His Majesty the Emperor of China cedes to Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain, &c., the Island of Hongkong, to be possessed in perpetuity by Her Britannic Majesty, her Heirs and Successors, and to be governed by such laws and regulations as Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain, &c., shall see fit to direct.' The reason here given why Hongkong should be ceded is rather curious. It appears to be rather Elliot's than Pottinger's view of the raison d'être of a British possession called Hongkong. We should not be surprised to find that the English rendering of this third Article of the Nanking Treaty is a literal translation of the Chinese text of the corresponding Article of the Chuenpi Treaty. If it was 'obviously' necessary in 1843, that English merchants should have dockyards and dockyard stores in a separate locality on the Chinese coast, it is very strange that Lord Palmerston and the Cabinet, that Parliament and the nation, could not be brought to see it, though the Mathesons, and Stauntons, and Robinsons and others did everything to demonstrate that necessity and desirability from 1833 to 1836. Moreover, it was obviously a sort of bonded warehouse, with dwelling houses, out of the reach of the avarice, corruption and oppression of Chinese officials that was needed, far more than dockyards and dockyard stores. And it was a Colony rather than a mere trade station or dockyard that Hongkong had become by the time, when this curious third Article of the Nanking Treaty was drafted.
Chastised and humbled as China was by the terms of the Treaty of Nanking, one might suppose that now at last the Chinese had been taught to surrender, once for all, their claim of supremacy over all foreign nations. But the popular Chinese theory, that 'as there is but one sun in the heavens, so there can be but one supreme ruler over all under heaven,' which proposition all mankind ought indeed to be ready to assent to in a religious sense, was so ingrained in the diplomatic mind and language of China, in the sense of China's political supremacy, that, within four months after the conclusion of the Nanking Treaty, the Emperor issued an Edict (December 24,
