CHAPTER VI.
The Search for a Colony.
ir George B. Robinson was by no means the first discoverer of the need of a British Colony in the East. Nor was Lord Palmerston the only statesman that shrank from the idea and found himself unable to form hastily a final opinion upon such a suggestion until the force of events had actually accomplished it.
So far back as 1815, Mr. Elphinstone, then President of the Select Committee of the East India Company's Supercargoes at Canton, recommended to the Court of Directors, that they should establish a high diplomatic Plenipotentiary 'on a convenient station on the eastern coast of China,' and as near the capital of the country as might be found most expedient. He further recommended that, this Plenipotentiary should be attended by a sufficient maritime force to demand reparation of the grievances from which the trade was suffering. The Directors of the Company, with all their statesman-like sagacity, did not see their way to follow up this suggestion, the carrying out of which would have anticipated the sound basis of commercial relations which was eventually obtained some thirty-six years later, by the very course of action first recommended by Mr. Elphinstone.
The next person to take up and develop Mr. Elpinstone's idea of a station on the east coast of China as a point d'appui for a naval demonstration, intended to compel China to redress grievances and to make some commercial concessions, was Sir George Staunton, the famous translator of the original statutes of the Tatsing Dynasty (Penal Code of China), who had also been a trusted servant of the East India Company in China. Having returned to England, he entered Parliament. In the course of a debate which took place in the House of
