Application having been made by private merchants, and by the
East India nod China Association, t• Lord Palmerston for information respecting the measures about to be taken by Government towards China, the following letters were written by the Foreign Secretary's directiou.
" Foreign Office, 27th November 1839. "Gentlemen—I ant directed by Viscount Palmerston to acknowledge the
xeceipt of your letter of the 26th instant, enclosing collies of communications which leul passed between Captain Elliot, her Majesty's Superiutendent of Trade, and certain British met•eletnts at Macao, and requesting to he in- formed, with reference to an intention on your part to send a ship to China for the purposes of trade, whether la r Majesty s ' Government sanction the 4prohilotory injunctions on the Britieh merchants to trade with Canton,' which are referred to in the (5101101111 CI ions ttbove-mentionett ; and 1 am to acquaint you in reply, that Captuin Elliot's notices seem to her Majesty's Government, for the reasons stated in them by him, to have been proper and expedient at the time when they were made ; but Lord Pahnereton is not able to inform you whether those notices will be in operation at the time when your
ship would arrive in China.
"1 am, gentlemen, your most obedient, humble servant, "W. Fox SootaxoWAYS."
"Messrs. Gould, bowie, and Co."
" Foreign Office, 2801 November 1839. " Sir—I am directed by Viscount Palmerston -to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of' the 26t1i instant, in which von submit, on behalf of the East India and China Association of London, that if it be not altogether inconsistent with the views of her Mojeety's Government and injurious to the public ser- vice, such a declaration of their intentious, as to the blockade or otherwise of the Chinese ports, may be notified before the 4th proximo, BS may regulate the communications which the merchants connected 111th China may deem it ex- pedient to make by the next overland mail; mul in reply, 1 have to request that you will state to the parties interested, that Lord Palmerston cannot make nay declaration of the nature of' that alluded to in your letter, and that the merchants !roast judge fit' themselves es to the orders which they may think it expedient to send to their correspondents.
" I am, Sir, your most obedient servant,
"W. Fox STRANOWATS."
Previous page
