Page:American Diplomacy in the Orient - Foster (1903).djvu/99

 of Canton to pay damages to the amount of several hundred thousand dollars for injuries suffered by Americans during the war on account of mob violence and illegal arrests. But he rendered a much more valuable service to his own and other nations, and for which he has received scant credit. By the British treaty it was provided that a tariff and new trade regulations should be agreed upon. On learning of this provision, Commodore Kearny addressed a communication to the governor of Canton, in which, referring to the expected arrival at that place of the imperial commissioners to arrange commercial affairs with the British, he asked that citizens of the United States in their trade should "be placed upon the same footing as the merchants of the nation most favored." In previous correspondence the governor had borne testimony to the fact that the American merchants at Canton had confined themselves "to legitimate and honorable trade," and in his reply to the commodore he said of them, "that they have been respectfully observant of the laws is what the august emperor has clearly recognized, and I, the governor, also well know. … Decidedly it shall not be permitted that the American merchants shall come to have merely a dry stick"—that is, their interests shall be attended to. And he assured the commodore that the emperor would be memorialized, in order that the imperial commissioners might be instructed on the subject.

Having received these assurances from the governor, Kearny prepared to take his departure, whereupon the American consul protested that he should not leave