Page 306 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

292.

much to be done and so little doing makes my heart ache. The
14
prospect all around is very dark." Although more missionaries

joined Bridgman during the 1830's, the prospects for conversion

did not improve. A more serious impediment was the Chinese

attitude toward foreign missionaries. Restricted to the suburbs

of Canton, the missionaries could not formally preach nor

teach. Theoretically, foreign missionaries were not even allowed

at Canton. The Chinese did not prosecute those few who were at

Canton because they assumed them to be connected with the mer­
cantile houses. All the missionaries had arrived in merchant

vessels and resided either at one of the commission houses or

at Macao. As long as they did not proselytize flagrantly, the

missionaries did not seem different from any of the English

and American merchants at Canton. Bridgman complained in his

journal: "A missionary is. .recognized only as a merchant, or

a merchant's clerk. 11 15 But such identification alone permitted

Bridgman to travel upriver to Canton.

Nevertheless. Imperial restrictions seemed to the mis­

sionaries to be the greatest barrier to success. In the early

14 -'- d .
QuoLe in Strong, Story of the American Board, p. 110.
15
Journal of E.C. Bridgman, Aug. 1, 1831, in the Mis­
sionary Herald, XXVIII, 7 (July 1832), 206. Strong, in Story of
the American Board, pp. 110-11, further states: "The Hong
merchants, .were the willing tool of the East India Company
when it opposed missionaries in China as it had done in India."
The Company's opposition to Morrison in 1807 forced him to go
to the United States for aid, but the Company's Select Committee
at Canton hired Morrison as its interpreter in 1811. There is
no evidence that the Hong merchants treated missionaries in any
way different from merchants. The two groups, Hong merchants
and missionaries, did not seem to have much contact with each
other.