on subsequent occasions in connection with Commercial Treaties concluded with France, the Zoll-Verein, the Levant and Holland. Whilst in Holland, he received (1829) from the Academy of Groningen the honorary title of Doctor Literarum Humaniorum. In the year 1833 he entered Parliament as Member for Kilmarnock (1833 to 1837) and, after three unsuccessful contests for Blackburn and Kirkcaldy, sat for seven years for Bolton (1841 to 1849). During this period he directed (in 1846) the attention of the Ministry to alleged illegal flogging in Hongkong and took, as a member of the Parliamentary Committee of 1847, a prominent part in the inquiry into Hongkong affairs and British relations with China. He was also for a number of years President of the Peace Society (established since 1816) which labours to procure universal disarmament and the substitution of international arbitration for war. Earl Clarendon and Lord Palmerston thought highly of Dr. Bowring and always remained his staunch supporters. Owing to financial reverses, however, Dr. Bowring had to seek a lucrative post and accepted, in January 1849, a Consular appointment. 'Lord Palmerston,' he says in his autobiography, 'offered me the Consulship of Canton where diplomatic questions with the Central Kingdom were discussed.' His actual occupations in Canton were, however, of a disenchantingly humble description and even during his short tenure of the Acting Superintendency in 1852, he disdained the limits of his little reign and considered himself a disappointed man. However, he adhered to Sir G. Bonham's policy, ruled in peace over the few Consular stations and abstained, while in Hongkong, from all interference with the affairs of the Colony, beyond resuscitating by sundry sinological contributions and by the inspiration of his personal presence the moribund Hongkong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. One of the most valuable papers he wrote at this time is his dispatch to Lord Clarendon of April 19, 1852, in which he correctly and lucidly summed up the policy of the Chinese Government, during the preceding ten years, as one of unflinching hostility and shewed the
