the Imperialists, the principles of British neutrality, to demand of them a strict observance of the Nanking Treaty of 1842, and to inquire what elements of stability there might be in the rebel government then established at Nanking. The result was complete disillusion on both sides. The rebels understood thenceforth what they had to expect from the British Government. Sir G. Bonham, on the other hand, was now able to satisfy the Foreign Office that the Taiping Dynasty was a mere bubble, that their policy was as anti-foreign as that of the Manchus, and that even less was to be expected from the former than from the latter for an eventual repression of that cancer of corruption which is gnawing at the vitals of China's political organism. Sir George's action, in visiting the rebel leaders, was afterwards severely and adversely criticized, but the mercantile community of Hongkong were unanimous in their applause of his proceedings. In the farewell address presented to Sir George on 7th April, 1854, the leading merchants of Hongkong specially praised him for having 'acted with prompitude in restoring confidence and relieving the public mind at Shanghai, at a moment of great alarm and excitement, by his bold, well-judged and successful movement up the Yang-tsze to Nanking in April, 1853.'
Now this same patient but practical and determined common sense, which marked Sir G. Bonham's policy as H.M. Plenipotentiary in China, characterized also his administration of Hongkong's local affairs. It appears from the last dispatch which he penned in Hongkong, that he from the first considered himself bound by the opinions expressed by the Committee of the House of Commons in the session of 1847, but that he was by no means satisfied with the conclusions which the Committee arrived at. However, the constitutional questions of popular representation in Legislative Council and municipal organisation were among the first subjects which occupied Governor Bonham's serious attention.
In January, 1849, the leading merchants signed a Petition to the House of Commons soliciting attention to the fact that
