It appears then from this point of view that the Colony of Hongkong, the offspring of a union between Europe and Asia, ushered into the world in the year 1841, was nursed by brave Captain Elliot in the cradle of liberty and free trade, solemnly christened at Nanking, in 1842, by the despotic autocrat, Sir H. Pottinger, weaned from 1844 to 1848 by pedantic Sir J. Davis amid an amount of tempest and strife which made the empoverished Colonial nursery resound with cries for representative government and with groans condemnatory of monopoly, until Parliament stepped in (in 1847) and laid down the programme on which the schooling of the young fledgeling was accordingly conducted by Sir G. Bonham, who gave the Colony its first common-sense instructions in the A-B-C of constitutional government. In other words, of the first four Governors of Hongkong only Captain Elliot and Sir G. Bonham appear to have read aright the lessons of the past history of British intercourse with China and to have applied those lessons correctly to the establishment of the Colony of Hongkong.
To begin with Captain Elliot, he seems to have recognized or at any rate acted upon the following principles—(1) that Hongkong must be regarded in the first instance as a point from which should radiate the general influence of Europe upon Asia; (2) that it is therefore of primary importance to maintain at Hongkong British supremacy vis à vis Chinese mandarindom; (3) that the settlement on Hongkong must be treated rather as a station for the protection of British trade in the Far East in general than as a Colony in the ordinary sense of the word, that is to say that Hongkong is in truth neither a mere Crown Colony acquired by war nor a Colony formed by productive settlement; (4) that the Colony of Hongkong can be made to prosper only by keeping sacredly inviolate its free trade palladium and by governing the colonists on principles of constitutional liberty. Unfortunately Captain Elliot was recalled before he could give full effect to these fundamental principles. But that he established the Colony on this basis redounds to his honour.
