Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 4

WAR WITH CHINA. (APRIL 7, 1840) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 7TH OF APRIL, 1840

On the seventh of April, 1840, Sir James Graham moved the following resolution:

"That it appears to this House, on consideration of the papers relating to China presented to this House by command of Her Majesty, that the interruption in our commercial and friendly intercourse with that country, and the hostilities which have since taken place, are mainly to be attributed to the want of foresight and precaution on the part of Her Majesty's present advisers, in respect to our relations with China, and especially to their neglect to furnish the Superintendent at Canton with powers and instructions calculated to provide against the growing evils connected with the contraband trade in opium, and adapted to the novel and difficult situation in which the Superintendent was placed."

As soon as the question had been put from the Chair the following Speech was made.

The motion was rejected, after a debate of three nights, by 271 votes to 261.

Mr Speaker,—If the right honourable Baronet, in rising to make an attack on the Government, was forced to own that he was unnerved and overpowered by his sense of the importance of the question with which he had to deal, one who rises to repel that attack may, without any shame, confess that he feels similar emotions. And yet I must say that the anxiety, the natural and becoming anxiety, with which Her Majesty's Ministers have awaited the judgment of the House on these papers, was not a little allayed by the terms of the right honourable Baronet's motion, and has been still more allayed by his speech. It was impossible for us to doubt either his inclination or his ability to detect and to expose any fault which we might have committed, and we may well congratulate ourselves on finding that, after the closest examination into a long series of transactions, so extensive, so complicated, and, in some respects, so disastrous, so keen an assailant could produce only so futile an accusation.

In the first place, Sir, the resolution which the right honourable Baronet has moved relates entirely to events which took place before the rupture with the Chinese Government. That rupture took place in March, 1839. The right honourable Baronet therefore does not propose to pass any censure on any step which has been taken by the Government within the last thirteen months; and it will, I think, be generally admitted, that when he abstains from censuring the proceedings of the Government, it is because the most unfriendly scrutiny can find nothing in those proceedings to censure. We by no means deny that he has a perfect right to propose a vote expressing disapprobation of what was done in 1837 or 1838. At the same time, we cannot but be gratified by learning that he approves of our present policy, and of the measures which we have taken, since the rupture, for the vindication of the national honour and for the protection of the national interests.

