Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/223

untoward incidents, the common device on each side alike was to suspend, or threaten to suspend, tradal relations. The directors of the East India Company, which, by grant from the British Government, enjoyed a monopoly of British trade at Canton and in China generally, sought to remedy this anomalous state of affairs, in part at any rate, by investing their chief representatives with consular authority. But they had no competence to delegate such powers, and they did not take the essential precaution, nor were they in a position to take it, of reporting the appointment to the Chinese Government and obtaining the latter's exequatur. It has often been noted by critics of China and her ways in mediæval times that she deliberately and avowedly based her treatment of foreigners on an old maxim which says that since barbarians lack any due appreciation of civilised rule, the logical way to govern them is by misrule. Obviously the paradox is not to be construed literally. It meant nothing more than that expediency must be substituted for law in governing men that neither know nor respect the law. Can it be claimed that in their early intercourse with China the Powers of Europe—Portugal, Spain, Holland, and England—gave themselves any concern about the international codes which they would have observed as a matter of course and necessity in their dealings with each other? The so-called consular representative of the East India Company was never officially