tangible and responsible head, having the status of an ordinary private trader, such as was accorded (A.D. 1699) to Mr. Catchpoole, but corresponding, on the English side, with the position held, on the Chinese side, by the head of the Hong Merchants. The establishment of a Chamber of Commerce, formed by compulsory membership and controlled by a permanent British president, would have exhausted the meaning of the Viceroy's suggestion. What the Viceroy wanted was merely leverage for applying the screw of official control and exactions whenever desirable.
It is not likely, however, that the British Cabinet acted upon this informal message of a Canton Viceroy, or at any rate not without taking pains to ascertain its authoritative character and real purport. As China had for centuries tolerated and regulated foreign trade at Canton, the Cabinet may well have proceeded on the general assumption that British merchants had gained a status involving, on the part of China and England, reciprocal responsibilities and rights. At any rate a Bill was laid before Parliament to regulate the trade to China (and India) and in due course received the Royal assent on August 28, 1833. This Act (3rd and 4th Will. IV. ch. 93), whilst throwing open, from after April 22, 1834, the trade with China (and the trade in tea) to all subjects of His Majesty, declared it expedient, 'for the objects of trade and amicable intercourse with the Dominions of the Emperor of China,' to establish 'a British Authority in the said Dominions.' Accordingly the Government was authorized by this Act to send out to China three Superintendents of Trade, one of whom should preside over 'a Court of Justice with Criminal and Admiralty Jurisdiction for the trial of offences committed by His Majesty's subjects in the said Dominions or on the high sea within a hundred miles from the coast of China.' The Act also expressly prohibited the Superintendents, as the King's Officers, from engaging in any trade or traffic, and authorized the imposition of a tonnage duty to defray the expenses of their peace establishment in China. The will of the British nation thus off-hand decided what for two centuries the Chinese Government had persistently refused to grant, viz., that British
