had been and still was under the grave consideration of the Cabinet. Without waiting for the result of the coining elections. Lord Palmerston sent orders to Mauritius and Madras to mobilize troops for service in China, and forthwith selected the Earl of Elgin and Kinkardine to proceed by the mail of April 26, 1857, as special Plenipotentiary to China. A supplementary force of troops, steam-vessels and gun-boats was immediately dispatched from England. The Viceroy's placards and the poisoning of the Hongkong community, which the Cantonese Mandarins had considered a master stroke of their policy, exercised, at the general elections, a considerable influence towards bringing about the deliberate adoption by the nation of the warlike policy of Lord Palmerston. He returned to power stronger than ever. However, so far as Sir John Bowring was concerned, the debate in Parliament blasted in one fell swoop all his ambitious hopes. Lord Clarendon indeed wrote to him sympathetically, saying, 'I think that you have been most unjustly treated and that in defiance of reason and common sense the whole blame of events which could not have been foreseen and which had got beyond your control was cast upon you.' But there was no comfort to Sir John in such a private declaration of his innocence, seeing that it was accompanied by the official announcement that he had been superseded in his office as H.M. Plenipotentiary in China. This measure virtually left him but the Governorship of Hongkong. But what was that in the eyes of the man who had been accustomed to say, 'I have China, I have Siam, I have no time for Hongkong'? Moreover, the loss of personal friends like Cobden and others, who could not get over the fact that the late President of the Peace Society had been the originator of the latest war, cut him to the quick. Fame now seemed to him but a glorious bubble and honour the darling of but one short day.
Owing to the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny (May, 1857) nearly a year passed by before the troops sent out to China and opportunely diverted to India, were ready to recall the Chinese Government to a sense of Treaty obligations. Meanwhile
