was received by the merchants of Liverpool on November 12th, 1856, in their Exchange Rooms, and he made a long statement explaining his views, which were listened to with polite curiosity. Mr. Field had, however, a much better reception, on the whole, than M. de Lesseps, who came to England a few months later to explain his project for constructing a ship-canal across the Isthmus of Suez. The proposal was received with coldness, and more than coldness, by engineers, capitalists, and politicians. Engineers showed. that the canal could not be made, or at least maintained when made; capitalists proved that it never could pay; and politicians were ready to make it plain that such a canal, if made, would be a standing menace to English interests. Lord Palmerston, a few days after, frankly admitted that the English Government were opposed to the project, because it would tend to the more easy separation of Egypt from Turkey, and set afloat speculations as to a ready access to India. M. de Lesseps himself has given an amusing account of the manner in which Lord Palmerston denounced the scheme in an interview with the projector. Luckily neither Mr. Field nor M. de Lesseps was a person to be lightly discouraged. Great projectors are usually as full of their own ideas as great poets. M. de Lesseps had in the end, perhaps, more reason to be alarmed at England's sudden appreciation of his scheme, than he had, in the first instance, to complain of the cold disapprobation with which her Government encountered it.

The political world seemed to have made up its mind for a season of quiet. Suddenly that happened which always does happen in such a condition of things-a storm broke out. To those who remember the events of that time, three words will explain the nature of the disturbance. "The lorcha Arrow" will bring back the recollection of one of the most curious political convulsions known in this country during our generation. For years after the actual events connected with the lorcha Arrow, the very name of that ominous vessel used to send a shudder through the House of Commons. The word suggested first an impassioned controversy which had left a painful impression on the condition of political parties, and next an effort of futile persistency to open the whole controversy over again, and force it upon the

notice of legislators who wished for nothing better than to be allowed to forget it.

In the Speech from the Throne at the opening of Parliament, on February 3d, 1857, the following passage occurred: "Her Majesty commands us to inform you that acts of violence, insults to the British flag, and infraction of treaty rights, committed by the local Chinese authorities at Canton, and a pertinacious refusal of redress, have rendered it necessary for her Majesty's officers in China to have recourse to measures of force to obtain satisfaction." The acts of violence, the insults to the British flag, and the infraction of treaty rights alleged to have been committed by the Chinese authorities at Canton had for their single victim the lorcha Arrow. The lorcha Arrow was a small boat built on the European model. The word "lorcha " is taken from the Portuguese settlement at Macao, at the mouth of the Canton River. It often occurs in Treaties with the Chinese authorities. "Every British schooner, cutter, lorcha, etc.," are words that we constantly find in these documents. On October 8th, 1856, a party of Chinese in charge of an officer boarded a boat, called the Arrow, in the Canton River. They took off twelve men on a charge of piracy, leaving two men in charge of the lorcha. The Arrow was declared by its owners to be a British vessel. Our Consul at Canton, Mr. Parkes, demanded from Yeh, the Chinese Governor of Canton, the return of the men, basing his demand upon the ninth Article of the Supplemental Treaty of 1843, entered into subsequently to the Treaty of 1842. We need not go deeper into the terms of this Treaty than to say that there could be no doubt that it did not give the Chinese authorities any right to seize Chinese offenders, or supposed offenders, on board an English vessel; it merely gave them a right to require the surrender of the offenders at the hands of the English. The Chinese Governor, Yeh, contended, however, that the lorcha was not an English but a Chinese vessel-a Chinese pirate, venturing occasionally, for her own purposes, to fly the flag of England, which she had no right whatever to hoist. Under the Treaties with China, British vessels were to be subject to consular authority only. The Treaty provided amply for the registration of vessels entitled to British protection, for the regular renewal of the registration, and for the condi

tions under which the registration was to be granted or renewed. The Arrow had somehow obtained a British registration, but it had expired about ten days before the occurrence in the Canton River, and even the British authorities who had been persuaded to grant the registration were not certain whether, with the knowledge they subsequently obtained, it could legally be renewed. We believe it may be plainly stated at once, as a matter of fact, that the Arrow was not an English vessel, but only a Chinese vessel which had obtained, by false pretences, the temporary possession of a British flag. Mr. Consul Parkes, however, was fussy, and he demanded the instant restoration of the captured men, and he sent off to our Plenipotentiary at Hong Kong, Sir John Bowring, for authority and assistance in the business.

