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Rh pursuance of his instructions, that he had arrived bearing the King's Commission and invested with political and judicial powers for the control of British subjects in China. But this information was couched in terms characteristic of a dispatch or official communication, and implying that the writer had an official status. By accepting the letter, the Chinese Government would have recognized Lord Napier as having such a status in China. Accordingly reception of the letter was peremptorily refused. The Viceroy, after sending Lord Napier word (through the Hong Merchants) 'that he could hold no communication with outside barbarians,' authorized the Prefect of Canton, the Prefect of Swatow, and the Deputy Lieutenant-General in command at Canton to go, together with the Hong Merchants, and interview Lord Napier in order to ascertain what he really wanted. This interview took place on August 23, 1834, and ended with the sage remark of the gallant Lieutenant-General, 'that it would be very unpleasant were the two nations to come to a rupture,' to which Lord Napier made the significant reply that England was perfectly prepared. The Hong Merchants offered to deliver the letter to the Governor of Canton, on condition that it should be rewritten in form of a humble petition, having on the outside a certain Chinese character (pien) which marks an application made by one of the common people (not having literary or official rank) to a Chinese official from a Magistrate upwards. But one of the Hong Merchants used the opportunity to heap a gratuitous insult upon Lord Napier. Addressing him in writing, he used characters which designated Lord Napier, by a pun, as 'the laboriously vile.'

Lord Napier's argument that a former Viceroy had by edict invited the British Government, in 1831, to send a chief to Canton to supervise trade, was met on the part of the Chinese Authorities by a denial of the meaning which Lord Napier attached to that invitation. They pointed out that in several proclamations issued by the Governor of Canton (August 18 and September 2, 1834), it was distinctly stated, that 'the 3