The first step towards the complete acquisition and control of Manchuria had now been successfully accomplished, and English diplomacy sought in vain to wrest from Russia the advantage she had thus skilfully acquired. Of course Russia was prolific of "assurances" as she always has been in similar circumstances. The Government of the Czar solemnly declared, for the satisfaction of any confiding person who was willing to believe it, that it had "no intention of infringing the rights and privileges guaranteed by existing treaties between China and foreign countries," and that the last thing it contemplated was interference with Chinese sovereignty over the province of Manchuria. The sincerity of these benevolent professions was to be judged by the fact that, having once secured a grip of Port Arthur, Russia hastened to convert it into a fortified post of great strength and magnitude, and closed it absolutely against the commerce of the world; and that, while on the one hand she so far met the anxious representations of the British Government as to constitute Ta-lien-wan a free port in name, on the other hand she deprived the concession of all real meaning by an irritating system of passports and administrative restrictions upon trade. [Sidenote: Wei-hai-Wei] Great Britain attempted to neutralize the advantage her rival had gained in the Gulf of Pechili by securing a port on her own account, and, with the support of Japan, she induced the Chinese Government to enter into an agreement for the acquisition "on lease" of Wei-hai-Wei, a harbor situated on the southern shore of the Gulf and opposite to Port Arthur. It was imagined at the time that the port could be turned into a powerful naval base, but the naval and military surveys afterwards taken showed that it was of little use for strategic purposes, and it has consequently sunk into the position of a health station for the English China Squadron. [Sidenote: Niuchwang Railway]