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LORD ELGIN's mission to the courts of Pekin and Yedo has been extremely fortunate in its historiographer; and although these volumes have not the tensions of the stately quartos which recorded the embassies of Lord Macartney and Lord Amherst to the Court of China, they are infinitely more agreeable, from a more familiar admixture of per sonal adventure, and from the increased knowledge we have now acquired of the habits of these singular nations. Few men of our time have seen more of the globe than Mr. Oliphant, or have described what

* Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan in the years 1857, 1858, and 1859. By LAURENCE OLIPHANT, Esq., Private Secretary to Lord Elgin. 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh. 1860. VOL. XLIX.-NO. 4

they have seen with more apropos. He visited the steppes of Southern Russia and the arsenal of Sebastopol, before the Crimean war. He has explored the distant confines of Minnesota in the Western World, and the Caucasian tributaries of the Euxine in the East. Attached as he was to the personal service of our late ambassador to China, conversant with his political designs, and an eye-witness of all that occurred in this strange medley of peace and war, no one could be better qualified to preserve the record of this mission. Several circumstances conspired to give Lord Elgin and his suite greater opportunities of exploring some of the great lines of river communication in China than ever were enjoyed before; the successful excursion of the ambassador to

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Japan is beyond all comparison the most curious and important addition yet made to our imperfect knowledge of that most remarkable country; and although we are afraid it can not be said that Lord Elgin's treaties have permanently established our relations with the furthest empires of the East on a secure and peaceful footing, there is no doubt that the narrative of his lordship's proceedings is highly instructive as to the best mode of conducting them hereafter.

compelled to abandon all the forts in the Canton river, except one at Macao, to write to India for five thousand troops, and to wait for instructions from England. Such was the state of our affairs in China when the House of Commons engaged in that most discreditable debate on Mr. Cobden's motion; and when, in fact, had the exact truth been known, every Englishman would have agreed that we must above all things rescue our countrymen from so dangerous and ignominious a position. This state of affairs had not much altered when Lord Elgin reached China; nor could it materially improve for some considerable time afterwards, because in the interval the Indian mutiny drew to itself, as to some great maelstrom, the interest and the available resources of the British Empire. With the utmost judgment, resolution, and disinterestedness, Lord Elgin at once diverted the forces on their way to China, and sent them to Calcutta, where they powerfully contributed to restore our authority in the Lower Provinces of Bengal. He himself followed in the Shannon, and that magnificent frigate, with her intrepid commander, William Peel, was thus withdrawn from the Chinese expedition altogether; and, in short, many weary months elapsed before it was possible to assume the attitude and language of a British plenipotentiary at Canton. That these things were not unknown to the Chinese, appears from the draft of a report from Yeh himself to the Emperor, which was probably sent about the commencement of December, 1857. The paper was found among those captured in Yeh's yamun, on the last day of the year, and it deserves to be quoted as a specimen of that mixture of fact and fiction, good sense and puerility, which commonly occur in Chinese state documents. It also throws some light on the Chinese notions of French interference.

The spring of the year 1857 was a crisis of no common danger to many of the most important interests of this country in Asia; and those who for the purpose of a factious attack on the Ministry of the day, lent themselves to a false cry of "justice to China" were, as it has since turned out, as ignorant of the real situation of our countrymen at Canton at that moment, as they necessarily were of the terrific tempest which was about to sweep over British India in the summer of the same year. In truth, a series of untoward events had contributed to extinguish the respect felt by the Chinese authorities for the power which fourteen years before had extorted from them the treaty of Nankin. All experience has proved that our treaties with China cease to be worth more than the paper on which they are written from the moment that the Chinese think they can be evaded with impunity; and whatever may be thought of the legal merits of the "lorcha" question, Sir John Bowring and Mr. Parkes were perfectly right in the conclusion at which they arrived, that British interests in Canton could no longer be sacrificed with impunity to the arrogance and obstinacy of Commissioner Yeh. Unfortunately their judgment was not equally correct as to the means at their disposal for enforcing their demands. The result showed that Yeh was perfectly able to resist them. A reward of thirty, and afterwards of a hundred, dollars was offered for the head of every Englishman. Mr. Cowper was kidnapped from Whampoa; the Thistle, postal steamer, was seized, and eleven persons murdered; supplies were interdicted; trade was stopped; an attempt was made to poison the whole foreign community at HongKong; the very urchins in the street, says Mr. Oliphant, considered a Briton a fit subject for "chaff," while their respect-li able parents took a mercenary view of his head; and at length the Admiral was

that the English barbarians, troubled at home, "(Yeh, etc.) presents a Memorial to the effect and pressed with daily increasing urgency by other nations from without, will hardly attempt any thing further; that they are reported to have had several consultations upon the opening of trade, and earnestly desire the suggestion of some means to that end; that in consequence of the English chief not returned to Canton. forwards by courier, at the rate of six hundred respectful memorial (of which particulars) he a day, and looking upward, solicits the sacred glance thereon.

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"On the sixth of the ninth moon, (twenty

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