commercial purposes.' At the same time when Sir George Robinson sought to impress upon the Foreign Office the advantages of an island station, away from Canton, another former resident of China appealed to the British public, commending the same policy, seeking to arouse public opinion in England and to turn it in favour of the project first advanced by Mr. Elphinstone. In a pamphlet, entitled 'The Present Condition and Prospects of British Trade with China,' and published in London in 1830, Mr. James Matheson of Canton, expounded and expanded Mr. Elphinstone's advice of sending a Plenipotentiary to China, who should take his station on one of the islands on the east coast of China and thence negotiate, by the demonstration of a small naval force, a commercial treaty, the object of which should be to secure for British trade in China an insular location beyond the reach of Chinese officialdom. This clearly pointed to a British Colony to be established on the coast of China.
Mr. Matheson, however, was no advocate of war with China. Neither did he imagine that China would readily consent to the establishment of a British Colony at her very gates. Mr. Matheson argued that a state of preparedness for war is the surest preventive of war, especially in our dealings with a nation like China, and that a firm policy, plainly supported by a strong rieet, ready for war, might, if judiciously pressed home, be all that would be absolutely necessary. Thus Mr. Matheson struck, in 1836, the key-note of the policy which eventually procured the establishment of the Colony of Hongkong.
What Mr. Matheson thus urged upon the home country as a whole by his pamphlet, he impressed especially also upon the various Associations and Chambers of Commerce within reach of his influence in England and Scotland. In the course of the year 1886, several memorials were accordingly presented at the Foreign Office from various parts of Great Britain, requesting that immediate and energetic measures should be adopted for the extension and protection of commerce in China. Among them was a memorial of the Glasgow East India
