The chasm between the Chinese and the Western world, as then represented by Great Britain, was in fact much too deep to be bridged over by any convention. Intercommunion between bodies so alien was as the welding of heterogeneous metals, contact without fusion. From one point of view, indeed, circumstances were highly favourable to a sympathetic attachment, for there is no safer medium of intercourse between nations than the commerce which blesses him that buys and him that sells. It was the pursuit of commerce alone that drew men from afar to the Asiatic coasts, and the reciprocal desire on the part of the natives which opened for the strangers, be it ever so little, the gates of the Chinese empire. The purely commercial relation left little to be desired on the side of mutual goodwill. The impression of it left on the mind of old residents in Canton is thus recorded by Mr W. C. Hunter, an American merchant, who lived there from 1824: "From the facility of all dealings with the Chinese who were assigned to transact business with us, together with their proverbial honesty, combined with a sense of perfect security to person and property, scarcely a resident of any lengthened time--in short, any 'Old Canton'--but finally left them with regret." Mr Hunter goes further and testifies to the "vigilant care over the personal safety of strangers who came to live in the midst of a population whose customs and prejudices were so opposed to everything foreign." Why, then, was it that on the ground-level of common material interest, and under the sunshine of the protection spontaneously accorded by authority, the parties failed in two hundred years to evolve between them a _modus vivendi_? The solution of this riddle can only be found in a patient survey of events both before and after the war. It would carry us far beyond our limits even to summarise the history of foreign intercourse with China. Nor is such a task necessary, since our concern lies mainly with those later developments which culminated in the war of 1839-42, a glance at which seems essential to any fair appreciation of the sequel. That there was no material cause of difference between the Chinese Government and people on the one hand and the foreign traders and their representatives on the other was made manifest by the persistence and continuous growth of their mutual commerce. And their common appreciation of the advantages of the trade is shown by the readiness of each in turn to resort to the threat of stopping business as a means of pressure on the other side. It is not therefore the substance, but the accidents and conditions, of the intercourse that generated the friction which led through outrage to reprisals; and the two conditions most fruitful in conflict were the necessary absence of law and the inevitable incomprehension of each others status.