began to rear its head at Canton. A new impetus was thereby given to British trade, and in the year 1832 as many as seventy-four British ships arrived at Canton. The little band of high-spirited, highly-educated and influential private merchants, that gathered at Canton during the closing years of the East India Company's monopoly, were, by their very position, ardent advocates of free trade and determined opponents of protection and monopoly in every shape or form. Some of them removed in later years to Hongkong and the spirit of free trade that filled them descended as a permanent heirloom to the future merchant princes of Hongkong. If the experiences of the East India Company negatively paved the way for the future Colony by demonstrating the irreconcilable antipathy of the Chinese against any equitable intercourse with Europeans, and the impossibility of conducting trade on a basis of international self-respect at Canton, this little band of free traders, the Jardines, the Mathesons, the Dents, the Gibbs, the Turners, the Hollidays, the Braines, the Innes, unconsciously did for the future Colony of Hongkong what subsequently Cobden did for Manchester, and prepared the public mind for future free trade in a free port on British soil in China.
When, as above mentioned, the Select Committee of the East India Company at Canton descended to the lowest step of degradation and handed the keys of the British factory to the Chinese Constabulary (May 27, 1831), the free traders, filled with righteous wrath, rushed to the front with the first of those public meetings which, in subsequent years, became such a characteristic means of venting public indignation in Hongkong. On May 30, 1831, this first public meeting of British subjects in China was held, under the presidency of William Jardine, and solemnly resolved to remonstrate against the policy of the Select Committee of yielding to the caprice of the Native Authorities and 'to appeal to the home country.' But the public mind of that dear country was by no means ripe yet for an unbiassed understanding of the real grievances
