Chinese Authorities stubbornly resisted these claims, and not only incited the Chinese residents of Macao to acts of treason, but commenced measures of hostility, many European and Chinese merchants, and even Portuguese families, removed from Macao and settled on the safer shores of Hongkong.
Sir G. Bonham found the Chinese Government as oblivious of Treaty obligations and as uncompromisingly hostile to the essential aims of British commercial policy as ever. The retrograde policy of the Emperor Taokwang and his successor (since February 25, 1849) Hien-fung had been demonstrated by the degradation of every Mandarin that had had anything to do with the Pottinger Treaties. No one was now in favour at Peking who did not distinguish himself by marked anti-foreign proclivities. The Imperial Commissioner Seu Kwang-tsin, the successor of Kiying at Canton, persistently sought to undermine the position granted by the Nanking Treaty by bringing foreign trade under the old restrictions of the time of the East India Company. For this purpose he set to work quietly to force one after the other of the main staples of foreign trade into the hands of responsible Chinese monopolists. A United States Commissioner, J. W. Davis, plied Sen (November 6, 1848) with the suavest blandishments of cute diplomacy but met only with discourtesy and blunt refusals to listen to any reasoning whatever. When Governor Bonham succeeded in wringing from Sen a reluctant consent to an interview (February 17, 1849) on board H.M.S. Hastings near the Bogue, Sen behaved with studied sulkiness, evaded all serious discussion of the burning question of the promised opening of Canton city, and declined even the customary refreshments. He knew that Sir George was not in a position to enforce the fulfilment of the promise which Sir J. Davis had forcibly extorted from Kiying to grant foreign merchants, from after April 6, 1849, the right of entering Canton city. When Sir G. Bonham in repeated dispatches insisted upon the immediate opening of Canton city, Sen fell back upon Kiying's tactics of postponing action on the ground that at the present time it would provoke popular disturbances. Fortified by an
