Americans in eastern Asia; a critical study of the policy of the United States with reference to China, Japan and Korea in the 19th century

Front matter

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Preface

The reader is entitled to some intimation as to what he may find in the following pages.

This is a study of the origin and development of American policy in Asia — in China, Japan, Korea, with passing attention to Siam, and the regions of the Indian and Pacific Oceans — in the 19th Century. It is an entirely fresh study, based on original records and documentary sources, the first book ever attempting to cover the entire field. In large measure the human interest and the peculiarly personal qualities of the record of Americans in Asia have been retained. The actors are permitted to speak for themselves in their own words.

The viewpoint is from Washington, not from Tokio, or Peking. American relations with the separate^ nations of the East, with the Japanese, the Chinese, the Koreans, have developed not separately but as a unity which the student disregards at his peril. There has not been one policy for one country and another policy for another. The policy has, in principle, been the same; the results of the policy were different because the peoples were different.

The tap-root of American poUcy has been not philanthropy but the demand for most-favored-nation treatment. One frequently meets the assumption that the Open Door Policy was invented by John Hay and first applied in 1899. The Open Door Policy is as old as our relations with Asia.' It was pronounced in China as early as 1842, and the spirit of the policy is as old as the Declaration of Independence. The policy was not limited to Chinr It was enunciated on the coast of Africa in 1832, and was repeated in Japan and Korea many times before 1899. The policy had been so fully developed before 1869 when William H. Seward vi PREFACE

retired from the Department of State, that no new principle has ever been introduced since that time. Neither Mr. Hay nor Mr. Hughes appears to have considered that they were creating anything new.

How can most-favored-nation treatment be secured? This was the persistent question in the 19th as it will be throughout the 20th Century. In pre-treaty days at old Canton the American merchants obtained it by conciliation of the Chinese. Caleb Cushing sought to make it secure by treaty and by elaboration of the principle of extraterritoriality. Commodore Perry strongly advised the acquisition of territory. Anson Burlingame set out to secure it by agreements between China and the powers. Seward was willing to join in an almost unlimited cooperative policy with the powers against the Asiatic States. He even proposed a joint armed expedition with the French into Korea. His successors in oJSice steadily withdrew from cooperation with the European Powers and turned to cooperation with and support of Japan. At the time of the Sino-Japanese War it was the United States alone which stood between Japan and the intervention of the European powers before the conflict was over. The United States not only desired the open door, but it also sought the development of Asiatic States strong enough to be their own door-keepers. It wanted a strong East; the other powers did not. On this difference of policy cooperation between the United States and the other Western powers was wrecked. At the beginning of the McKinley Administration the American Government was in a dangerous position of isolation. The open door was gravely threateiled. McKinley returned to the policy of territorial acquisition advocated by Perry. Then John Hay set out to restore the cooperative policy and found his model in Burlingame's method of- agreement between the powers. Hay would have preferred an alliance with Great Britain, Japan and as many more powers as could have been brought to agree upon the open door and a strong East. Hay was a statesman fifty years, perhaps,

PREFACE vii

ahead of his tune, but there are many now hving who will some day witness the realization of Hay's dream. Indeed, in a measure it is already realized in the treaties of Washington in 1922.

In the 19th Century the issue in American policy in Asia was not the open door. That was never a question. The real issue was whether the United States should follow an. isolated or a cooperative policy to make sure of the open, door. An isolated policy was essentially belligerent. It inevitably led to a pitting of the United States against not one but all of the powers and against the Asiatic states as well. It was the isolation of 1897 following the wreck of the cooperative policy which forced the United States to retain the Philippines, just as the distrust of British and French designs in the fifties had led to the attempt of some loyal but misguided Americans to seek the appropriation by the United States of Formosa. As a matter of fact the American flag did fly over the principal port of the island for a year. Likewise today a wreck of the newly established cooperative policy would in the end lead to belligerency, and very likely to still further acquisitions of territory by the United States. Those who scoff at such a speculation will do well to study the past records.

The maintenance of a cooperative policy is, therefore, so utterly important for the peace of the East and of the world, that it is well to turn one's attention to the records and study well why and where the cooperative policy failed. Such a study is quite as important for the Japanese, the French, the British and for the other peoples of the West as it is for Americans. Cooperation failed partly because Americans were poor cooperators, but not wholly for that reason. It also failed because other cooperating powers sought to wrest the power of that cooperation to serve their separate purposes. The present policy may easily be wrecked upon a similar reef.

