Travels in China, Sir John Barrow [phonics readers txt] 📗

hands, and were not, without difficulty, allowed to escape with the clothes on their backs. Can we blame these people for representing us as a barbarous, unfeeling, and inhospitable nation, however undeserving we may be of such a character?

Our case at Canton is pretty nearly the same as that of the two Chinese missionaries. Every petty officer of the government knows he can practise impositions on our trade with impunity, because we have not the means of bringing his villainy to the knowledge of his superiors. For, how great soever may be the propensity of the Chinese people to fraud and extortion, I have little doubt of the justice and moderation of the Chinese government, when the case is properly represented. A recent circumstance may be mentioned in support of this opinion. In the year 1801, a sailor on board his Majesty's ship the Madras fired upon and mortally wounded a Chinese who was passing in a boat. A discussion, as usual, took place with the Chinese government; but it was conducted in a very different manner from what had hitherto been usual on similar occasions. Instead of entering into any explanation or defence through the medium of the Hong merchants, who tremble at the lowest officer of government, a memorial was addressed to the Viceroy, drawn up in a proper and becoming manner by the present Sir George Staunton, the only Englishman in the Company's service who was skilled in the Chinese language. Several conversations were also held on the subject with the officers of justice, from which the Hong merchants were excluded. Captain Dilkes setting up a plea of recrimination on the ground of some Chinese having cut his cable with an intent to steal it, the government assented to have the matter tried in the supreme court of justice in the city of Canton. By the law of China, if the wounded person survive forty days, the sentence of death is commuted for that of banishment into the wilds of Tartary; yet so favourably did the court incline to the side of the accused in this instance, that although the time was not expired, and there was little hope of the wounded man recovering, they allowed Captain Dilkes to take the seaman into his own custody, requiring only that he should leave in court a written promise to produce him in case the wounded should not survive the time prescribed by law. The man lingered near fifty days and then died, upon which a message was sent by the court, intimating to the Captain, that the court saw no impropriety, in this instance, in leaving it to him to punish the delinquent according to the laws of his own country; thus, for the first time, assenting to set aside a positive law in favour of foreigners. By this proper mode of interference an English subject was saved from an unjust and ignominious death, which would otherwise inevitably have happened, as on all former occasions of a similar kind, had the affair been left in the hands of men whose interest it is to represent us as barbarians, and who, however well they might be disposed, have not the courage to plead our cause. Hitherto the Chinese have invariably made a point of executing immediately, and without a regular trial, any foreigner who should kill a Chinese, or some substitute in the place of the actual criminal, as I have already instanced in the seventh chapter. One of the most intelligent of the East India Company's servants at Canton, speaking on this subject, in answer to certain queries proposed to him about the time of the Embassy, remarks, "I cannot help observing, that the situation of the Company's servants and the trade in general is, in this respect, very dangerous and disgraceful. It is such that it will be impossible for them to extricate themselves from the cruel dilemma a very probable accident may place them in, I will not say with honour, but without infamy, or exposing the whole trade to ruin." Yet we have just now seen, on the recurrence of such an accident, that by the circumstance of a direct and immediate communication with the government, the affair was terminated, not only without disgrace or infamy, but in a that was honourable to both parties.