its proposed supervision of British merchants residing within the Dominions of the Emperor of China, we would have to assume that these experienced statesmen made an incomprehensible blunder. It seems much more probable that we have here one of those many cases which have caused historians to characterize Lord Palmerston's general policy as an incessant violation of the principle of non-intervention. There is reason to suppose that Lord Palmerston, with his keen political foresight, anticipated the probability that this attempt to establish quietly a mild form of extra-territorial jurisdiction would by itself, apart from any existing complications, be sufficient to provoke hostilities. But he no doubt anticipated also that in the end English public opinion would support him. In giving his final instructions to Lord Napier, Lord Palmerston (January 20, 1834) enjoined him 'to foster and protect the trade of His Majesty's subjects in China, to extend trade if possible to other ports of China, to induce the Chinese Government to enter into commercial relations with the English Government, and to seek, with peculiar caution and circumspection, to establish eventually direct diplomatic communication with the Imperial Court at Peking, also to have the coast of China surveyed to prevent disasters.' But Lord Palmerston added to all these peaceful instructions the significant direction, 'to inquire for places where British ships might find requisite protection in the event of hostilities in the China sea.' Surely we are justified in saying that Lord Palmerston then, as ever after, was determined that, to use his own words, like the civis Romanus of old, wherever he be, 'every British subject should feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong,'—even in China.
Assuming that the British Government could reasonably argue, on the ground of their interpretation of the Viceroy's invitation of 1831, and on the principle of established reciprocal responsibilities and rights, that the Chinese Government ought to be willing, or at any rate should be compelled, to admit
