Page 97 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

83.
56
foreigners in terms of law enforcement. In all cases, con­

cerning the rules and regulations of the foreign trade, the

provincial authorities operated through the Co-hong. Their

usual method was to issue edicts to the Hong merchants com­

manding them to make the foreigners obey. If the foreigners

did not do so, the authorities held the Hong merchants respon-

sible. In some instances they even resorted to imprisonment

and threats of death to force the Hong merchants to regulate

the foreigners. If the foreigners wished to communicate to

the authorities, they had to petition the Hong merchants to

submit pleas on their behalf to the proper officials. There was

no direct communication between foreigners and Chinese except

through the Hong merchants.

Like the Hoppo the provincial authorities viewed the

foreign trade as a source of revenue. Also like the Hoppo's,

their expenses usually exceeded their legal resources of revenue.

Although autonomous in governing their province, the governor­

general and governor were subject to "squeeze" from above.

Naturally they in turn squeezed the officials under them. This

system went all the way down to the Hien, who then squeezed the

57
Co-hong. Such a system, although alien to Western ideas about
government, had operated efficiently for a long period in

Imperial China. But by the nineteenth century the Ch'ing

56
Morse, Gilds of China, pp. 71-72.
57
Morse and Macnair, Far Eastern International Relations,
p. 59� Journal of Benjamin Hoppin, jr., Memorandum.