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heart. But what was the impression conveyed to the Chinese?

Although successful in thus asserting their own customs over those of the country where they resided, the foreign traders were unable to prevent the local authorities from carrying out their plan of entrusting the whole conduct of the business at Canton to a fixed number of Chinese merchants. It is difficult to see, indeed, what other device could have been practically efficacious under the circumstances. Duties and various charges had to be collected, and some machinery was necessary to check outrages on the part of ship's crews and excesses on the part of unscrupulous traders. Yet, although the Chinese had undoubtedly the right to make such collections and adopt such precautions, they were without means of enforcing their right unless they assumed competence to arrest foreigners and to sit in judgment on them. From police and judicial functions, however, they always prudently shrank, their invariable rule being to leave the foreigner's person severely alone except in the one contingency of his having taken a Chinese life. Nothing offered, therefore, except to attach to the trade an association of Chinese merchants who, in return for the sole privilege of conducting it, would undertake to collect the prescribed duties and fees, and to be responsible for the transactions of each supercargo as well as for the conduct of each ship's crew while in port.