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56 When an echo of the foregoing discussions reached Canton at the close of the year 1833, a writer in one of the local publications, signing himself 'A British Merchant,' made some further suggestions. Canton, he said, should no longer be the base of operations, be they of negotiation, of peace, or of war. An Admiral's station should be selected, and, for the sake of resting on some point, Ningpo might be adopted or the adjacent island of Chusan. The writer then goes on discussing the annexation of Formosa, the seizure of the island of Lantao (close to Hongkong), the cession of Macao to be obtained from the Portuguese, but finally rejects the seizure of any portion of Chinese territory as impolitic and the cession of Macao as impracticable. The author of this letter thereupon labours to recommend the idea of negotiating a treaty with China under which some port of the east coast of China should be opened to British trade, free from the restrictions in force at Canton. A treaty port with a British Consulate seemed to him preferable to a Colony, but how such a treaty could be negotiated without compulsion by force of arms, he did not explain.

The honour of having first discerned and directed attention to the peculiar facilities afforded by the Island of Hongkong belongs to Lord Napier. In a dispatch addressed to Lord Palmerston (August 14, 1834), in which he urged the necessity of commanding, by an armed demonstration, the conclusion of a commercial treaty to secure the just rights and interests of European merchants in China. Lord Napier distinctly recommended that a small British force 'should take possession of the Island of Hongkong, in the eastern entrance of the Canton River, which is admirably adapted for every purpose.' It is possible, however, that Lord Napier, as subsequently Captain Elliot, thought of Hongkong as a future Chinese treaty port rather than as a British Colony. The next advocate of a similar policy was Sir George B. Robinson, who, as stated above, urged upon Lord Palmerston (in 1836) to withdraw from Canton and to occupy 'one of the islands in the neighbourhood (of Lintin) so singularly adapted by nature in every respect for