work, and more likely to mislead than to
inform. The right honourable Baronet has told us that an Englishman at
Canton sees about as much of China as a foreigner who should land at
Wapping and proceed no further would see of England. Certainly the
sights and sounds of Wapping would give a foreigner but a very imperfect
notion of our Government, of our manufactures, of our agriculture, of
the state of learning and the arts among us. And yet the illustration
is but a faint one. For a foreigner may, without seeing even Wapping,
without visiting England at all, study our literature, and may thence
form a vivid and correct idea of our institutions and manners. But the
literature of China affords us no such help. Obstacles unparalleled in
any other country which has books must be surmounted by the student
who is determined to master the Chinese tongue. To learn to read is the
business of half a life. It is easier to become such a linguist as Sir
William Jones was than to become a good Chinese scholar. You may count
upon your fingers the Europeans whose industry and genius, even when
stimulated by the most fervent religious zeal, has triumphed over the
difficulties of a language without an alphabet. Here then is a country
separated from us physically by half the globe, separated from us
still more effectually by the barriers which the most jealous of all
governments and the hardest of all languages oppose to the researches of
strangers. Is it then reasonable to blame my noble friend because he has
not sent to our envoys in such a country as this instructions as full
and precise as it would have been his duty to send to a minister at
Brussels or at the Hague? The right honourable Baronet who comes forward
as the accuser on this occasion is really accusing himself. He was
a member of the Government of Lord Grey. He was himself concerned in
framing the first instructions which were given by my noble friend to
our first Superintendent at Canton. For those instructions the right
honourable Baronet frankly admits that he is himself responsible. Are
those instructions then very copious and minute? Not at all. They merely
lay down general principles. The Resident, for example, is enjoined to
respect national usages, and to avoid whatever may shock the prejudices
of the Chinese; but no orders are given him as to matters of detail.
In 1834 my noble friend quitted the Foreign Office, and the Duke of
Wellington went to it. Did the Duke of W