Page:Europe in China.djvu/42

24 and needs of the China trade, and the next advices from London informed the free traders of Canton (April 31, 1832), then smarting under a new order of the Hoppo positively forbidding' foreign ships to remain at Lintin (April 11, 1832), that general apathy prevailed in England as to the restrictions and interruptions or hardships of the China trade.

However, the hated monopoly of the East India Company at Canton finally ceased and determined on April 22, 1834, and the chagrin felt at the discovery that the East India Company, though closing its factory at Canton, left behind a Financial Committee for brokerage purposes, was almost forgotten in the general rejoicing over the first private British vessel, the ship Sarah, that openly sailed from Whampoa for London as the pioneer of the new free trade.

, principally originating with the servants of the East India Company, were not wanting that under the Company's regime British trade with China had reached its zenith and was bound to decline henceforth. It was asserted in Parliament that China offered no further outlet for British goods and that, by throwing open the trade to all comers, things would go from bad to worse. But the free traders had a better insight into the inner workings of the trade movement. They confidently predicted a great development of British trade to set in at once and history verified their expectations.

A few of these free traders were even keen enough to foretell (April, 1834) that the Act of King William IV., by which he abolished the exclusive rights of the East India Company, 'would aid very much in hastening the abolition of the long cherished exclusive rights of the Celestial Empire.' All may not have seen this at the time, but all were aware that a new period in the history of British trade with China was inaugurated thereby. It required, indeed, no prophet's vision to foresee that the inherent difficulties of commercial intercourse with the Chinese were considerably accentuated by the substitution of free trade for monopoly.