Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/239

of the viceroy" and winning from him various valuable concessions, such as the privilege of corresponding with the local Government "under seal and in the Chinese language," a thing never previously permitted; a pledge that no Chinese official should ever enter the British Factory without leave from the inmates; an engagement that native servants should at all times be free to enter the service of Englishmen and other points. The whole story is a string of paradoxes,—the river at Canton converted into an arena of belligerent operations by British and American ships; the Chinese remonstrating against such a flagrant disregard of international law and being told placidly that it could not be cured and must be endured; their attempts to assert their national rights by hampering the trade; the foreign merchants retaliating by stopping the trade altogether; and finally the Chinese, who were the wronged party throughout, being compelled to make many concessions in order that the foreigner might consent to resume the business which alone held him in Canton. Need it be added that these concessions were declared to be "the only security against a breach of faith on the part of the Chinese," and that this series of bizarre incidents was considered "to prove that the commercial interests of the British nation in China were exposed to the utmost hazard from the chance of perpetual interruption at the will of a capricious and despotic set of delegates who kept the Court of Peking in