ledge of the Spanish language and literature. He was soon in complete accord with the Liberal party in Spain, and this was afterwards the cause of his intimate acquaintance with Jeremy Bentham, whose follower and close friend he became, and who left him his literary executor. It was Bowring who edited and prepared from the original manuscript Bentham's work on Free-Trade Principles, published in 1822; and at this time he was engaged in the commercial business which he had commenced in 1815, after peace had been declared, and in which he continued till 1828. During that period Bowring had written and published several works which introduced to English readers the poetry, language, and literature of other countries. Specimens of the Russian Poets was the first of the series, and it was followed by Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain, Servian Popular Poetry, Bohemian Anthology, Specimens of the Polish Poets, The Poetry of the Magyars, The Poets of Holland, and the Cheskian Anthology.

When the Westminster Review was founded by Bentham in 1824, Bowring was its first political editor. In 1828 he was sent to Holland by the government to report on the Dutch system of keeping accounts in connection with the introduction of a proposed reform in our own public accounts; and on the accession of the Liberal party to power, and Mr. Poulett Thompson, afterwards Lord Sydenham, to the Board of Trade, commenced his series of commercial missions to the Continent and the East. It was on his return from one of the latter in 1838 that he became at once associated with the movement which resulted in the Corn-law League. He had been member for Kilmarnock from 1835 to 1837, and in 1841 was returned for Bolton, which he represented till 1849, when he was appointed to the consulship at Canton, and subsequently in 1854 governor of Hong Kong. He then received the honour of knighthood and became Sir John Bowring. It would be idle to infer that the knighthood had the slightest influence on his "attitude" towards the people about him, or upon his own character; but it certainly appears that the accomplished man of letters, who had taken his

doctor's degree at the Dutch university of Groningen, and had displayed no very unusual tokens of "bumptiousness," suddenly assumed a position which was overbearing even for a British plenipotentiary in China. It has been mentioned as a rather remarkable thing, however, that in a short passage of autobiography Sir John records his having, when a little boy, dreamed that he was sent by the King of England as ambassador to China. Whether the recollection of this dream, and any sudden sense of power, had the effect of emphasizing his desire to assert authority in Canton, may be left to conjecture; but it is certain that when he received the application from Mr. Parkes to support the demands made on the Chinese authorities, he saw an opportunity for enforcing other claims for admission to the port and city of Canton in accordance, as it was alleged, with certain treaty engagements which had not been properly observed.

To begin with, however, all the men taken from the Arrow were to be surrendered, ample apologies were to be made for their arrest, and a formal undertaking was to be entered into by the Chinese authorities that nothing of the kind should ever occur again.

All this was to be done within forty-eight hours, under a threat of hostilities from the naval force under the command of Admiral Sir Michael Seymour; but Governor Yeh, though he promptly sent back the men (under a kind of protest that he did so to avert the hostility of the British representative), and at the same time undertook to promise that care should be taken to prevent any British ship from being improperly visited by Chinese officers, refused to apologize for what had occurred with regard to the Arrow, which was, he contended, a Chinese vessel, with no right to the protection of the English flag. This Sir John Bowring had already admitted in a letter to Mr. Parkes, wherein he said that the license of the Arrow, however it may have been obtained, had expired, but at the same time argued that the Chinese were not aware of that fact, and that they were therefore culpable. At all events not a tittle of the demand for reparation was abated, and Sir John wrote to Sir Michael Seymour: "I

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cannot doubt that the imperial commissiouer will now feel the absolute necessity of complying with the demands which have been made; and I have to add, that if your excellency and the consul should concur with me in opinion that the circumstances are auspicious for requiring the fulfilment of treaty obligations as regards the city of Canton, and for arranging an official meeting with the imperial commissioner within the city walls, I shall willingly come to Canton for that pose." Surely when Lord Derby and Mr. Cobden afterwards concurred in accusing Sir John Bowring of a kind of monomania for getting into Canton, they were not outside the mark; for, on the representation that Commissioner Yeh did not pay sufficient attention to the remonstrances of the British consul, hostilities had already commenced by the destruction of the forts on the river, and instead of these hostilities being suspended for negotiations, they were pursued-the island and fort of Dutch Folly being taken and occupied without any opposition from the Chinese. This was the beginning of an attack which lasted three weeks, during which more forts were taken, many junks destroyed, and the suburbs of Canton were bombarded till they crumbled down and left an open range for the ships to fire shot and shell upon the city.

