ARTICLE Page 3. Society in America. By HARRIET MARTINEAU, in 3 vols. Vol. iii. Second Edition. London Saunders and Otley, 1837. . . . 608 IX.-Mémoires d'un Prisonnier d'Etat au Spielberg. Par A. ANDRYANE, compagnon de l'illustre Comte Confalonieri. 4 vols. Paris: 1837. Memoirs of a Prisoner of State in the fortress of Spielberg. By ALEXANDER ANDRYANE, fellow-captive of Count Confalonieri; with an Appendix by Maroncelli, the companion of Silvio Pellico. Translated by Fortunato Prandi. Complete in 2 vols. Saunders and Otley London, 1840 644 3. Address of British Merchants trading at Canton to the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Palmerston, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Canton, 23rd May, 1839. 4. The Iniquities of the Opium Trade with China; being a developement of the main causes which exclude the Merchants of Great Britain from the advantages of an unrestricted Commercial Intercourse with that vast Empire. By the Rev. A. S. THELWALL, M.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge. London: W. H. Allen and Co., Leadenhall-street. 1839. 5. The Opium Question. By SAMUEL WARREN, Esq., F.R.S., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law. London: James Ridgway, Piccadilly. 1840. 6. The Chinese Vindicated, or Another View of the Opium Question; being in reply to a pamphlet, by Samuel THE commercial relations of Great Britain with China (for political relations she cannot be said to have any) are of so anomalous a kind, that, before entering upon the more immediate subject of this article, it will be necessary to make a few preliminary observations respecting them. In all other parts of the globe to which the spirit of commercial adventure has led us, finding nations or tribes of men in all degrees of civilization, one of two things has happened. We have either gone on trading with them till, some quarrel having arisen, our superior knowledge has enabled us easily to subdue them; or, finding them in a stage of civilization equal to, or not far short of our own, we have continued the commercial intercourse, regulated by certain rules recognised by a considerable portion of the nations of the earth which style themselves civilized. The former of these events has happened in the case of the nations of India, as well as of some African and American tribes; the latter, in the case of the European nations, and some of those of Asia and Africa which border on the Mediterranean. The case of the Chinese differs essentially from all these. Our first intercourse with China dates as far back as the year 1637, only about twenty years later than that with India. It is unnecessary to trace, step by step, its history from that time to this. It will be sufficient to state the result, viz. that in those two hundred years we have rendered ourselves in India sovereigns of a country containing a population equal to more than half that of all Europe; while in China we have not acquired a foot of territory, the acknowledgment of a single commercial relation on a footing of equality, nor the privilege of being viewed in any other light, or treated on any other footing by the government and people of the self-styled Celestial Empire, than as a pack of intrusive, mean, pedling, pettifogging barbarians. We do not use these terms rhetorically or for the purpose of calling up feelings of animosity towards the Chinese; to do so is not our object, as will sufficiently appear in the sequel. But we use them simply because they indicate a fact and a fact which, with other facts, it is necessary to know, in order to understand the various bearings of the question which we are about to discuss. It is very important towards arriving at right conclusions on this question, to form, as far as possible, correct notions respecting the condition of the people with whom we have to deal. The tendency is at present in this country rather to ed the early accounts of them greatly overrated them; and, as is usually the effect of a reaction, because they and those who followed their accounts ascribed to the Chinese a very high degree of civilization, of advancement in wealth and power, and the sciences and the arts which tend to humanize life, succeeding generations have gone to the opposite extreme, and have pictured to themselves the Chinese as a horde of miserable barbarians. This view is perhaps as far from the truth as the other. We are not concerned to know for our present purpose what may be the particular attainments of the Chinese in literature and science; our business is with their social and political condition; to know, namely, whether that is sufficiently bad to warrant any interference on the part of the British Government with the view of improving it; for this after all is the question. There is no doubt but we could very much incommode the Chinese by blockading their coasts; that we could bombard some of their towns, demolish their forts, and destroy their shipping (such as it is); nay, that we could even march to Peking, and reduce it to a heap of ruins. But cui bono? is the question that immediately arises. What should we get by it except a certain loss of ready money, and a contingent loss of many things besides? Moreover, are we prepared to undertake, in addition to the hundred millions of our Indian subjects, the government of some three hundred millions of human beings, who now obey the Chinese Emperor, in such manner as to ensure them a larger portion of happiness than they now enjoy under the rule of his Celestial Majesty? Among the Chinese, though the standards of enjoyment and knowledge may be, according to our notions, not very high, yet the means of both enjoyment and information, such as they are, are perhaps more equally distributed than among any people on the face of the earth. They are a most industrious people; and, what is particularly worth noticing, they are cheerful and happy in their industry. These facts, if they can be substantiated, are so important, that it seems worth while to adduce the best testimony that can be procured in regard to them. We therefore make the following extracts from Mr. Davis's work, which, from the long residence of the author in China, and his more than ordinary opportunities of acquiring information, is admitted by competent judges to be one of the most trustworthy that have yet appeared on this subject. "The great wealth of the empire, the cheerful and indefatigable industry of the people, and their unconquerable attachment to their country, are all of them circumstances which prove that, if the Government is jealous in guarding its rights, it is not altogether ignorant or unmindful of its duties. We are no unqualified admirers of the Chinese system, but would willingly explain, if possible, some of the causes which tend to the production of results whose existence nobody pretends to deny. In practice there is of course a great deal of inevitable abuse; but upon the whole, and with relation to ultimate effects, the machine works well,—and, we repeat, that the surest proofs of this are apparent on the very face of the most cheerfully-industrious and orderly, and the most wealthy nation of Asia. It may be observed that we make great account of the circumstance of cheerful industry, because this characteristic, which is the first to strike all visitors of China, is the best proof in the world that the people possess their full share of the results of their own labour. Men do not toil either willingly or effectively for hard masters. "It would be a very rash conclusion to form any estimate of the insecurity of property generally from what is observed at Canton among those connected with the foreign trade, and especially the Hong merchants. These persons are instruments in the hands of a cautious government, which, not wishing to come into immediate collision with foreigners, uses them in the manner of a sponge, that, after being allowed to absorb the gains of a licensed monopoly, is made regularly to yield up its contents, by what is very correctly termed squeezing.' The rulers of China consider foreigners fair game: they have no sympathy with them, and, what is more, they diligently and systematically labour to destroy all sympathy on the part of their subjects, by representing the strangers to them in every light that is the most contemptible and odious. There is an annual edict or proclamation displayed at Canton at the commencement of the commercial season, accusing the foreigners of the most horrible practices, and desiring the people to have as little to say to them as possible. We have already seen that the professed rule is to govern them like beasts,' and not as the subjects of the empire. With perfect consistency, therefore, they are denied the equal benefits and protections of the known laws of the country, condemned to death for accidental homicide, and executed without the Emperor's warrant. These are their real subjects of complaint in China; and whenever the accumulation of wrong shall have proved, by exact calculation, that it is more profitable, according to merely commercial principles, to remonstrate than to submit, these will form a righteous and equitable ground of quarrel. But, to return to the Hong merchants and others at Canton, there is in fact a set of laws existing under this jealous Tartar Government which makes all transactions of Chinese with foreigners, without an express li |