ships belonging to the Company should take any opium to China. After the close of the eighteenth century "they never carried an ounce of it in their own ships." 1 The responsibility for the demoralizing situation must, however, be shared by the East India Company with the smugglers who defied all law, foreign and Chinese alike, with the Hong merchants who evaded the regulations for restriction, and with the Chinese officials who were themselves frequently the slaves of the habit and not indisposed to make profit from its extension.

Other potential sources of trouble existed: the restrictions placed upon the residence and movements of foreigners; the heavy and uncertain port-charges; and the tiresome rules as to the kinds of cargo which were accepted. Yet, with all this, the trade grew and created for itself a curious lingo, known as pidgin2 (business) English. It was a jargon which drew its vocabulary from several languages, and adjusted them to Chinese idioms for the convenience of those who dispensed with a linguist.

A revolutionary change in the relation of the United States to the trade of the Far East came through the discovery, late in the eighteenth century, of the importance of the northwest coast of North America. A number of circumstances combined to bring about this change. There was, for instance, Cook's discovery of the Hawaiian Islands, not unconnected with the discovery that furs and skins obtained on the northwest coast might be sold in Canton at fabulous prices. There was the work of John Ledyard,3 an American sailor in one of Cook's ships, who moved heaven and earth for some years in the endeavor to draw attention to the significance of the Northwest. There was, again, the pioneer work of the Russians who plied between the American coast and that of Asia. There was, yet again, the readily discovered convenience of spending the summer

1 Brinkley.

2 Originated at Canton, when few foreigners spoke Chinese and no Chinese knew English; is now rapidly disappearing.

* 1751-89. See Memoirs of the Life and Travels of John Ledyard, by Jared Sparks.

at Nootka Sound in the collection of furs, then proceeding to Honolulu to pick up a valuable cargo of sandalwood (to be turned into incense at Canton), and thence sailing for Canton to dispose of the double cargo. Thus it came to pass, long before the founding of Astoria1 by John Jacob Astor,- specially to take advantage of the opportunities the trade afforded,

that American traffic on the Pacific became exceedingly important. Shaw had in 1789 spoken of four American ships at Canton, but, as Latourette tells us, "in the season of 1804-5 there were 34, in that of 1805-6 there were 42, and in that of 1809-10 there were 37. Although the total commerce of the United States had more than quadrupled in a decade and a half, that with China had nearly kept pace with it, averaging each year from four to five per cent of the whole." 2

As time went on, unforeseen dangers appeared, such as the attacks of Chinese pirates and of English and French privateers. With the War of 1812 these dangers rapidly multiplied, and it is not surprising that for some years American trade on the Pacific sank to half its former volume. But after the peace of Ghent things rapidly improved, and American statesmen began to note in earnest the importance of Pacific commerce. One of the clearest signs of this is the emergence of the Oregon question into the arena of practical politics. On December 17, 1822, Mr. Floyd emphasized before Congress the fact that the settlement of Oregon must “open a mine of wealth to the shipping interests . . . surpassing the hopes even of avarice itself. It consists principally of things which will purchase the manufactures and products of China at a better profit than gold and silver; and if that attention is bestowed upon the country to which its value and position entitle it, it will yield a profit, producing more wealth to the nation than all the shipments which have ever in any one year been made to Canton from the United States." 3 It may safely be said, adds Latourette,

1 Founded 1811. See Washington Irving's Astoria.

2 Latourette, Early Relations, p. 56.

Ibid., p. 57.

"that the Oregon country was preserved to the United States because of the importance it was felt to have in the Canton commerce, and because of the claims to it which the early fur trade had established."

