see no present reason to believe that Her Ma-
jesty's subjects may expect such an arrangement of existing
circumstances, as to admit of British ships and goods being
sent within the Bocca Tigris under the sanction of my au-
thority, before the pleasure of Her British Majesty's Govern-
ment be made known.

I have the honour to be, &c. &e.
(Signed) CHARLES ELLIOTT.
To Braine, Esq.