In this, as in some other respects, Sir John's ideas were in advance of his time.
How far behind the times some worthy men in Hongkong kept lagging, is evidenced by the fact that in spring 1856 the Lieutenant-Governor, Colonel W. Caine, revived the old suggestion, first made by Captain Elliot (June 28, 1841) and then repeated by misguided Hongkong merchants (December, 1846), that Parliament should impose a differential duty of one penny per pound in favour of teas shipped from Hongkong. Colonel Caine thought that, if this measure were adopted, the result would need no demonstration. Sir J. Bowring, however, incisively remarked in his covering dispatch, that the whole system of differential duties was, in his view, obnoxious in principle, fraudulent in practice and disappointing in result. After this, no more was heard of the scheme.
Among the minor commercial topics which ephemerically occupied the attention of the public, may be mentioned the complaint made by the Postmaster General regarding the irregular arrival of mail steamers (December 10, 1854), the breaking up of the Hongkong and Canton Steam Packet Company (December 13, 1854), and a decision given by the Supreme Court (May 2, 1855) to the effect that the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company must forward parcels without unnecessary delay and have no right to leave any of the parcels for Europe behind, at any point on their route, to make room for other cargo.
The fact that the commercial reputation of the Colony had, even by this time, not yet been re-established in England, became painfully evident by an article which appeared (December 17, 1858) in the Times and caused much comment in the Colony. Hongkong was there represented as feeling humiliated and displaced by the opening of so many Treaty ports in China. It was alleged that all the success of British arms in China, so valuable to the rest of the world and so important to the great interests of humanity, was rather carped at by Hongkong merchants, owing to their natural tendency towards their own individual
