of China, had caused the disabilities and restrictions which had been imposed on British trade in China, and that Lord Napier's not having the requisite powers, properly sustained by an armed force, had put British merchants in their present degraded and insecure position. Accordingly they suggested to the King in Council, that a determined maintenance of the rank of the British Empire in the scale of nations was the proper policy to adopt, and they recommended the plan which was actually carried out seven years later in the so-called opium war, viz., that a Plenipotentiary, with an armed force, proceed to a convenient station on the east coast of China and demand of the Emperor ample reparation for the insults offered to Lord Napier, to the King and to his subjects, and to propose the appointment of Imperial Commissioners to arrange with the British Plenipotentiary a basis for regulating British trade, so as to prevent future troubles, and to extend trade to Amoy, Ningpo and Chusan.
The fact that at the close of the year 1834 ample reasons existed for making this demand and for taking this action, which without coercive measures was impossible, is important. Equally important is the other fact that the subsequent war of 1841 did no more than what was needed and demanded in the year 1834. For these facts show that the subsequent expulsion of the British community from Canton (in 1839) and the whole opium question, as connected with the war of 1841, were merely accidental accessories to the fact already patent in the year 1834 to every resident in China, the foreign merchants and the British Superintendents, that the necessities of British trade, combined with British national and individual self-respect, were so irreconcilable with Chinese contempt of trade and Chinese notions of supremacy and autocracy, as to make war between Great Britain and China an absolute necessity. In no other way could the Chinese Authorities be induced to make reasonable concessions to the merchants, whom they had themselves invited and whom they desired to continue their commerce with China. Nothing short of
