Importance of appointment -- New position created by Treaty of Nanking -- Exceptional responsibility of the new consuls -- The evolution and scope of foreign intercourse -- Pioneer traders -- Mutual experiences of Chinese and foreigners -- Results -- English inheritors of the record -- An intolerable state of things -- Drastic remedy -- Where it failed -- Chasm between Eastern and Western ideas -- Commerce alone supplied a safe medium of intercourse -- Its healing qualities -- But social and political concomitants created friction -- Arbitrary interferences of Chinese Government -- Their traditional mode of treating barbarians -- Denial of human rights -- Absence of law in their intercourse -- Spasmodic resistance to Chinese tyranny aggravated the evils -- East India Company submitted for the sake of gain -- Close of the Company's charter -- Followed by endeavour of British Government to establish official intercourse -- Determined resistance of Chinese -- Lord Napier, first British envoy, not received -- Loaded with insults -- Contradictory instructions given by British Government -- To conciliate Chinese as in days of Company, and at same time to open diplomatic relations -- Lord Napier's appeal to experience -- His death at Macao -- Captain Ellis, a third envoy, reverts to the policy of submission -- Has no success. When thus thrown upon his beam-ends in 1844, an appointment was conferred on Mr Alcock which was not only honourable to him but creditable to the Government which selected him. He was among the five chosen to fill the office of consul in China under the treaty of Nanking, which had been concluded in 1842. And if any event in human life be deserving of such distinction, the opening thus provided for the talents of Mr Alcock is on many grounds entitled to rank as providential. To the end of his days he himself recognised that his previous training had not been thrown away, but "had been unconsciously preparing him for the great work of his life." The Minister responsible for the appointment may be excused if, while selecting a man of proved capacity for a post of unknown requirements, he did not realise the full value of the service he was rendering to his country. Governments are not always so perspicacious in gauging the merits of the uncovenanted, and other nominations made under circumstances not dissimilar have shown how easily the efficiency of the candidate may be subordinated to considerations extraneous to the public weal.