CHAPTER V.

ABERDEEN AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE.

1841-1846.

Lord Palmerston and the Smaller Powers-Lord Aberdeen-The Chinese War-Policy of the Government-Treaty of 1842-Disputes with the United States-The Boundary Question-The Greely and McLeod affairs-Right of Search-The Ashburton Mission-Lord Aberdeen and France-Palmerston and Home Affairs-The crisis of 1845-His visit to Paris.

THOUGH Palmerston's administration of foreign affairs during the Grey and Melbourne Governments had been distinctly inspiring and eminently successful, it left very bitter recollections behind it in the hearts of many continental nations. Even when the Foreign Secretary was in the right, he had sometimes a wrong way of showing it; and the " swagger and bully" of which he was so fond of accusing the French Ministers was frequently to be found in his own treatment of the minor States of Europe. For instance, in 1838, a paltry dispute about a sulphur monopoly granted by the Government of the Two Sicilies to a French company was terminated by naval hostilities and the capture of Neapolitan vessels by the Mediterranean fleet. "I dined with Lady Holland on Sunday," writes Greville in January 1842,

"and had a talk with Dedel (the Dutch Ambassador), who said that Palmerston had contrived to alienate all nations from us by his insolence and violence, so that we had not now a friend in the world, while from the vast complication of our interests and affairs we were exposed to perpetual danger." Of course a Dutchman would hardly be an impartial witness in this instance, but the statement probably contains a modicum of truth.

Greville consoled himself with the reflection that "Aberdeen was doing well, avoiding Palmerston's impertinence of manner and preserving his energy as to matter"; and certainly the Conservative Foreign Secretary was an adept at the soft answer which turneth away wrath without being an expression of pusillanimity. In the course of one of his philippics against Sir Robert Peel's Government, Lord Palmerston said that since they had come into office they had been "living on (the Whig) leavings. They have been subsisting on the broken victuals which they found upon our table. They are like a band of men who have made a forcible entrance into a dwelling, and who sit down and carouse upon the provisions they found in the larder." Now two of Palmerston's "leavings" were a war with China and a most complicated dispute with the United States, and Lord Aberdeen would probably have gladly dispensed with both of them.

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The Chinese war, though perhaps unavoidable, was but little calculated to provoke enthusiasm, inasmuch as it was an opium war. The trade in that article of commerce had been expressly declared by the Vermilion Pencil to be contraband; but it had been openly carried on for years without the smallest objection on the part of the Mandarins, until in 1837 the

Chinese Commissioner Lin was sent to Canton with orders from the Emperor to stop it entirely. Now the attitude of the English Government towards the trade had been one of benevolent neutrality. It had been sanctioned by a Committee of the House of Commons, and it formed a valuable source of revenue to India. It was, therefore, allowed to continue, but our superintendents of trade were given to understand that they must on no account mix themselves up with the opium traders. This position was emphasized in a memorandum of the Duke of Wellington, written in March 1835; in the instructions taken out by Captain Elliot on his appointment as Superintendent; and in new instructions sent to him by Lord Palmerston in June 1838. In the last he was told that "with regard to the smuggling in opium . . . Her Majesty's Government could not interfere for the purpose of enabling British subjects to violate the laws of the country with which they trade." It is true that Palmerston afterwards changed his ground, and, in a debate raised by Sir James Graham in 1840, appeared to maintain that the opium traffic was justifiable because the objections of the Celestial authorities to it were not sincere. Opium, he pointed out, was freely grown in China, and the question with the Mandarins was really "an exportation of bullion question, an agricultural protection question"; that is, they did not wish that silver should leave the country in payment for opium, and did wish to encourage Chinese poppy-growing. But so flimsy an excuse was probably a mere ad captandum argument advanced during the stress of discussion. The real case for

Government was that they could not, if they would, suppress the traffic. As far as every country except China was concerned, opium was a perfectly legitimate

article of trade, and therefore could not be suppressed in the Indian harbours; while it was an important source of revenue which could not be suddenly cut off. If they had established courts in Canton with power of expelling Englishmen who were detected in smuggling the drug, the only result would have been that the trade would have sought other ports along the coasts of China, and that a shriek of indignation against Government interference would have been raised throughout India and England. In short, it was the business of the Chinese to carry out their own laws by keeping up an effective set of custom-house officials, and the British Government might fairly wash their hands of the whole question.

It is clear that as far as the British Government was concerned there was no attempt to force the trade upon the Chinese, and Captain Elliot at Canton had done his best to discountenance it. Circumstances changed when Lin ordered the merchants to deliver up the drug that it might be destroyed, and proceeded to enforce his order by blockading them in Canton with every sort of violence. Then Captain Elliot felt bound to identify himself with the trade, "on the principle that these violent compulsory matters were utterly unjust per se." He persuaded the merchants to surrender the opium into his own hands before handing it over to the Chinese, and gave them bonds on the British Government for its value. Though the position he had taken up was apparently inconsistent with his instructions, it is absurd to blame him for not having left his fellow-countrymen to the mercy of Lin; and his conduct was further justified when the Chinese Commissioner, having destroyed the opium, refused to raise the blockade unless Elliot would promise to enter into an agreement by which all

smuggling vessels were for the future to be confiscated to the Celestial Government and their crews condemned to death. It was felt at home that, even if Elliot had made mistakes, he had tried to do his duty, and must be supported at all hazards. That was the view, not only of Palmerston, but of the great Duke, who, when Lord Stanhope brought on a debate in the House of Lords, threw him over and asserted the justice of the quarrel. His followers were annoyed to the last degree. "I know that," said he to Greville, " and I don't care one damn. I was afraid Lord Stanhope would have a majority, and I have no time not to do what is right."

The opium war, though attacked in both Houses of Parliament, was on the whole popular with the nation. Palmerston and his colleagues, however, did not reap much benefit from it. The operations at the outset were not particularly successful. The island of Chusan was occupied, but proved a hot-bed of fever, in which one man out of every four died, and more than one-half the survivors were invalided. The resistance of the Chinese was so feeble that little glory was to be reaped from the bulletins of victory, while the obstinacy of the Emperor rendered negotiations unavailing until after the downfall of the Whigs. It was left to Elliot's successor, Sir Henry Pottinger, to put a stop to the slaughter of the unfortunate Chinese by a treaty concluded in 1842, by which Hongkong was ceded to England in perpetuity, five ports were thrown open to British traders, and consuls established in them, and an indemnity of nearly four millions and a half sterling agreed upon, in addition to one million and a quarter extracted from Canton by way of ransom). Though the slaughter of the unfortunate Chinese was to be deplored, Lord Palmerston was in all probability only expressing public opinion