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ing to extremities. He overvalued menace, and constantly forgot that operations of war to be effectively victorious must be convincing from the enemy's point of view. An European general stopping short of the measure of destruction they would themselves have meted out, seemed to the Chinese not merciful but impotent. Thus, though the ransom of Canton cost heavily, and though the operations preceding it involved the death of some five thousand of the defenders against only fourteen killed on the side of the assailants, as well as the temporary loss of a vast quantity of cannon and warlike material, the Chinese were able to say at the end that they had bought off the enemy, and were further able to report to the Throne that the captured guns had all been recovered, and that the questions of the cession of Hongkong and compensation for the opium destroyed by Lin were no longer pressed by the British. Clemency such as Captain Elliot showed, however laudable from a moral point of view, could not be wisely exercised towards Chinese generals, who, even if they appreciated the motive, would certainly pervert the fact into a proof that their own failures had been only partial. It is extravagant to say, as is often said, that the Chinese do not understand kindness or appreciate clemency. But it is certain that their officials have often sought to win dishonest credit for themselves by representing foreign generosity as a compulsory concession to