Ernst Johann Eitel

“ But the spirit which moved the British Parliament to wrench asunder the shackles in which British trade had been kept for two long centuries by the East India Company, was the potent spirit of free trade, and in this general free trade movement we see above the dark horizon the first streak of light heralding the advent of the future free port of Hongkong. ”

“ The British communities at Canton and Hongkong were indignant at this wanton and bootless 'bucaneering expedition' which merely served to cause a sudden stagnation of the Canton trade, to render the lives and property of foreigners in Canton even less secure than before, and to make European views of state policy and international law ridiculous in the eyes of the Chinese. It seemed clear to them that Sir John Davis was even a worse failure as a diplomatist than Sir Henry Pottinger had been. ”

“ A sense of insecurity as to life and property was again, as in days gone by, taking possession of the public mind. The cry among the colonists now was for a strong and resolute Governor, one who would give his undivided attention to the needs and interests of the Colony and govern it accordingly, undeterred by what the foreign community of Hongkong now called 'the vicious system of colonial administration in vogue at home.' Sir J. Bowring, they said, had attended to everything under the sun except the government of the Island. ”

“ Great houses were falling on all sides. Hongkong, connected now with every great bourse in the world, was suffering likewise and property was seriously depreciated. Credit became instable. Men were everywhere suspicious, unsettled in mind, getting irritable and economically severe. Yet great public works, the Praya, the new Gaol, the Mint, the Water-Works, the sea wall at Kowloon, commenced or constructed in a period of unexampled prosperity, had now to be carried on, completed or maintained, from the scanty resources of an impoverished and well-nigh insolvent Treasury. ”

“ As trade could only be brought to Hongkong by guaranteeing perfect freedom from custom and excise exactions and inspiring native and foreign merchants with confidence in the Colonial Government. Sir Henry's Supplementary Treaty, by destroying both the freedom of the port and confidence in the independence of the Hongkong Government, unwittingly annihilated for the time all chances of Hongkong becoming the centre of the coasting trade. ”

“ If we view the history of the China Trade from the standpoint of Europe's relations with China, it is clear that the tendency, which God put into the movement that commenced at Canton two centuries ago and which resulted in the establishment of this British Colony, was the inchoative union of Europe and China, by the subordination of the latter to the former, and this by means of free trade coupled with enlightened and humane local government. The genius of British free trade and political liberty constitutes unmistakeably the vital element in the historic evolution of Hongkong. ”

“ A stormy career, war without and dissensions within, yet real though slow growth withal and eventual power radiating from a healthful centre of innate Anglo-Saxon vitality, was what the seer gifted with power to look into the future might have predicted as the fate in store for this phenomenal Anglo-Chinese Colony in the Far East. ”

“ No wonder that Hongkong was in bad odour among the Cantonese officials and people, that Chinese trading junks now commenced to give the harbour of Hongkong a wide berth and that the Chinese mercantile community, which had just begun to develop, disappeared even more rapidly than it had come. But what a depressing effect all this had on the mercantile prospects of the Colony may easily be imagined. English merchants now began to fear that the Colony was an egregious failure. Chusan was freely spoken of as being after all vastly preferable to Hongkong on sanitary and commercial grounds. ”

“ New laws were clearly needed for the regulation of the Chinese whose gambling habits were filling the streets with riot and honeycombing the Police Force with corruption. Crime was rampant and the gaols overflowing with prisoners. Piracy, flourishing as ever before, was believed to have not only its secret lairs among the low class of marine-store dealers but the support of wealthy Chinese firms and to enjoy the connivance of men in the Police Force. ”

“ Trade, however, continued increasing from year to year. But soon a hand's breadth of a cloud, destined to develop into a tempest, arose on the commercial horizon in the shape of the 'exportation of bullion' question and the altered attitude of foreigners generally. With the gradual increase of the opium trade, the Chinese observed with dismay that the balance of trade, though still in favour of China, was steadily diminishing from year to year as foreign commerce expanded. ”

“ It had been the fond dream of British, merchants that, whilst indeed foreign vessels could only trade with the five open ports, natives of China would be allowed to bring goods from any port of China, and convey British goods from Hongkong, in Chinese junks, to any part of the coast of China, so that Hongkong would become the centre of a vast junk trade, and of a coasting trade possessing infinite capabilities of expansion. ”

“ And as to Hongkong's exercising, on behalf of Europe, a civilizing influence upon the adjoining continent of Asia, the colonists and their rulers could well trust to the natural course of events to work out that problem. A British Colony thus firmly established in Asia, on the root principles of European liberty, was and is sure to play, in the drama of the future, such a part as will illustrate, in the sight of Asia, the superiority of British over Chinese forms of civilization and government and make Hongkong for all times the bulwark of the cause of Europe in the East. ”

