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their intercourse with foreigners the Chinese show well by the side of the Macao Portuguese, concerning whom, however, it is only just to note that their truly representative national character has often been denied.

Modern experience has taught the public to assume the presence of competent machinery for preserving order and administering justice at all Eastern places frequented by foreigners for tradal purposes. There is implied in the very word "settlement" an idea of duly exercised consular authority and of conventional provision for regulating all commercial operations. Therefore it is necessary to premise that very different conditions existed at Canton when the English began to trade there at the close of the seventeenth century. There was no such thing as a consul; no such thing as a convention; no such thing as a recognised division of jurisdiction; no such thing as a mutual agreement about the mode of doing business; no such thing as a fixed tariff, or harbour regulations, or police. Each side had to be guided by its own instincts. If, as happened sometimes in brawls between natives and foreign sailors, a Chinese subject was killed, the Chinese, in obedience to their traditional doctrine of a life for a life, demanded surrender of a foreigner in order that they might execute him,—a demand which the foreigners sometimes conceded and sometimes rejected; and when disputes had to be settled in connection with these events or other