It is also to be observed that the right honourable Baronet has not ventured, either in his motion or in his speech, to charge Her Majesty's Ministers with any unwise or unjust act, with any act tending to lower the character of England, or to give cause of offence to China. The only sins which he imputes to them are sins of omission. His complaint is merely that they did not foresee the course which events would take at Canton, and that consequently they did not send sufficient instructions to the British resident who was stationed there. Now it is evident that such an accusation is of all accusations that which requires the fullest and most distinct proof; for it is of all accusations that which it is easiest to make and hardest to refute. A man charged with a culpable act which he has not committed has comparatively little difficulty in proving his innocence. But when the charge is merely this, that he has not, in a long and intricate series of transactions, done all that it would have been wise to do, how is he to vindicate himself? And the case which we are considering has this peculiarity, that the envoy to whom the Ministers are said to have left too large a discretion was fifteen thousand miles from them. The charge against them therefore is this, that they did not give such copious and particular directions as were sufficient, in every possible emergency, for the guidance of a functionary, who was fifteen thousand miles off. Now, Sir, I am ready to admit that, if the papers on our table related to important negotiations with a neighbouring state, if they related, for example, to a negotiation carried on with France, my noble friend the Secretary for Foreign Affairs (Lord Palmerston.) might well have been blamed for sending instructions so meagre and so vague to our ambassador at Paris. For my noble friend knows to-night what passed between our ambassador at Paris and the French Ministers yesterday; and a messenger despatched to-night from Downing Street will be at the Embassy in the Faubourg Saint Honore the day after to-morrow. But that constant and minute control, which the Foreign Secretary is bound to exercise over diplomatic agents who are near, becomes an useless and pernicious meddling when exercised over agents who are separated from him by a voyage of five months. There are on both sides of the House gentlemen conversant with the affairs of India. I appeal to those gentlemen. India is nearer to us than China. India is far better known to us than China. Yet is it not universally acknowledged that India can be governed only in India? The authorities at home point out to a governor the general line of policy which they wish him to follow; but they do not send him directions as to the details of his administration. How indeed is it possible that they should send him such directions? Consider in what a state the affairs of this country would be if they were to be conducted according to directions framed by the ablest statesman residing in Bengal. A despatch goes hence asking for instructions while London is illuminating for the peace of Amiens. The instructions arrive when the French army is encamped at Boulogne, and when the whole island is up in arms to repel invasion. A despatch is written asking for instructions when Bonaparte is at Elba. The instructions come when he is at the Tuilleries. A despatch is written asking for instructions when he is at the Tuilleries. The instructions come when he is at St Helena. It would be just as impossible to govern India in London as to govern England at Calcutta. While letters are preparing here on the supposition that there is profound peace in the Carnatic, Hyder is at the gates of Fort St George. While letters are preparing here on the supposition that trade is flourishing and that the revenue exceeds the expenditure, the crops have failed, great agency houses have broken, and the government is negotiating a loan on hard terms. It is notorious that the great men who founded and preserved our Indian empire, Clive and Warren Hastings, treated all particular orders which they received from home as mere waste paper. Had not those great men had the sense and spirit so to treat such orders, we should not now have had an Indian empire. But the case of China is far stronger. For, though a person who is now writing a despatch to Fort William in Leadenhall Street or Cannon Row, cannot know what events have happened in India within the last two months, he may be very intimately acquainted with the general state of that country, with its wants, with its resources, with the habits and temper of the native population, and with the character of every prince and minister from Nepaul to Tanjore. But what does anybody here know of China? Even those Europeans who have been in that empire are almost as ignorant of it as the rest of us. Everything is covered by a veil, through which a glimpse of what is within may occasionally be caught, a glimpse just sufficient to set the imagination at work, and more likely to mislead than to inform. The right honourable Baronet has told us that an Englishman at Canton sees about as much of China as a foreigner who should land at Wapping and proceed no further would see of England. Certainly the sights and sounds of Wapping would give a foreigner but a very imperfect notion of our Government, of our manufactures, of our agriculture, of the state of learning and the arts among us. And yet the illustration is but a faint one. For a foreigner may, without seeing even Wapping, without visiting England at all, study our literature, and may thence form a vivid and correct idea of our institutions and manners. But the literature of China affords us no such help. Obstacles unparalleled in any other country which has books must be surmounted by the student who is determined to master the Chinese tongue. To learn to read is the business of half a life. It is easier to become such a linguist as Sir William Jones was than to become a good Chinese scholar. You may count upon your fingers the Europeans whose industry and genius, even when stimulated by the most fervent religious zeal, has triumphed over the difficulties of a language without an alphabet. Here then is a country separated from us physically by half the globe, separated from us still more effectually by the barriers which the most jealous of all governments and the hardest of all languages oppose to the researches of strangers. Is it then reasonable to blame my noble friend because he has not sent to our envoys in such a country as this instructions as full and precise as it would have been his duty to send to a minister at Brussels or at the Hague? The right honourable Baronet who comes forward as the accuser on this occasion is really accusing himself. He was a member of the Government of Lord Grey. He was himself concerned in framing the first instructions which were given by my noble friend to our first Superintendent at Canton. For those instructions the right honourable Baronet frankly admits that he is himself responsible. Are those instructions then very copious and minute? Not at all. They merely lay down general principles. The Resident, for example, is enjoined to respect national usages, and to avoid whatever may shock the prejudices of the Chinese; but no orders are given him as to matters of detail. In 1834 my noble friend quitted the Foreign Office, and the Duke of Wellington went to it. Did the Duke of Wellington send out those copious and exact directions with which, according to the right honourable Baronet, the Government is bound to furnish its agent in China? No, Sir; the Duke of Wellington, grown old in the conduct of great affairs, knows better than anybody that a man of very ordinary ability at Canton is likely to be a better judge of what ought to be done on an emergency arising at Canton than the greatest politician at Westminster can possibly be. His Grace, therefore, like a wise man as he is, wrote only one letter to the Superintendent, and in that letter merely referred the Superintendent to the general directions given by Lord Palmerston. And how, Sir, does the right honourable Baronet prove that, by persisting in the course which he himself took when in office, and which the Duke of Wellington took when in office, Her Majesty's present advisers have brought on that rupture which we all deplore? He has read us, from the voluminous papers which are on the table, much which has but a very remote connection with the question. He has said much about things which happened before the present Ministry existed, and much about things which have happened at Canton since the rupture; but very little that is relevant to the issue raised by the resolution which he has himself proposed. That issue is simply this, whether the mismanagement of the present Ministry produced the rupture. I listened to his long and able speech with the greatest attention, and did my best to separate that part which had any relation to his motion from a great mass of extraneous matter. If my analysis be correct, the charge which he brings against the Government consists of four articles.

