Page 456 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

442.

for his appearance at Peking. Seeking further to persuade

Cushing not to leave Macao, the Imperial Commissioner said that

he could not conclude a treaty with the Americans, if they per­

sisted in disobeying orders from the Emperor. Ch'i-ying added

that he had perused Cushing•s abstract and found most points

acceptable. Privately, the Com,�issioner shrewdly concluded that

Cushing's major purpose was to negotiate a commercial treaty

with China and that the Minister used the trip to Peking as
86
a threat to insure that treaty. Although Cushing did believe

that, to obey his instructions, he must deliver the Presiden�'s

letters to the Emperor, he was unwilling to prejudice the treaty

by an obstinate stand on a secondary point. He answered Ch'i-ying

that he had ''concluded to yield on this point, as the strongest

proof that I could give of a disposition to cultivate the friend­

ship of China." But Cushing also told the Chinese that, unless

their negotiations arrived at a satisfactory conclusion, he would
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necessari d k.
· 1 y procee to Pe ing.
With the problem of Cushing's trip to Peking settled,

the discussions turned to the security matter. Cushing included

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ch'i-ying also believed that Cushing's proposed trip to
Peking was an attempt to-outdo the English. I-wu-shih-mo: Tao­
kuang, LXXII, 1-3, and Swisher, Management of American Barbarians,
pp. 153-54.
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cushing did not like Governor Ch'eng Yu-ts'ai, espec­
ially the governor's presumptious attitude in attempting to nego­
tiate with Cushing. The latter believed his mission to be none
of the governor's business. He therefore purposely maintained
an uncompromising stand in correspondence with Ch'eng. Cushing's
tone with Ch'i-ying was much friendlier. The envoy explained
this course of action in Diplomatic Despatches: China, C. Cushing,
Jul. 9 and 15, 1844.