until Chinese officers could be educated in the duties and extent of Consular power, did not remove the radical objections which the colonists almost unanimously entertained against the proposed measure. These objections, which Sir R. Alcock denominated 'fears more or less chimerical and exaggerated,' were embodied by the Hongkong community in a Memorial addressed to Earl Clarendon (January, 1870), and consisted principally in the solemn conviction, entertained by Europeans and Chinese alike, that under existing circumstances the power which a Chinese Consul would gain over the local Chinese population would constitute a veritable imperium in imperio and subject the native community to an intolerable system of official espionage and to the insatiable rapacity of a corrupt mandarindom. Although Earl Clarendon sided with Sir R. Alcock on the main points of the dispute, and sanctioned his concluding with the Chinese Government a Convention providing for a Chinese Consulate in Hongkong, Sir Richard, who strongly supported the Memorial of the community, succeeded in convincing H. M. Government that the fears of the community were anything but chimerical and rested on a solid foundation. Although the blockade was never abated, the question of a Chinese Consulate in Hongkong remained shelved.
Another diplomatic question agitated for some time (1867 to 1870) the mind of the mercantile community. But Sir Richard had comparatively little to do with it, as it concerned Sir R. Alcock (and since 1870 Sir Th. Wade) and the Foreign Office rather than the Government of Hongkong or the Colonial Office. This was the question of Treaty Revision which arose from a provision contained in Article XXVII. of the Tientsin Treaty making the tariff and commercial articles of this Treaty (confirmed by the Peking Convention of October 24, 1860) subject, after the lapse of ten years, to further revision at the request of either of the two contracting parties. Sir R. Alcock accordingly issued, in spring 1867, to the British communities of the Treaty ports in China, an invitation to forward to him, through their respective Consuls, suggestions as