The first article is, that the Government omitted to alter that part of the original instructions which directed the Superintendent to reside at Canton.

The second article is, that the Government omitted to alter that part of the original instructions which directed the Superintendent to communicate directly with the representatives of the Emperor.

The third article is, that the Government omitted to follow the advice of the Duke of Wellington, who had left at the Foreign Office a memorandum recommending that a British ship of war should be stationed in the China sea.

The fourth article is, that the Government omitted to authorise and empower the Superintendent to put down the contraband trade carried on by British subjects with China.

Such, Sir, are the counts of this indictment. Of these counts, the fourth is the only one which will require a lengthened defence. The first three may be disposed of in very few words.

As to the first, the answer is simple. It is true that the Government did not revoke that part of the instructions which directed the Superintendent to reside at Canton; and it is true that this part of the instructions did at one time cause a dispute between the Superintendent and the Chinese authorities. But it is equally true that this dispute was accommodated early in 1837; that the Chinese Government furnished the Superintendent with a passport authorising him to reside at Canton; that, during the two years which preceded the rupture, the Chinese Government made no objection to his residing at Canton; and that there is not in all this huge blue book one word indicating that the rupture was caused, directly or indirectly, by his residing at Canton. On the first count, therefore, I am confident that the verdict must be, Not Guilty.

To the second count we have a similar answer. It is true that there was a dispute with the authorities of Canton about the mode of communication. But it is equally true that this dispute was settled by a compromise. The Chinese made a concession as to the channel of communication. The Superintendent made a concession as to the form of communication. The question had been thus set at rest before the rupture, and had absolutely nothing to do with the rupture.

As to the third charge, I must tell the right honourable Baronet that he has altogether misapprehended that memorandum which he so confidently cites. The Duke of Wellington did not advise the Government to station a ship of war constantly in the China seas. The Duke, writing in 1835, at a time when the regular course of the trade had been interrupted, recommended that a ship of war should be stationed near Canton, "till the trade should take its regular peaceable course." Those are His Grace's own words. Do they not imply that, when the trade had again taken its regular peaceable course, it might be right to remove the ship of war? Well, Sir, the trade, after that memorandum was written, did resume its regular peaceable course: that the right honourable Baronet himself will admit; for it is part of his own case that Sir George Robinson had succeeded in restoring quiet and security. The third charge then is simply this, that the Ministers did not do in a time of perfect tranquillity what the Duke of Wellington thought that it would have been right to do in a time of trouble.

And now, Sir, I come to the fourth charge, the only real charge; for the other three are so futile that I hardly understand how the right honourable Baronet should have ventured to bring them forward. The fourth charge is, that the Ministers omitted to send to the Superintendent orders and powers to suppress the contraband trade, and that this omission was the cause of the rupture.

