Page:Europe in China.djvu/40

22 (1823 to 1839) and the brothers A. Matheson (1826 to 1839) and J. Matheson (of whom we shall hear more anon). The Mathesons exercised particular influence, as so long ago as 1827 they established in Canton a weekly newspaper, the 'Canton Register,' to disseminate the principles of free trade and to oppose a prolongation of the East India Company's monopoly. To this paper Charles Grant referred (some time before 1836) in the following memorable words: 'The free traders appear to cherish high notions of their claims and privileges. Under their auspices a free press is already maintained at Canton; and should their commerce continue to increase, their importance will rise also. They will regard themselves as the depositaries of the true principles of British commerce.'

During the three or four years that preceded the expiry of the East India Company's Charter, it was already foreseen by the free traders, who were staunch advocates of the Reform Bill of 1831, that the Company's monopoly was not likely to be renewed by a Reformed Parliament. The officers of the Company themselves had the same apprehensions and gradually relaxed its rules against the admission of private interlopers at Canton. Happily, before the question of renewing the Company's Charter had to be decided, the first Reform Bill swept away those rotten boroughs which would have enabled the well-organized band of monopolists in the House of Commons, aided and abetted as they were by the ignorance or indifference as to all questions of Eastern trade which distinguished the vast majority of honourable members, to crush the few scattered advocates of commercial freedom. It was the first Reformed Parliament that fulfilled the hopes and realized the prophecies of the British free traders at Canton, stripped the East India Company of its commercial attributes, delivered the China trade from the thraldom of monopoly, and thereby paved also the way for its eventual liberation from the tyranny of Chinese mandarindom.

Thus it happened that, even before the final expiration (A.D. 1834) of the Company's Charter, free trade cheerily