Association, addressed to Lord Palmerston. This document suggested, no doubt at the instigation of Mr. Matheson, 'the obtaining, by negotiation or purchase, an island on the eastern coast of China, where a British factory may reside, subject to its own laws and exposed to no collision with the Chinese.' When the Glasgow merchants thus recommended to seek, by negotiation or purchase, the cession of an island for the establishment of a factory, they did not mean a factory like the trade stations of the East India Company, but a factory of British and notably Scotch free traders, in the Canton sense of the word. They forestalled thus in principle the future cession of Hongkong, although their thoughts then turned, with Mr. Matheson, more in the direction of Chusan than of Hongkong.
The idea which Mr. Matheson thus prominently brought, by his pamphlet, before the general public, and by the Glasgow memorial before the Cabinet, to desert Canton and to seek, somewhere on the east coast, an island where British trade with China might be conducted under the British flag, on British ground, and under British government, was not left without its opponents. Mr. H. Hamilton Lindsay, also a former Canton resident and ex-member of the East India Company's Select Committee, published, in 1836, a Letter addressed to Lord Palmerston under the title 'British Relations with China.' In this pamphlet, whilst recommending the adoption of a belligerent policy in opposition to Mr. Matheson's armed peace procedure, Mr. Lindsay advocated the formation, on the coast of China, of two or three depots with floating warehouses, like the above mentioned hulks anchored at Lintin. Each of those depots, he suggested, should be guarded by a stout frigate and thrown open for the resort of merchant vessels to trade there. As to the project of forming a Colony, Mr. Lindsay added that he would on no account advocate the taking possession of the smallest island on the coast.
Another opponent of the Colonial policy came forward anonymously, by a pamphlet published in London, in 1836, by
