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other words, of change; and a natural corollary of such a programme was their endeavour to inspire and preserve a belief in their own acknowledged superiority to all outside Powers. It must be frankly admitted that the doings of the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Dutch, and the English, as described above, were not at all calculated to encourage hospitality or inspire respect.

Unsuccessful in Formosa and in a lesser degree at Amoy also, the East India Company again turned its attention to Canton, only to again encounter unreasoning opposition from the Portuguese. Sir John Davis, one of the most impartial historians of China's foreign relations, although he wrote at a time so close to the events recorded that a true perspective must have been very difficult to obtain, says of Portuguese action: "In the progress of all these trials one of the most striking circumstances is the stupid pertinacity with which the Portuguese at Macao excluded English ships from that port, and the perfidy with which they represented their supposed rivals to the Chinese with a view to prevent their getting a footing at Canton. … Their systematic policy has been to attribute motives to the English which should injure them with the provincial Government." Such tactics did not permanently succeed in excluding the English, but the methods of the Portuguese must have helped to discredit all foreign intercourse in the eyes of the Chinese, who, whether they believed the Portu-