intercourse and withdrew to Macao, the trade with the British merchants would be stopped.
The controversy continued through the months of July and August with increasing irritation. The authorities encouraged the exhibition of every possible annoyance to the commission and the English residents; in communications of the hong merchants to Lord Napier, at the instigation of the governor, he was addressed as "laboriously vile;" and Chinese laborers and servants were forced to leave British service. Lord Napier's correspondence with his government shows that these annoyances were leading him to lose his temper. In referring to the governor he used such epithets as "petty tyrant." and "presumptuous savage."
Having been rebuffed in his efforts to establish intercourse with the officials, and it becoming apparent that his mission was to prove a failure, he published in the Chinese language and caused to be circulated a document, in which he reviewed the government's edicts, closing as follows: "Governor Loo has the assurance to state in the edict of the 2d instant that 'the King (my master) has hitherto been reverently obedient.' I must now request you to declare to them (the hong merchants) that his Majesty, the King of England, is a great and powerful monarch, that he rules over an extent of territory in the four quarters of the world more comprehensive in space and infinitely more so in power than the whole empire of China; that he commands armies of bold and fierce soldiers, who have conquered wherever they went; and that he is possessed of great ships, where no native of China has ever yet dared to
