ensibly the painfulness of the position of a
negotiator, who has to treat with persons who yield nothing to reason and
everything to fear, and who are at the same time profoundly ignorant both
of the subjects under discussion and of their own real interests.' Moreover
he had constantly to recollect that, under the 'most favoured nation'
clause, every concession made to British subjects would be claimed by the
subjects, or persons calling themselves the subjects, of other Powers, by
whom they were only too likely to be employed for the promotion of
rebellion and disorder within the empire, or for the establishment of
privileged smuggling and piracy along its coasts and up its rivers. In all
these circumstances he saw grounds for exercising forbearance and
moderation; and his forbearance and moderation were rewarded by the
readiness with which the Emperor sanctioned the Treaty, and the amicable
manner in which its details were subsequently settled. One exception there
was to this moderation on his part, and to this readiness on theirs; viz.
his insisting, against the earnest remonstrances of the Imperial
Commissioners, backed by the intercession of the Russian and American
envoys, on the right of sending an ambassador to Pekin. But it was an
exception of that kind which is said to prove the rule; for the stipulation
was one which could not lead to abuses, and which would be conducive, as he
believed, in the highest decree to the true interests of both the
contracting parties. He was convinced that so long as the system of
entrusting the conduct of foreign affairs to a Provincial Government
endured, there could be no security for the maintenance of pacific
relations. On the one hand the Provincial Governors were entirely without
any sentiment of nationality, caring for nothing but the interests of their
own provinces: nor were they in a position to exercise any independence of
judgment, their lives and fortunes being absolutely at the disposal of a
jealous Government, so that it was generally their most prudent course to
allow any abuses to pass unnoticed rather than risk their heads by
reporting unwelcome truths. On the other Land the central Government, in
which alone a national feeling and an independent judgment were to be
looked for, was profoundly ignorant on all questions of foreign policy, and
must continue to be so as long as the Department for Foreign Affairs was
established in the provinces. For these reasons he re