Now, Sir, let me ask whether it was not notorious, when the right honourable Baronet was in office, that British subjects carried on an extensive contraband trade with China? Did the right honourable Baronet and his colleagues instruct the Superintendent to put down that trade? Never. That trade went on while the Duke of Wellington was at the Foreign Office. Did the Duke of Wellington instruct the Superintendent to put down that trade? No, Sir, never. Are then the followers of the right honourable Baronet, are the followers of the Duke of Wellington, prepared to pass a vote of censure on us for following the example of the right honourable Baronet and of the Duke of Wellington? But I am understating my case. Since the present Ministers came into office, the reasons against sending out such instructions were much stronger than when the right honourable Baronet was in office, or when the Duke of Wellington was in office. Down to the month of May 1838, my noble friend had good grounds for believing that the Chinese Government was about to legalise the trade in opium. It is by no means easy to follow the windings of Chinese politics. But, it is certain that about four years ago the whole question was taken into serious consideration at Pekin. The attention of the Emperor was called to the undoubted fact, that the law which forbade the trade in opium was a dead letter. That law had been intended to guard against two evils, which the Chinese legislators seem to have regarded with equal horror, the importation of a noxious drug, and the exportation of the precious metals. It was found, however, that as many pounds of opium came in, and that as many pounds of silver went out, as if there had been no such law. The only effect of the prohibition was that the people learned to think lightly of imperial edicts, and that no part of the great sums expended in the purchase of the forbidden luxury came into the imperial treasury. These considerations were set forth in a most luminous and judicious state paper, drawn by Tang Tzee, President of the Sacrificial Offices. I am sorry to hear that this enlightened Minister has been turned out of office on account of his liberality: for to be turned out of office is, I apprehend, a much more serious misfortune in China than in England. Tang Tzee argued that it was unwise to attempt to exclude opium, for that, while millions desired to have it, no law would keep it out, and that the manner in which it had long been brought in had produced an injurious effect both on the revenues of the state and on the morals of the people. Opposed to Tang Tzee was Tchu Sing, a statesman of a very different class, of a class which, I am sorry to say, is not confined to China. Tchu Sing appears to be one of those staunch conservatives who, when they find that a law is inefficient because it is too severe, imagine that they can make it efficient by making it more severe still. His historical knowledge is much on a par with his legislative wisdom. He seems to have paid particular attention to the rise and progress of our Indian Empire, and he informs his imperial master that opium is the weapon by which England effects her conquests. She had, it seems, persuaded the people of Hindostan to smoke and swallow this besotting drug, till they became so feeble in body and mind, that they were subjugated without difficulty. Some time appears to have elapsed before the Emperor made up his mind on the point in dispute between Tang Tzee and Tchu Sing. Our Superintendent, Captain Elliot, was of opinion that the decision would be in favour of the rational view taken by Tang Tzee; and such, as I can myself attest, was, during part of the year 1837, the opinion of the whole mercantile community of Calcutta. Indeed, it was expected that every ship which arrived in the Hoogley from Canton would bring the news that the opium trade had been declared legal. Nor was it known in London till May 1838, that the arguments of Tchu Sing had prevailed. Surely, Sir, it would have been most absurd to order Captain Elliot to suppress this trade at a time when everybody expected that it would soon cease to be contraband. The right honourable Baronet must, I think, himself admit that, till the month of May 1838, the Government here omitted nothing that ought to have been done.

The question before us is therefore reduced to very narrow limits. It is merely this: Ought my noble friend, in May 1838, to have sent out a despatch commanding and empowering Captain Elliot to put down the opium trade? I do not think that it would have been right or wise to send out such a despatch. Consider, Sir, with what powers it would have been necessary to arm the Superintendent. He must have been authorised to arrest, to confine, to send across the sea any British subject whom he might believe to have been concerned in introducing opium into China. I do not deny that, under the Act of Parliament, the Government might have invested him with this dictatorship. But I do say that the Government ought not lightly to invest any man with such a dictatorship, and, that if, in consequence of directions sent out by the Government, numerous subjects of Her Majesty had been taken into custody and shipped off to Bengal or to England without being permitted to wind up their affairs, this House would in all probability have called the Ministers to a strict account. Nor do I believe that by sending such directions the Government would have averted the rupture which has taken place. I will go further. I believe that, if such directions had been sent, we should now have been, as we are, at war with China; and that we should have been at war in circumstances singularly dishonourable and disastrous.

