them. However, the commercial prospects of the Colony were certainly extending and assuming a character of greater permanency. When (in summer 1850) the great firms in India were prostrated one after the other, the China firms dealing with India bore the shock firmly with but one exception.
But it took years before Hongkong's commercial reputation was rehabilitated in England. The Economist, which had maligned the good fame of the Colony (in 1846), continued even in 1851 (March 8) to belittle the progress which had been made meanwhile. How very little was thought or known of Hongkong at this time even by those in authority in England, is evidenced by the fact that the Royal Commissioners of the International Exhibition of 1851 gave no place to Hongkong as a Colony. They merely invited the merchants of Hongkong to join in an exhibition representing China. Naturally resenting this slight, the Committee, appointed at a public meeting that was held on June 24, 1850, resolved to leave it to the Canton Committee, which had already appointed numerous Sub-Committees, to take action. But the latter also threw up the project and it was left to a few enthusiastic individuals in Canton and Shanghai (chiefly Consuls) to collect and forward to London specimens of Chinese produce and manufactures. China merchants in London were the principal contributors. The only exhibits representing Hongkong in that fair temple of the world's commercial competition at Hyde Park consisted of a tiny pagoda, a jade cup and two silver race cups exhibited by Mr. W. Walkinshaw, and a North-China walking stick added by Mr. F. S. Carpenter of St. John's Wood. The Royal Commissioners further demonstrated the prevailing popular ignorance of Hongkong's position by labelling and cataloguing the Canton Consul's exhibits of specimens of Chinese coal as 'collected by H.M. Consul at Hongkong.'
The sanitary record of this period presents a remarkable illustration of the vagaries of Hongkong fever and of human inability to restrain or even account for them. It had previously been customary to attribute the origin of Hongkong fever to
