Grey) when Colonial Secretary in 1845. But would anything have been said against the promptitude of Sir John Bowring, if, instead of the twelve Chinese taken out of the lorcha, there had been one Englishman? Would he have been justified in waiting four months for the return of his messenger with instructions from the home Government before he interfered to save such an Englishman from assassination? His Lordship then proceeded to remark on the zeal with which noble Lords on the opposite side of the House constituted themselves lay readers to the episcopal bench, and admonished right rev. Prelates with moving sermons, whenever they were in doubt about which way their votes should go. He need not remark on the disinterested advice thus offered them, and he was sure that the Bishops would vote according to the true dictates of their consciences, and be guided only by what they believed and felt to be the principles of justice and Christianity. If the object of the Opposition was to censure Her Majesty's Government, let them do so in an intelligible manner, and not cast blame on the exertions of those public servants who were totally undeserving such treatment at their Lordships' hands.

The Bishop of Oxford believed that the claim which we made in behalf of the lorcha was not founded either on the principles of law or justice, and therefore the war which had sprung from that claim was indefensible, and its principle untenable among Christian men. He condemned the conduct of Sir John Bowring in the strongest terms, and reprobated the conduct of a great Christian nation like England, spreading the

horrors of war among a weak and unoffending people. He entreated the House to pause ere it gave the weight of its great authority to support an act so unjust and wrong as this. If they did so, let them recollect that they were going against a power which took its own time for vindicating eternal justice, and which never allowed a wrong to pass unavenged, and a power which could find, if need were, in the very weakness of China sufficient elements to abase and rebuke the lawless oppression of this country.

The House then divided, when there appearedContentsPresent Proxies

53

57

110

71

75

Majority against Lord

146

Derby's motion . . 36 The debate in the House of Commons on the same question commenced by Mr. Cobden, was continued for four nights, and drew forth most of the leading members of that House, including the ablest lawyers and prominent politicians of all parties. We can only afford space for an epitome of the arguments of the principal speakers. The original resolution moved by Mr. Cobden was in the following terms:

"That this House has heard with concern of the conflicts which have occurred between the British and Chinese authorities in the Canton River; and, without expressing an opinion as to the extent to which the Government of China may have afforded this country cause of complaint respecting the

non-fulfilment of the treaty of 1842, this House considers that the papers which have been laid upon the table fail to establish satisfactory grounds for the violent measures resorted to at Canton in the late affair of the Arrow; and that a select committee be appoint. ed to inquire into the state of our commercial relations with China." Adverting to the extent to which the national conscience, he said, had been moved upon this question, and the large amount of sympathy felt with reference to the object of his motion, and premising that he had no motive but to arrive at a just decision, Mr. Cobden commenced with a brief narrative of the facts consequent upon the boarding of the lorcha Arrow, on the 8th of October, up to the date of the last advices; and asked the House to inquire how all this devastation and warfare began, and who were the authors, and he asked it, he said, in defence of our own honour, and as if we had been dealing with a strong power, and not a weak one. He contrasted the conduct of the British authorities at Hong Kong with that which would have been pursued, he said, had the Government we dealt with been at Washington and the transaction had taken place at Charleston. He cited the opinion expressed by Lord Lyndhurst, that, upon the principle of international law the Chinese Governor was right with reference to the Arrow, which was in no respect a British vessel; and he urged, besides, other reasons why the whole proceeding was illegal on our part. Admitting this, and he defied contradiction upon this point,-look, he said, at the correspondence between Consul Parkes, a young man, and Yeh, the Governor of a province !

