on the next and subsequent days with edicts and communications to the hong merchants from the governor, but the British superintendent refused to change his position. In these documents Lord Napier was requested to return to Macao, there to petition to be received as a superintendent, and to await the emperor's decision. He was told that the laws of the Celestial Empire did not permit ministers and those under authority to have intercourse by letter with outside barbarians, especially in commercial affairs, and that any communications to them must be made through the hong merchants in the form of a petition, to which the barbarian merchants had always yielded willing and obedient submission. "There has never been," wrote the governor, "such a thing as outside barbarians sending a letter. … It is contrary to everything of dignity and decorum. The thing is most decidedly impossible."
In the matter of commerce, the governor defined the attitude of his government in very decided terms. "The barbarians of this nation [Great Britain] coming to or leaving Canton have beyond their trade not any public business; and the commissioned officers of the Celestial Empire never take cognizance of the trivial affairs of trade. … The some hundreds of thousands of commercial duties yearly coming from the said nation, concern not the Celestial Empire to the extent of a hair or a feather's down. The possession or absence of them is utterly unworthy of one careful thought." These declarations were followed by a notice that unless Lord Napier desisted from his efforts to hold direct