About the same time it became obvious not only that it was necessary to take notice of the China trade in the interest of continental America, but that in the interest of American prestige in China something must be done to put that trade under governmental protection. The incident which did much to convert men to this opinion is that known as the Terranova case.1 Terranova was a sailor on an American ship who in September 1821 accidentally caused the death of a Chinese woman by dropping something overboard upon a bumboat. As things stood, he had to be surrendered to the Chinese authorities, to be barbarously strangled without a chance of trial according to legal form. It was plain that the lack of proper diplomatic intercourse and the insistence by the Chinese upon their right to regard Americans in common with other foreigners - as outside barbarians, was hastening a crisis. Moreover, the United States was getting interested in other parts of the Far East besides China. The whalers on the farther side of the Pacific were suffering from the Japanese policy of segregation, since, in the case of those who drifted ashore after shipwreck or other misadventure, there were no means available for their repatriation. It was for this reason that, in 1815, the same year in which Decatur was sent to the Mediterranean to settle affairs in Algiers with a squadron, Commodore Porter addressed a letter to Secretary Monroe, asking that a similar squadron might be sent to Japan. About the same time John Quincy Adams urged that "it was the duty of Christian nations to open Japan, and that it was the duty of Japan to respond to the demands of the world, as no nation had a right to withhold its quota to the general progress of mankind." Under President Jackson it was suggested that Mr. Edmund Roberts be appointed a special agent in the Orient for the negotiation 1 See Sir J. F. Davis, The Chinese, ch. III.

of treaties. This was soon after the sending of an expedition to Sumatra to punish the natives for the plunder of the Friendship. Roberts visited a number of places, including Manila, Canton, Cochin-China, Siam, and Muscat. In the last two places he concluded treaties, but in China he did not even succeed in getting into communication with the governor. Jackson did not accomplish much with his Oriental policy, but he was certainly interested beyond his generation in the future of the Pacific, as is again illustrated by his dispatch of the Wilkes expedition to the South Seas.

One interesting incident of this new policy is to be seen in the sending of the Morrison. An American merchant of Macao, Mr. C. W. King, equipped this vessel at his own expense in 1837, for the purpose of fetching away from Japan certain shipwrecked sailors who had at various times been carried thither by the Black Current. The ship was named after Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to China. Of one curious indirect result of this philanthropic venture we shall have something to say a little later, but of direct result there was none, since the crew of the Morrison were not even allowed to land. Mr. King continued to appeal to the United States for interest and action, declaring that "America is the hope of Asia beyond the Malay Peninsula, that her noblest effort will find a becoming theatre there." So far as So far as Japan was concerned, some years had to pass before anything more was done, although in 1845, as the result of a report laid before Congress, by Congressman Pratt, Commodore Biddle was in the next year sent in command of the Columbus and the Vincennes, with a letter from President Polk to the Emperor of Japan. Commodore Biddle's mission, however, was in the words of Nitobe- "worse than a failure," and "had the effect of lowering the dignity of his country in the mind of the Oriental."

Meanwhile, the United States had entered into treaty relations with China, under circumstances to be presently described.

1 See Nitobe, The Japanese Nation, ch. x.

CHAPTER XIII

DECLINE OF THE MANCHU DYNASTY

WITH the abdication of the Emperor Ch'ien Lung in 1796 the glory of the Manchu dominion in China rapidly began to fade. The nineteenth century, beginning with the rule of Chia Ch'ing (1796-1820), was an era of disaster, during which the sword of Damocles hung over the dynasty, suspended by a thread wearing thinner and thinner day by day. The troubles which vexed China at this epoch were both of her own and of the foreigners' making. In domestic matters there were the secret societies waxing bolder and bolder, so that the above-mentioned Emperor was twice assailed by conspiracy, in 1803 and in 1813. On the second occasion it would have gone hard with Chia Ch'ing had not Prince Mien-ning (afterward the Emperor Tao-kwang) entered unexpectedly and shot two of the conspirators with a matchlock. In these attempts it rankled deeply that few were minded to rally to their sovereign's aid. "It is this indifference," exclaimed Chia Ch'ing, "rather than the poignard of the assassin, which hurts me most."

Hurricane and flood too came to trouble the politically minded, for in China convulsions of nature, equally with war and rebellion, are supposed to be the consequences of a badly administered government. There were certainly rebels secreted somewhere around Peking, said the Son of Heaven, and "hence it is that fertile vapors were fast-bound and the felicitous harmony of the seasons interrupted." 1

More convincing to us, as showing the failure of the adminis

1 See S. W. Williams, op. cit., vol. I, p. 465.