There was not the slightest indication on the part of the latter to insult our authorities; on the contrary, while courtesy, forbearance, and temper appeared on his side, arrogance and presumption were manifest on the other. In short, Mr. Parkes seems to have made up his mind not to be satisfied in spite of the logical arguments of Governor Yeh, whose exposition of the law upon the question he considered worthy of Westminster Hall. He conscientiously believed, he said, that there had been a preconceived design to pick a quarrel with the Chinese, for which the whole world would cry shame upon us. The papers recently laid before the House Mr. Cobden treated contemptuously, as a garbled record. of trumpery complaints against the Chinese. It was an insult, he said, to bring down such a book in order to make out a case for Lord Clarendon. On the other hand, he read letters, some of them from Sir John Davis, testifying to the civility and inoffensive habits of the Chinese, and to the overbearing conduct of our own countrymen in China, with whom Sir John said he found it more difficult to deal than with the Chinese; and Mr. Cobden suggested reasons why this was likely to be the case,-that Englishmen carried with them a haughty demeanour and an inflexible bearing towards the natives of other countries.

He strongly condemned the vast pretensions put forth by mercantile men in England, who demanded concessions from China in terms which he characterised as downright selfish violence. As to the admission of foreigners into Canton, he was of opinion that in the treaty of 1842 it was contemplated that foreigners should have free access to Canton; but it would

be found from the dispatches of Sir George Bonham and Lord Palmerston that there were the best possible grounds for not persevering in this demand, the Cantonese being fierce, ungovernable, and hostile to Englishmen. This was, in his opinion, a chimera; it was an object not worth fighting for; he believed if this part of the treaty could be enforced to-morrow, it would be of no use to us. In the last place, Mr. Cobden contended that Sir John Bowring had not only violated the principles of international law, but had acted contrary to his instructions, and even to express directious from his Government, and that this petty squabble might lead to complications with other nations.

Mr. Labouchere said, he did not complain of this subject having been brought before the House, since the question affected the reputation of the British nation. When the case was fairly and impartially considered, he was persuaded that the House would be of opinion that no blame justly at tached to our local authorities at Canton, or to the Government at home, who could have pursued no other course than they had taken without betraying the interests intrusted to their care and lowering the British character in the eyes of the world. There was one fact of importance, he observed, on the face of the papers--namely, that these transactions had taken place, not in an obscure corner of the world, but before the great community of merchants, who, he affirmed, had been libelled by the language employed towards them by Mr. Cobden. The French and American merchants had coincided with ours in their view of the conduct of the Chinese authorities,

and Mr. Labouchere read a letter from the United States' Chief Superintendent of Trade, condemning the character and proceedings of the Canton authorities. He believed, he added, that for some time past the relations of the Chinese authorities at Canton with every European Government had become so thoroughly unsatisfactory as to be at length absolutely intolerable, and that the general opinion was that, at the price of a temporary interruption of commercial transactions, the Canton authorities should be restrained from setting aside treaty obligations and committing acts of violence. After criticising the form and terms of the motion, Mr. Labouchere insisted upon the British character of the lorcha, and that, when the outrage was committed, the Governor Yeh knew he was doing wrong. He denied that the British functionaries had evinced any want of forbearance, and that Consul Parkes had, as Mr. Cobden alleged, endeavoured to pick a quarrel with the Chinese; his proceedings, on the contrary, had, he said, been gentle and moderate. As to the right of entry into Canton, this had been conceded by treaty, and, although it had been postponed from time to time, it had never been abandoned by the British Government, and he was not satisfied that it was an improper step on the part of Sir John Bowring, under the circumstances, to take this opportunity to press this stipulation. Mr. Cobden had said that Sir John had acted in violation of the express directions of Lord Grey to avoid any act of hostility against the local Government without authority from home; but he (Mr. Labouchere) was of opinion that Sir John Bowring had not rendered himself

liable to this imputation, and he read a dictum of Lord Stowell, that a commander sent to a distant State carried with him such a portion of sovereign authority as was necessary to the exigencies of the service on which he was employed. On the part of the Government at home, he should regret, he said, if it had been so weak and pusillanimous as to fail in supporting officials placed in a difficult position, whose conduct had been applauded by the representatives of foreign nations. We were not, he observed, at war with the Court of Pekin, but with the local Government at Canton, and he hoped that the result of these hostilities would be to place the relations of Europe with China upon a safer and more satisfactory footing.