The news of these proceedings caused much excitement in England, but of course men took different views of it. The name of Commissioner Yeh was in everybody's mouth, and his effigy was subsequently a great attraction in Madame Tussaud's exhibition of wax-work, where it is still a familiar, though no longer a particularly prominent figure. The course taken by Yeh when the attack was made on Canton was not very wise. He opposed to the British hostilities a proclamation offering a reward for every head of an Englishman brought into the city. This is, perhaps, why Lord Palmerston felt justified in referring to him as a "barbarian" when Parliament had dissolved on the Chinese question, and his lordship was defending his government in an address to his constituents at Tiverton. But the barbarian had so much reason on his side at the outset, that his views were

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endorsed by the venerable Lord Lyndhurst in the House of Lords, when, on the 24th of February, Lord Derby brought forward the motion to which we have referred. Lord Lyndhurst maintained that nobody could successfully contest the principle that we might give any rights or privileges to a foreigner or a foreign vessel as against ourselves, but that we could not grant to any such foreigner a single right or privilege as against a foreign state; and he declared with earnest reprehension that when we were talking of treaty transactions with Eastern natives, we had a kind of loose law and loose notion of morality in regard to them.

This was the conclusion supported by Cobden when he brought forward his resolution in the House of Commons, and from his point of view the whole argument was plain enough.

In a pamphlet on the war with Burmah, Cobden had shown the danger and injustice of our accepted policy towards the weak nations of the East; and he held that this war which had now broken out in China illustrated the same principles in a still more striking way. The Chinese boarded the Arrow and rescued twelve of their countrymen from it on a charge of piracy. The British consul protested on the ground that malfeasants on board a British ship should not be seized, but should be demanded from the consul. Nine men were returned at once. Bowring sent word that unless the whole of the men were returned within eight-and-forty hours, with apologies for the past and pledges for the future, the English men-of-war would begin operations. On a certain day the whole of the men were returned, with a protest from the Chinese governor that the ship was not a British ship, and that therefore he was not bound to demand his malfeasants from the consul. The Chinese governor was perfectly in the right. Bowring's contention was an absolute error from beginning to end. The Arrow was not a British ship. Its license had expired. Even if this had not been so, the Hong Kong agents had no power to give a license to a Chinese ship-owner protecting him against his own government. The case stood thus then. Bowring had made a claim

which was legally untenable. The Chinese governor, while declaring it illegal, acquiesced in the demand. Yet the day after the whole of the men had been given up, naval and military operations were begun, a great number of Chinese junks were destroyed, the suburbs of Canton were burned and battered down, the town was shelled.

The government resolved to support Bowring. To do so, they shifted the ground from the particular to the general; if the Chinese were right about the Arrow, they were wrong about something else; if legality did not exactly justify violence, it was at any rate required by policy, as orientals mistake justice for fear.

To Cobden (says his latest biographer) the whole transaction seemed worthy of condemnation on every ground. Bowring's demand was illegal, and ought not to have been made. If this was doubtful, at any rate Bowring's violent action was precipitate. It was a resort in the first instance to measures which would hardly have been justifiable in the last instance. If there were general grievances against the Chinese, why not make joint representations with France and the United States, instead of stumbling into a quarrel in which we had not a leg to stand upon, and beginning a war for which in the opinion of our best lawyers there was no proper ground.

