of crime as Yeh, should be thoroughly
disarmed. This could be done, as regards the city, by three
changes:--First, by utterly destroying the walls and gates; secondly, by
admitting the British to the freest access, and placing their residence
in a special quarter, upon the securest footing; thirdly, and as one
chief means in that direction, by establishing a police on an English
plan, and to some extent English in its composition. As to the cost, it
is evident enough that the colonial head-quarters at Hong-Kong must in
future keep up a _permanent_ military establishment; and since any
danger threatening this colony must be kindled and fed chiefly in
Canton, why not make this large city, sole focus as it is of all
mischief to us, and not a hundred miles distant from the little island,
the main barrack of the armed force?

Upon this world's tariff of international connections, what is China in
relation to Great Britain? Free is she, or not--free to dissolve her
connection with us? Secondly, what is Great Britain, when commercially
appraised, in relation to China? Is she of great value or slight value
to China? First, then, concerning China, viewed in its connection with
ourselves, this vast (but perhaps not proportionably populous) country
offers by accident the same unique advantage for meeting a social
_hiatus_ in our British system that is offered by certain southern
regions in the American United States for meeting another _hiatus_
within the same British system. Without tea, without cotton, Great
Britain, no longer great, would collapse into a very anomalous sort of
second-rate power. Without cotton, the main bulwark of our export
commerce would depart. And without tea, our daily life would, generally
speaking, be as effectually-ruined as bees without a Flora. In both of
these cases it happens that the benefit which we receive is _unique_;
that is, not merely ranking foremost upon a scale of similar benefits
reaped from other lands--a largest contribution where others might still
be large--but standing alone, and in a solitude that we have always
reason to regard as alarming. So that, if Georgia, &c., withdrew from
Liverpool and Manchester her myriads of cotton bales, palsied would be
our commercial supremacy; and, if childish China should refuse her tea
(for as to her silk, that is of secondary importance), we must all go
supperless to bed: seriously speaking, the social life of England would
receive a deadly wound