CHAPTER XIV.
The Administration of Sir John F. Davis.
May 8, 1844, to March 18, 1848.
t has been pointed out above what a serious error it was that was committed when the British Cabinet, sending out Lord Napier as the King's representative at Canton, associated him in office with men who had been trained in the East India Company's Canton school of truculent submission to Chinese mandarindom and who were looked upon by Chinese officials as contemptible traders. A similar mistake was made when Her Majesty's Government, looking out for a successor of Sir H. Pottinger, in that game of diplomacy with Chinese statesmen in which he had been so smartly duped, and in the government of a Colony established on the express principles of free trade, selected for this difficult post a gentleman who, as a former member of the East India Company's Select Committee at Macao and Canton, was altogether identified with the ideas of mingled servility, autocracy and monopoly as exemplified in the history of that Company. Mr. (subsequently, since July, 1845, Sir) John Francis Davis, Baronet, had indeed great experience of Chinese affairs. In his youth (1816 to 1817) he had served on the staff of Lord Amherst's mission to China. He had spent the best part of his life in the service of the Company in South China, bowing to Chinese officials and frowning upon European free traders, till he retired (January 21, 1835) in all the glory of a Chief Superintendent of Trade. He had meanwhile composed and published a work on 'China,' in two volumes, which is still recognized as one of the best descriptions of the Celestial Empire, and he posed now as a great sinologue and scholar. No doubt he knew the Chinese character and naturally he thought also he
