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Rh to the absolutism of Chinese officialdom, the British merchants gained concessions which the British Government conld not have gained for them, whilst claiming international equality, except by an armed demonstration.

Captain Elliot's relations with the Cantonese Authorities were, throughout his whole tenure of office, characterized by an unceasing battle for a formal recognition of his official status and for the ordinary courtesies of official intercourse, which China never conceded until they were wrung out of her at the point of the bayonet by the Nanking Treaty. On the ground of what on the surface seemed to be petty questions of official etiquette, Elliot had, single-handed and unsupported, to fight the battle between China's stubborn assertion of supremacy over all barbarian potentates, Queen Victoria included, and England's quiet but deliberate claim of international equality. Elliot's position in this conflict was extremely difficult.

On the one hand, the Cantonese Authorities argued that for two centuries British merchants had acknowledged, with abject servility, China's claim of supremacy and consented to take the orders of the Governor or the Hoppo at the hands of the Hong merchants; that Lord Macartney and Lord Amherst had brought tribute from the Kings of England; that Imperial Decrees, which admitted of no alteration, had fixed the mode of governing foreign trade at Canton; and that there was no intelligible difference between a Royal Superintendent like Elliot and a Supercargo of the former East India Company, the latter having wielded, in the experience of Chinese officials, more authority and power over their countrymen than Lord Napier or Captain Elliot ever possessed. On the other hand. Lord Palmerston, with equal justice, persisted in giving Captain Elliot reiterated instructions, based on an assumed equality of the British and Chinese nations, and, on account of the barbarities of the Chinese Penal Code, virtually amounting to a claim of extra-territorial criminal jurisdiction over British subjects trading at Canton. The mistake was that he, at the same time, left Elliot without