Page:Europe in China.djvu/37



OWEVER galling this stolid assertion of self-adequacy and supremacy, and this persistent exclusivism of the Chinese Government, must have been to the East India Company's officers and to the Ambassadors specially commissioned to bolster up the position of the East India Company in China, it must not be forgotten that the East India Company was, within its own sphere, just as haughty, domineering and exclusive a potentate, as any Emperor of China. Private British merchants, scientists, missionaries, and even English ladies, had us much reason to complain of the tyranny of the East India Company's Court of Directors, as their Supercargoes suffered in their relations with the Chinese Government. When naturalists or missionaries, entirely unconnected with trade, desired to pursue their noble avocations at any port of Asia occupied by the East India Company, they were either strictly prohibited and ordered off, or permission was granted in exceptional cases, as a matter of extraordinary favour, and under galling injunctions and restrictions.

As to the treatment of foreign ladies, the coincidence between the policy of the Chinese Government and that of the East India Company is striking. When the first Englishspeaking lady, a Mrs. McClannon who, with her maid, had been shipwrecked on her way to Sydney and picked up at, sea by the American ship Betsey, arrived at Macao, the Chinese officials professed themselves shocked. They refused to admit the ship to trade. What with barbarian merchants, residing