The chance of reversing the course of policy depended as usual on the accidents of party combination. In a letter to Mr. Lindsay, written in the last month of 1856, Cobden describes the state of parties at that time. "It is unlike," he said, "everything I have witnessed for the last fifteen years. There seems to be no party having an intelligible principle or policy in which any considerable body out-of-doors takes an interest. The two sides of the house no longer represent opposing parties—unless, indeed, it may be said that our leader is at heart an aristocratic Tory, while the chief of the opposition is, if anything, a democratic Radical. Of this, a considerable number on the Tory side seem to be shrewdly aware, for they evince no desire to turn out Palmerston, in whom they have no more confidence than in Disraeli." Under these circumstances, however, the position of a minis

ter must always be precarious, for the absence of definitely antagonistic policies places him at the mercy of fortuitous personal coalitions. One of these coalitions came into existence now. The Peelites were only following the tradition of their master in condemning a precipitate and useless war. Mr. Disraeli and his friends played the official part of an opposition in censuring an administration. Lord John Russell obeyed an honest instinct for justice. All these sections resolved to support Cobden. It was on the 26th of February that Cobden brought forward a motion to the effect that, without expressing an opinion on the causes of complaint arising from non-fulfilment of the treaty of 1842, the house thought the late violent measures at Canton not justified by the papers, and that a select committee should inquire into the commercial relations with China. This enabled him to cover the whole ground of our policy in that country. He did so in one of the most masterly of his speeches; it was closely argued, full of matter, without an accent of passion, unanswerable on the special case, and thoroughly broad and statesmanlike in general views.

The house was profoundly impressed. After a long debate, in which Lord Palmerston taunted Cobden with his un-English spirit, and wondered how he could have thought of attacking an old friend like Bowring, the division was taken. There was a majority of sixteen against the government. The sixteen would have been sixty, it was said, if Lord Derby's party had held together. That so many of them were found on Cobden's side, showed that so far as opinion and conviction went, the minority was very small indeed. But, as we are always seeing, it is the tendency of party government to throw opinion and conviction too often into a secondary place. Mr. Gladstone said that if the division had been taken immediately after the speeches of Cobden and Lord John Russell, the motion would have been carried by a majority so overwhelming that the minister could not have ventured to appeal to the country against it. The interval allowed the old party considerations to resume their usual force. As it was, Lord Palmerston, with his usual acute

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The debate by which the result had been achieved lasted for four nights, and many of the principal speakers in parliament took part in it (those who were in favour of Mr. Cobden's motion sat on both sides of the house and represented all parties). It was not to be wondered at therefore that Lord Palmerston should represent the movement as an attack by a coalition for the purpose of upsetting the government. This gave Mr. Disraeli an opportunity for uttering a series of sarcasms, which he delivered with telling effect. "The first minister," he said, "was of all men the man who could not bear a coalition. He was the archetype of political combinations, without avowed political principles. noble lord could not bear coalitions. noble lord had acted only with those amongst whom he was born and bred in politics! That infant Hercules was taken out of a Whig cradle! And how consistent had been his political life! Looking back upon the past half century, during which he had professed almost every principle and connected himself with almost every party, the noble lord had raised a warning voice that night against coalitions, because he feared that a majority of the House of Commons, ranking in its numbers some of the most eminent members of that house, might not approve a policy with respect to China which had begun in outrage, and which, if pursued, would end in ruin. . . . Let the noble lord not only complain to the country let him appeal to the country."

...

Eminent men of various shades of opinion had, indeed, condemned the government policy. Sir Bulwer Lytton had earnestly and eloquently warned the house that trade could not prosper if traders made themselves an object of detestation to those they traded with. Sir James Graham, Sir John Pakington, Mr. Phillimore, Sir Frederick Thesiger,

1 Mr. Morley's Life of Cobden.

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Mr. Sidney Herbert, Sir Roundell Palmer-all expressed in terms unusually strong their opposition to a policy which was characterized as cruel and fraudulent. Mr. Gladstone protested against diverting attention from the government by accusations against Sir John Bowring, whose conduct was involved in the decisions, but whom they were not trying judicially. Their prime and paramount duty was to consider the interests of humanity and the honour of England. The policy of Sir John Bowring was not unknown to the government nor by them disapproved. With regard to the general question, he denied that we had festering wrongs against the Chinese. The attorney-general, he said, had argued that the term "British subjects" in the treaty meant any Chinese resident at Hong Kong, Mr. Gladstone asked, When we talked of treaty obligations by the Chinese, what were our treaty obligations towards them? Hong Kong was given to us to be a port in which British ships might careen and refit. Was not our contraband trade in opium a breach of treaty obligations? Had our government struggled to put it down, as bound by treaty? Had they not encouraged it by organizing a fleet of lorchas under the British flag? They who put the British flag to the uses to which it had been put, stained that flag. After earnestly pointing to the calamities which the war had inflicted upon the Cantonese, calamities to which the resolution before the house invited the wisdom of members to put an end, he demanded the reasons why we were at war Iwith the Chinese. Were we afraid of the moral effects upon the Chinese if the acts of the government were disavowed? He implored the house to consider the moral impressions which must be produced, and never could be avoided.

