The brutalizing influence of this method of carrying on the foreign trade of England was shown by a later altogether unnecessary war with China about the Lorcha "Arrow." This was a Chinese pirate vessel, which had obtained, by false pretences, the temporary possession of the British flag. On Oct. 8, 1856, the Chinese police boarded it in the Canton River, and took off twelve Chinamen on a charge of piracy. This they had a perfect right to do; but the British consul, Mr. Parkes, instead of thanking them, demanded the instant restoration of men who had been flying a British flag under false pretences. He applied to Sir John Bowring, the British plenipotentiary at Hong Kong, for assistance. Sir John was an able and experienced man. He had been editor of the _Westminster Review_, had a bowing, if not a speaking acquaintance with a dozen languages, had been one of the leaders of the free trade party, and had a thorough acquaintance with the Chinese trade. For many years he had been secretary of the Peace Society. He was the author of several hymns. In fact, an American hymn-book contains not less than seventeen from his pen. One of them, found in most modern hymn-books, was that commencing,-- "In the cross of Christ I glory"; and its author proceeded to glory in the cross of the Prince of Peace by making war on the Chinese, although the governor, Yeh, had sent back all the men whose return was demanded by Mr. Parkes. Mr. Justin McCarthy, in his "History of our own Times," says, "During 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." One of the highest legal authorities in England, Lord Lyndhurst, declared Sir John Bowring's action, and that of the British authorities who aided him, to be unjustifiable on any principle either of law or reason; and Mr. Cobden, himself an old friend of Sir John Bowring, moved in the House of Commons that "the papers which have been laid upon the table fail to establish satisfactory grounds for the violent measures resorted to at Canton in the late affair of the 'Arrow.'"