y.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS.--CHINA AND JAPAN.

{A.D. 1858-1859}

The foreign transactions of 1858 have been partly related in the last
chapter; the conclusion of a peace with China, which was hailed with
great satisfaction in Europe, was among those transactions. After the
peace a work was published by Mr. Laurence Oliphant, who held a position
on the civil staff of Lord Elgin, relating the events of the war. Mr.
Oliphant had been distinguished as a traveller and writer, and his work
upon the mission of Lord Elgin to the Eastern seas naturally excited
very great attention. In that work it transpired that Sir Michael
Seymour, the admiral commanding the British fleet in the Chinese waters,
did not heartily co-operate with Lord Elgin. The admiral disapproved,
or affected to disapprove, of the actively hostile proceedings of Lord
Elgin. He was for carrying on the war by blockades and compromises,
after the fashion desired by certain merchants in China and in England
connected with the Chinese trade, who did not wish China thoroughly
opened to all nations, or to all English merchants, and who desired
to go on much in the old way--dealing and quarrelling with the Chinese
alternately, enduring all insults except personal oppressions, the
plunder of property, and the stoppage of trade; so that a restricted
intercourse with the Chinese might continue available to these
merchants, already in the trade and experienced in Chinese intrigue,
but calculated to deter others from entering a field of commerce
so hazardous and uncertain. With this British merchant-clique
the Manchester party in England sympathized. This at first seemed
inconsistent with the principles of that party, which involved free
trade with all nations. The system adopted in China, however, was
believed by many of the party to work well enough for the trade of
Manchester. Many of that school, who did not think so, believed that
a Chinese war would prove so expensive, and inflame the minds of the
Chinese so much, that on the whole it was better to patch up a peace any
how, or endure a troublesome peace, rather than have open hostilities.
The general conviction in Lancashire that a war anywhere, great or
small, was injurious to the trade of the district, had much to do with
the inveterate objection of the northern politicians to a Chinese war.
A considerable number of influential persons, in the middle and northern
counties of England especially, adopted the peace princip