Page:Europe in China.djvu/300

282 population, who were still in the habit of sending their sons to be educated outside the Colony, in Canton or in their respective native villages, cared little for local education. Public spirit among the Chinese vented itself in guild meetings, processions and temple-committees. Among the latter, the Committee of the Man-moo temple (rebuilt and enlarged in May, 1851) now rose into eminence as a sort of unrecognized and unofficial local-government board (principally made up by Nampak-hong or export merchants). This Committee secretly controlled native affairs, acted as commercial arbitrators, arranged for the due reception of mandarins passing through the Colony, negotiated the sale of official titles, and formed an unofficial link between the Chinese residents of Hongkong and the Canton Authorities.

With the advent of Sir G. Bonham, who possessed the secret of making himself thoroughly popular without surrendering a vestige of his dignity as Her Majesty's Representative, and who was fortunate in having for his co-adjutors popular and hospitable men like the Major-Generals Staveley and Jervois, a great change came over the social life of the Colony. From the very commencement of this administration, Hongkong society began to take its tone from, and was thenceforth held together by, the spirit that prevailed at Government House. The transition, from the state of things in the days of Sir H. Pottinger and Sir J. Davis, when Government House was virtually under a self-imposed ban of social ostracism, to the time of Sir G. Bonham, when the social life of the Colony gathered round Government House as its pivot, was too sudden and too great to pass off smoothly. When Sir George (November, 1849) selected fifteen of the unofficial Justices of the Peace, summoned them to a conference, and thenceforth frequently consulted them collectively or individually, he virtually created, in succession, to the merchant princes of former days, an untitled commercial aristocracy. Unfortunately, this select company had no natural basis of demarcation. Merchants, formerly of equal standing with some of the chosen fifteen, resented their