Page 402 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

388.
the United States in 1840, traveled to Washington, where he

lobbied for an American diplomatic mission to China. Various
members of the Van Buren Administration, including the President,

granted Parker appointments. But all of them evaded committing

the government to any action. Parker, in the United States

for eighteen months did not relent. After the election of 1840

he solicited assistance from Daniel Webster and John Quincy

Adams in securing a diplomatic mission. Representing only him­

self and his missionary associates at Canton, Parker did not

receive any encouragement from these men either, although Adams

conceded that he might support "an intelligent & discreet &

spirited informal commissioner" to investigate opening relations
85
with China.

Later that year Adams publicly expressed himself on the

Opium War. In a speech before the Massachusetts Historical

Society, Adams claimed that the opium trade was not the major

cause of the Opium War. Adams argued: "The cause of the war is

the pretension on the part of the Chinese, that in all their

intercourse with other nations, political or commercial, their

superiority must be implicitly acknowledged, and manifested in

humiliating forms." Concluding that such an attitude by the

Chinese was uncivilized and unchristian, Adams strongly supported

the English hostile policy of forcing China to treat foreigners

on an equal basis. For Adams, the "Canton system" of trade was

an "enormous outrage upon the rights of human nature, and upon

85
claude M. Fuess, The Life of Caleb Cushing (2 vols.;
Hamden, Connecticut, 1965), I, 405-06. Letter, P. Parker to J.Q.
Adams, Mar. 15, 1841, in Niles' Weekly Register, LX, 4 (March 27,
1841), 50, gives a sample of Parker's arguments.