in a false position by the ignorance of the Cabinet as to the real attitude preserved by the Chinese Government all along, and by the obscurity in which the Orders in Council and the instructions of Lord Palmerston enveloped the real policy of the British Government. Lord Napier died, like Admiral Hosier, 'of a grieved and broken heart.'
As soon as the Cantonese Authorities learned that the frigates had left the river and that Lord Napier had reached Macao, they reported to the Emperor that 'Napier had been driven out and his two ships of war dragged over the shallows and expelled,' but they eagerly resumed commercial intercourse with the British merchants (September 29, 1834), placing them, however, under fresh restrictions. They expressly stipulated that henceforth no barbarian official should presume to come to Canton but only persons holding the position of tai-pan (the vulgar term for the East India Company's Chief Supercargoes), and that all commercial transactions should be strictly confined to dealings with the Hong Merchants. Moreover, they published now (November 7, 1834) an Imperial Edict prohibiting the opium trade.
Thus ended the melancholy mission of Lord Napier. Its failure is clearly not due to any want of diplomatic tact or courage on the part of Lord Napier, but to the clashing of Chinese and British interests. Nor can we blame the Chinese Authorities, who, accustomed by the policy of abject servility, maintained by the East India Company for two consecutive centuries, to deal with Europeans willing to forego for the sake of trade all claims of national and personal self-respect, were entirely taken by surprise when they suddenly encountered, on the part of the British Government, the identical notions of national self-adequacy and political supremacy which had hitherto been the undisputed monopoly of the Chinese Government. The crowning misfortune of Lord Napier was that by the time (end of November) when the first news of the disastrous ending of his mission reached England, the administration of Lord Melbourne (who had taken Earl Grey's place in July) had come