For, Sir, suppose that the Superintendent had been authorised and commanded by the Government to put forth an order prohibiting British subjects from trading in opium; suppose that he had put forth such an order; how was he to enforce it? The right honourable Baronet has had too much experience of public affairs to imagine that a lucrative trade will be suppressed by a sheet of paper and a seal. In England we have a preventive service which costs us half a million a year. We employ more than fifty cruisers to guard our coasts. We have six thousand effective men whose business is to intercept smugglers. And yet everybody knows that every article which is much desired, which is easily concealed, and which is heavily taxed, is smuggled into our island to a great extent. The quantity of brandy which comes in without paying duty is known to be not less than six hundred thousand gallons a year. Some people think that the quantity of tobacco which is imported clandestinely is as great as the quantity which goes through the custom-houses. Be this as it may, there is no doubt that the illicit importation is enormous. It has been proved before a Committee of this House that not less than four millions of pounds of tobacco have lately been smuggled into Ireland. And all this, observe, has been done in spite of the most efficient preventive service that I believe ever existed in the world. Consider too that the price of an ounce of opium is far, very far higher than the price of a pound of tobacco. Knowing this, knowing that the whole power of King, Lords, and Commons cannot here put a stop to a traffic less easy, and less profitable than the traffic in opium, can you believe that an order prohibiting the traffic in opium would have been readily obeyed? Remember by what powerful motives both the buyer and the seller would have been impelled to deal with each other. The buyer would have been driven to the seller by something little short of torture, by a physical craving as fierce and impatient as any to which our race is subject. For, when stimulants of this sort have been long used, they are desired with a rage which resembles the rage of hunger. The seller would have been driven to the buyer by the hope of vast and rapid gain. And do you imagine that the intense appetite on one side for what had become a necessary of life, and on the other for riches, would have been appeased by a few lines signed Charles Elliot? The very utmost effect which it is possible to believe that such an order would have produced would have been this, that the opium trade would have left Canton, where the dealers were under the eye of the Superintendent, and where they would have run some risk of being punished by him, and would have spread itself along the coast. If we know anything about the Chinese Government, we know this, that its coastguard is neither trusty nor efficient; and we know that a coastguard as trusty and efficient as our own would not be able to cut off communication between the merchant longing for silver and the smoker longing for his pipe. Whole fleets of vessels would have managed to land their cargoes along the shore. Conflicts would have arisen between our countrymen and the local magistrates, who would not, like the authorities of Canton, have had some knowledge of European habits and feelings. The mere malum prohibitum would, as usual, have produced the mala in se. The unlawful traffic would inevitably have led to a crowd of acts, not only unlawful, but immoral. The smuggler would, by the almost irresistible force of circumstances, have been turned into a pirate. We know that, even at Canton, where the smugglers stand in some awe of the authority of the Superintendent and of the opinion of an English society which contains many respectable persons, the illicit trade has caused many brawls and outrages. What, then, was to be expected when every captain of a ship laden with opium would have been the sole judge of his own conduct? It is easy to guess what would have happened. A boat is sent ashore to fill the water-casks and to buy fresh provisions. The provisions are refused. The sailors take them by force. Then a well is poisoned. Two or three of the ship's company die in agonies. The crew in a fury land, shoot and stab every man whom they meet, and sack and burn a village. Is this improbable? Have not similar causes repeatedly produced similar effects? Do we not know that the jealous vigilance with which Spain excluded the ships of other nations from her Transatlantic possessions turned men who would otherwise have been honest merchant adventurers into buccaneers? The same causes which raised up one race of buccaneers in the Gulf of Mexico would soon have raised up another in the China Sea. And can we doubt what would in that case have been the conduct of the Chinese authorities at Canton? We see that Commissioner Lin has arrested and confined men of spotless character, men whom he had not the slightest reason to suspect of being engaged in any illicit commerce. He did so on the ground that some of their countrymen had violated the revenue laws of China. How then would he have acted if he had learned that the red-headed devils had not merely been selling opium, but had been fighting, plundering, slaying, burning? Would he not have put forth a proclamation in his most vituperative style, setting forth that the Outside Barbarians had undertaken to stop the contraband trade, but that they had been found deceivers, that the Superintendent's edict was a mere pretence, that there was more smuggling than ever, that to the smuggling had been added robbery and murder, and that therefore he should detain all men of the guilty race as hostages till reparation should be made? I say, therefore, that, if the Ministers had done that which the right honourable Baronet blames them for not doing, we should only have reached by a worse way the point at which we now are.