It was even more unfortunate that Captain Elliot's successors, Sir H. Pottinger and Sir J. Davis, pursued a policy which, while theoretically accepting the first of those propositions, virtually ran counter to all of them. It is quite possible that the recall of Captain Elliot implied a condemnation on the part of the Colonial Office of the above stated propositions rather than of his Palmerstonian war policy, and that the contrary principles adopted by Elliot's successors originated with the Downing Street Authorities rather than with themselves. But if so, it is remarkable that both Sir H. Pottinger and Sir J. Davis appear to have carried out con amore those pernicious instructions and to have personally identified themselves with the autocratic and protectionist spirit that must have governed the authors of those instructions whoever they were. Sir H. Pottinger, indeed, gloriously maintained, while the British army and navy were at work, the ascendancy of Europe in Asia, but, the moment the sword was sheathed, he allowed Mandarin duplicity and arrogance to cajole him so as to surrender one and all of the principles established by Captain Elliot. Sir H. Pottinger thought so highly of Chinese officials and so badly of British merchants that, for very fear of furthering the interests of opium dealers and smugglers, he shrank from maintaining free trade principles. In result, he preferred to allow the Cantonese Authorities to frame regulations for Hongkong's commerce which effectually strangled it. Moreover, whilst thus sacrificing the liberty and prosperity of British commerce. Sir H. Pottinger, though in the Nanking Treaty he had defined Hongkong as a mere naval station for careening and refitting British ships, governed the settlers as if Hongkong were a regular Colony bound to maintain by taxes an extravagantly expensive official establishment, and yet refused to give them any representation or voice whatsoever in a Council which autocratically disposed of the taxpayers' money. Sir J. Davis, specially selected as the trained tool of Mandarin autocracy and monopoly, not only followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, but went even farther in violation of the principles