"Every member of the House of Commons," he continued, "is proudly conscious that he belongs to an assembly which in its collective capacity is the paramount power of the state. But if it is the paramount power of the state it can never separate from that paramount power a similar and paramount responsibility. The vote of the House of Lords will not acquit us; the sentence of the government will not

acquit us. It is with us to determine whether this wrong shall remain unchecked and uncorrected. And at a time when sentiments are so much divided, every man, I trust, will give his vote with the recollection and the consciousness that it may depend upon his single vote whether the miseries, the crimes, the atrocities that I fear are now proceeding in China are to be discountenanced or not. We have now come to the crisis of the case. England is not yet committed. With you, then, with us, with every one of us, it rests to show that this house, which is the first, the most ancient, and the noblest temple of freedom in the world, is also the temple of that everlasting justice without which freedom itself would only be a name, or only a curse to mankind. And I cherish the trust and belief that when you, sir, rise to declare in your place to-night the numbers of the division from the chair which you adorn, the words which you speak will go forth from the walls of the House of Commons, not only as a message of mercy and peace, but also as a message of British justice and British wisdom, to the farthest corners of the world."

The message went forth from the House of Commons by a majority of 16 in favour of the resolution proposed by Mr. Cobden and seconded by Mr. Gibson; but that message was not endorsed by the nation, or at all events by that part of the nation which had votes. Palmerston accepted the challenge of Disraeli, and appealed to the country by dissolving parliament. "The Tory chief of a Radical cabinet," as Mr. Disraeli called

him, who "with no domestic policy was obliged to divert the attention of the people from the consideration of their own affairs to the distractions of foreign politics;' "" - the minister whose "external system was turbulent and aggressive, that his rule at home might be tranquil and unassailed,”—went to his constituents at Tiverton, and denounced Governor Yeh as "an insolent barbarian," who, "wielding authority at Canton, violated the British flag, broke the engagements of treaties, offered rewards for the heads of British subjects in that part of China, and planned their destruction by murder, assassination, and

poison." Would the British nation, he asked, give their support to men who, if they got into power and were prepared to be consistent, must apologize to the Chinese government, and offer compensation to the Chinese commissioner, and who had endeavoured to make the humiliation and degradation of their country the stepping-stone to power?

The British nation believed so implicitly in the name and the foreign tactics of Palmerston that they did nothing of the kind. It was everywhere understood that he had so upheld British influence abroad as to make this country "feared and respected." It was believed that foreign official functionaries bowed humbly at the sight of his signature on a passport, when that signature was once translated to them. Remarkably enough, too,—the premier, who by his alleged flippancy and irreverent references in the matter of epidemics, had scandalized very "serious" people, had come to be regarded as a bulwark of the evangelical party in the church, because of his appointment to bishoprics, of men of that tendency. The appeal to the country was a triumph. Cobden, Bright, Milner Gibson, Layard, W. J. Fox, and several other leading opponents, actually lost their seats. Some ugly stories were current of attempts to poison Englishmen in China-of new promises of reward for assassination, and of poisoned bread sold by Chinese bakers. Some of these rumours appear to have had a foundation of fact. At any rate Commissioner Yeh remained "an insolent barbarian,” though Lord Lyndhurst had endorsed his arguments, and Lord Derby had declared that on his side there had been courtesy, forbearance, and temper, and on ours arrogance and presumption. The vote of parliament had supported Mr. Cobden in saying that injustice had had been done to "an ingenious and civilized people, who were learned when our Plantagenet kings could not write, who had logic before Aristotle, and morals before Socrates," but the country reversed the decision. Cobden, hopeless of the West Riding, was defeated at Huddersfield. Mr. Bright, who was suffering so severely from the effects of mental strain and unremitting work that he was incapable of