Sir John Bowring was a man of considerable ability. At one time he seemed to be a candidate for something like fame. He was the political pupil and the literary executor of Jeremy Bentham, and for some years was editor of the Westminster Review. He had a very large and varied, although not profound or scholarly, knowledge of European and Asiatic languages (there was not much scientific study of languages in his early days), he had travelled a great deal, and had sat in Parliament for some years. He understood political economy, and had a good knowledge of trade and commerce; and in those days a literary man who knew anything about trade and commerce was thought a person of almost miraculous versatility. Bowring had many friends and admirers, and he set up early for a sort of great man. He was full of self-conceit, and without any very clear idea of political principles on the large scale. Nothing in all his previous habits of life, nothing in the associations and friendships by which he had long been surrounded, nothing in his studies or his writings, warranted any one in expecting that, when placed in a responsible position in China at a moment of great crisis, he would have taken on him to act the part which aroused such a controversy. It would seem as if his eager self-conceit would not allow him to resist the temptation to display himself on the field of political action as a great English plenipotentiary, a master-spirit of the order of Clive or Warren Hastings, bidding England be of good cheer, and compelling inferior races to grovel in the dust

before her. Bowring knew China as well as it was then likely that an Englishman could know the "huge mummy empire by the hands of custom wrapped in swathing bands." He had been Consul for some years at Canton, and he had held the post of chief superintendent of trade there. He sent to the Chinese authorities, and demanded the surrender of all the men taken from the Arrow. Not merely did he demand the surrender of the men, but he insisted that an apology should be offered for their arrest, and a formal pledge given by the Chinese authorities that no such act should ever be committed again. If this were not done within forty-eight hours, naval operations were to be begun. against the Chinese. This sort of demand was less like that of a dignified English official, conscious of the justice of his cause and the strength of his country, than like the demeanor of Ancient Pistol formulating his terms to the fallen Frenchman on the battle-field: "I'll fer him, and firk him, and ferret him-discuss the same in French unto him." Sir John Bowring called out to the Chinese Governor, Yeh, that he would fer him, and firk him, and ferret him, and bade the same be discussed in Chinese unto him. Yeh sent back all the men, saying, in effect, that he did so to avoid the ferring, and firking, and ferreting, and he even undertook to promise that for the future great care should be taken that no British ship should be visited improperly by Chinese officers. But he could not offer an apology for the particular case of the Arrow; for he still maintained, as was indeed the fact, that the Arrow was a Chinese vessel, and that the English had nothing to do with her. In truth, Sir John Bowring had himself written to Consul Parkes to say that the Arrow had no right to hoist the English flag, as her license, however obtained, had expired; but he got over this difficulty by remarking that, after all, the Chinese did not know that fact, and that they were therefore responsible. Accordingly, Sir John Bowring carried out his threat, and immediately made war on China. He did something worse than making war in the ordinary way; he had Canton bombarded by the fleet which Admiral Sir Michael Seymour commanded. From October 23d to November 13th naval and military operations were kept up continuously. A large number of forts and junks were taken and destroyed. The suburbs of

Canton were battered down in order that the ships might have a clearer range to fire upon the city. Shot and shell were poured in upon Canton. Sir John Bowring thought the time appropriate for reviving certain alleged treaty rights for the admission of representatives of British authority into Canton. During the Parliamentary debates that followed, Sir John Bowring was accused by Lord Derby and Mr. Cobden of having a sort of monomania about getting into Canton. Curiously enough, in his autobiographical fragment Sir John Bowring tells that when he was a little boy he dreamed that he was sent by the King of England as ambassador to China. In his later days he appears to have been somewhat childishly anxious to realize this dream of his infancy. He showed all a child's persistent strength of will and weakness of reason in enforcing his demand, and he appears, at one period of the controversy, to have thought that it had no other end than his solemn entry into Canton. Meanwhile Commissioner Yeh retaliated by foolishly offering a reward for the head of every Englishman. Throughout the whole business Sir John Bowring contrived to keep himself almost invariably in the wrong; and even where his claim happened to be in itself good, he managed to assert it in a manner at once untimely, imprudent, and indecent.

This news from China created a considerable sensation in England, although not many public men had any idea of the manner in which it was destined to affect the House of Commons. On February 24th, 1857, Lord Derby brought forward in the House of Lords a motion comprehensively condemning the whole of the proceedings of the British authorities in China. The debate would have been memorable if only for the powerful speech in which the venerable Lord Lyndhurst supported the motion, and exposed the utter illegality of the course pursued by Sir John Bowring. Lord Lyndhurst declared that the proceedings of the British authorities could not be justified upon any principle, either of law or of reason; that the Arrow was simply a Chinese vessel, built in China, and owned and manned by Chinamen; and he laid it down as a "principle which no one will successfully contest," that you may give "any rights or any privileges to a foreigner or a foreign vessel as