Sir B. Lytton did not think that Mr. Labouchere had succeeded in giving a very satisfactory reply to the powerful arguments of Mr. Cobden, and he undertook to show how groundless was the position assumed by Mr. Labouchere. For this purpose he entered upon an argument of some length to show that, by the international law, since the treaty of Nankin the regulations of the Government of Hong Kong could not confer upon the lorcha a British character; but, assuming that it possessed such character, he contended that our officials were not justified in their proceedings. The language used by Consul Parkes in his correspondence with Commissioner Yeh, he censured as repugnant to the rules of diplomatic intercourse and offensive, and he condemned with vehemence the hostilities carried on by our commanders upon the miserable plea of an alleged affront to our flag, for the refusal of

an entry into Canton was not a tenable ground, it being a question whether the Emperor of China himself could practically enforce that article of the treaty, or, if he could, whether the effect would not be pernicious. He charged the Ministers with an improper exercise of the authority of the Crown in this matter, for it was the duty of a wise Government to correct the over-zeal of its agents.

Mr. Gregson complained that some of the supporters of the motion had scandalized the mercantile community of Canton, who, he said, were as much addicted to peace as Mr. Cobden could be. It had been fully understood, he observed, by Chinese and Europeans, that the Arrow carried a British flag. This, however, was only a continuation of insults which had been heaped upon us by the Chinese authorities for a series of years. He read a letter from British merchants long resident at Canton testifying to this fact, and approving the measures adopted by the British authorities.

Lord J. Russell said he had every disposition to pay respect to the opinions and wishes of the British merchants at Canton; at the same time, the House must not forget that it became them seriously to contemplate what had taken place, and to decide the question according to their opinion of the rights, the interests, and the honour of the country. With this view he had listened with great attention and anxiety to the statement of Mr. Labouchere, hoping that the ambiguity which seemed to rest upon the policy of the Government might be dispelled, and some view might be afforded of a distinct policy to which

Parliament might look for future security. In all these respects the speech of Mr. Labouchere had disappointed him. The question he considered under these three heads-first, the nationality of the Arrow; second, the right to enter Canton; third, the policy which the Government intended to pursue, and the object at which they aimed in hostilities. Neither of the two provocations, he contended, afforded a sufficient ground for the extreme measures resorted to, which were not a proper mode of settling such a great question; and he thought Her Majesty's Government ought to have considered that the British officials had committed a serious offence, having, without sufficient cause, put in jeopardy amicable relations with a great and populous empire, and proceeded to the solution of a question which a Secretary of State had expressly declared should not be decided without reference to the Government at home. And where was the affair to end? He feared that, in the disorganized state of China, a social revolution might be produced, and it might cease to be a country in which commercial operations could be advantageously carried on. The worst part of the case was that Sir John Bowring, while he declared that the vessel had lost all right to British protection, set up that claim against the Chinese Commissioner, and required an apology to the British flag, as having been rightfully used. Much had been said about the prestige of this country, but he had no wish to see its prestige maintained separated from character, honour, and reputation.

Mr. Lowe observed that the argument that we could not by

any municipal law give a right to Chinese subjects against their own Government proved too much, for the result would be that the greater portion of the British ships would not be within the treaty. He contended that the ordinance under which the lorcha was registered was legal in its inception; and as to the question whether the Chinese had violated the treaty, what an outcry would have been raised, he said, if the British Consul had, upon a paltry quibble, repudiated the British character of the vessel! The real question, he contended, was not one of legality, but of the animus of the Chinese authorities, and it was impossible to acquit them of a bad animus in the matter. Much

as he deplored the consequences, it appeared to him that upon those authorities, not upon the British Government or its officials, rested the responsibility.

Mr. Warren, disclaiming all factious motives in discussing what he regarded as a momentous question, insisted that it could not be condensed into a dry legal argument. The reason assigned for the war into which the country had been dragged with the empire of China he regarded as a flimsy pretext for carrying out what appeared to have been a longcherished design. He denied that the Chinese had given a fit occasion for war, and he challenged the law officers of the Crown to disprove the law laid down in the House of Lords upon the question. Commerce, he observed, was very good; but what were the interests of commerce compared with national honour? Having looked into the matter dispassionately, he felt it to be his duty to affirm the resolution.