“ The development of the Colony's commercial prosperity kept pace with the increase of the population. The fresh streams that stirred the stagnant pool of local commerce into renewed life came, however, not merely from the rebellion-fed source of Chinese emigration, but to a great extent also from the discovery of the Californian gold-fields, from the development of the North-Pacific whale and seal fisheries, from the progress made by the Australian Colonies and from the opening up of Japan to British trade and civilization. ”

“ When the first mutterings of the coming storm of the Taiping Rebellion, which in the providence of God was destined to ire-establish the waning fortunes of Hongkong, were observed by the Cantonese Authorities, they shrewdly availed themselves of the known fact, that the Chinese in Hongkong were as much influenced by that secret political propaganda as those in the interior of China, to strike another blow at the success of Hongkong as a Colony for Chinese. ”

“ Hongkong now seemed in 1844 to be at best a second Lintin, the flourishing centre of a limited and illegal trade in opium, but palpably shunned by the legitimate Chinese trade. Numbers of Chinese merchants in Canton would have been willing enough to send down to Hongkong junks laden with tea, rhubarb, camphor, silk and cassia, and to send back those junks to Canton freighted with India cotton or yarn or English piece goods, but the Cantonese Authorities set their faces against it like a flint. ”

“ Hongkong now dominates the China Sea as Malta dominates the Mediterranean and strategically closes the road to India from the East as Gibraltar opens the gateway from the West. As the opening of the Suez Canal, with its consequent increase of European trade with China, enhanced the importance of Hongkong as a commercial emporium, so the universal employment of steamers in the navies of all the great Maritime Powers, which likewise followed from the opening of the Suez Canal, gave Hongkong a new important function to fulfil as the only coaling station of the British navy in the Far East. ”

“ A survey of Sir George Bonham's administration clearly marks him out as the first model Governor of Hongkong. The renewed prosperity of the Colony, that set in with his regime, was indeed principally due to a fortunate combination of events quite beyond his control. But whilst it never is in the power of a Governor to create prosperity, he has it in his power to hinder, mar and destroy it. ”

“ Within a few days after his arrival in the Colony, Sir Richard found himself painfully disillusioned. By his interviews with the officials in Downing Street, he had been led to believe that he would find in Hongkong a full treasury, a steadily increasing revenue, public works of all sorts finished or so nearly completed that little remained to be done, a Mint ready to commence operations and sure to pay well, and a competent official staff, purged by the labours of Sir Hercules of every taint of corruption. ”

“ Men, women and children, with bag and baggage, were hurried through the streets of Macao amidst a terrible excitement of the whole population, expecting every moment a massacre by the Chinese soldiery. The refugees assembled on the Praya in the presence of Governor Pinto who had the whole of the Portuguese troops (some 400 Indian lascars and 500 Caffre slaves) under arms, and embarked hurriedly on board British ships, lorchas, schooners and boats of all descriptions, which immediately set sail for Hongkong harbour, a mournful procession, to seek refuge on board the ships at Hongkong. ”

“ The general feeling of the community, at the time of Sir Richard's final departure, was—that he was an emphatically sincere and, though a stern character, by no means an acrid man; that he was an able ruler, one of the most able, if not the best, of Hongkong's Governors; that he failed to please everybody because he, on principle, strove to do only what he himself thought best in the interests of the Colony, without fear or favour of any man; that he improved the police, the roads and the waterworks of the Colony ”

“ The administration of Sir R. MacDonnell is, indeed, specially distinguished by the fearless attempt he made, in bold defiance of public opinion and official restraints, to solve the problem, which had troubled all his predecessors in office, connected with the well-known Chinese mania for gambling. This national vice, like opium smoking and prostitution, but more widespread and powerful than either, is rooted in an ineradicable, because congenital, disease of the Chinese social organism. ”

“ So great was his craving for monopolies that he persisted in farming out the monopoly of fishing in Hongkong waters, though it brought in only 17 shillings for the year 1845. His great grief and trouble was 'the total absence of a custom house establishment' in the free port of Hongkong. He was decidedly of opinion that, as most of the available spots for building purposes had already been disposed of (thanks to the gambling mania which his predecessor and himself had unconsciously fostered) , no great expansion of the land revenue could be looked for in the future. ”

“ The opium trade had, by its financial operations, become so intertwined with the legitimate trade, that separate dealing with it was impossible. The import of opium into China, as it gradually expanded, gave an enormous impetus to the export of tea and silk from China to the European markets, and the whole opium trade had imperceptibly become a necessity both for China and for Europe; for China, because the craving for opium was so widespread among the Chinese people, that the demand for it defied the severest criminal enactments ”