This study of the past is approached in no partisan spirit. The writer does not regard himself as an apostle of viii PREFACE

peace, or of any other doctrine. He is mindful of the fact that there is something in the atmosphere of Asia which makes it very difficult for most people to see the half-tones. All has a tendency to appear very black or very white. The writer does not regard Great Britain as the benevolent -source from which all blessings flow, nor does he find the Englishman the arch mischief-maker of world politics. He regards the Japanese neither as innocent lambs nor ravening wolves. Least of all has he any desire to see created any alliance of powers for the exploitation of China which must remain for so many years the great unknown quantity in the world equation. But whether we like or trust each other or not we all have to live together in a world which is becoming smaller every day — and we must either fight each other or cooperate. The basis of cooperation must be understanding. In the following pages, therefore, the Englishman, Continental, Chinese and Japanese as well as the American are invited to view the pictures of themselves as they appear in the American records.

At the risk of incurring the dislike which attaches to all iconoclasts, the writer has aimed to record the facts as they are, mindful that they do not lead to verdicts which have long been accepted. The exultant, complacent boaster of his nation's virtue, whatever the nation, will not find this a satisfying source-book, not if he reads it through to the end. No nation, either of the East or of the West, has escaped the valid charge of bad faith. The guilt of all parties being clearly proven it has seemed profitless to continue the discussion of guilt with a view to determining the relative degrees of wickedness. Each nation, the United States not excepted, has made its contribution to the welter

rof evil which now comprises the Far Eastern Question. We shall all do well to drop for all time the pose of self-righteousness and injured innocence and penitently face the ^ facts.

'^ Cordial relations between the United States, Japan and Great Britain are now constantly being rendered unstable

PREFACE ix

by the perpetuation of historical fictions which were created at some time in the past to justify a position not otherwise defensible, and then reiterated with such frequency as to give them the currency of inspired truth. It is hoped that the following pages, carrying as they do the documentary evidence for the statements made, will contribute towards the retirement of some of these fictions and also clear a path for honest dealing and franker understanding in the future.

The proportions assigned to the various phases of this study would have been different had it been the purpose to survey the international relations of China, Japan and Korea with the Western powers. In the international relations of the East with the West the last thirty years of the century bulks larger than the preceding seventy years. In a review of American policy the reverse is true, and this fact has determined the proportions of this study. The creative period in the relations of the United States to Eastern Asia practically came to an end in 1868. The following thirty years were relatively barren in both American enterprise and statesmanship. While the three very full closing years of the century may be claimed as the vestibule to a contemporaneous period which is not yet concluded, these years are equally the conclusion of an epoch and bring the cycle of policy back to a point of cooperation similar to that when William H. Seward retired from the Department of State and Anson Burlingame was launched upon his mission to the Western Powers. To follow the policies of the McKinley administration down through the recent years to the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaties of Washington would be to enter upon a discussion where speculation and hearsay evidence would have to be substituted at important points for documentary facts. This period hab already been traversed by many excellent writers and it has therefore seemed wiser to bring this study to a close with a statement of the initial policies of the McKinley administration

X PREFACE

and a comparison of them with the precedents of the preceding century.

Some of the material which appears in the following chapters has already been published in different and more elaborate form in the Journal of International Law (Jan. 1922), and in the American Historical Review (Oct, 1922), while several of the chapters, now much revised, were originally printed for the use of the American Commissioners in the Conference on the Limitation of Armaments and the Problems of the Pacific, but never released for general circulation.

Bibliographical footnotes in a most abbreviated form have been inserted wherever the subject matter appears of sufficient importance to require them, or where the statements in the text are at variance with those which have appeared in other works on the subject. The student who cares primarily for the sources of history is recommended to read first of all Chapter XXXV, Notes on Bibliography, where the source material for the entire field is reviewed.

Acknowledgments to writers of books and pamphlets which have proved of value in the preparation of this work appear in Notes on Bibliography (Chapter XXXV) and in, the bibliographical index. In addition to these the author is under such obligation as only those who have been placed under a similar debt can fully appreciate to the following: to the officials and attendants of the Library, the Bureaus of Appointment and of Rolls and Indexes of the Department of State, and of the Libraries of Congress, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, of Columbia University, of the New York, Wisconsin, and Minnesota Historical Societies, the Manuscripts Division of the New York Public Library, and the Missionary Research Library; to James Rankin Young for information about his distinguished brother, John Russell Young; to Murray Olyphant for data and literature concerning his famous grandfather, D. W. C. Olyphant; to Hon. Charles Denby for helpful suggestions about the period in China

PREFACE xi

when he served in the American Legation at Peking under his honored father; to Hon. Henry White for information drawn from the rich stores of his memory as Secretary of the American Embassy at the Court of St. James; to Dr. J. Frankhn Jameson, Editor of the American Historial Review, for encouragement and suggestions, and especially for securing from His Excellency, J. Jules Jusserand, copies of important dispatches contained in the archives of the French Embassy at Washington, and to Waldo G. Leland for securing the copy of a document from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris; to Drs. Stanley K. Hornbeck, A. L. P. Dennis, Henry W. Wriston, and to Gaillard Hunt for many such helpful suggestions and counsel as comes from frequent conversations with those who have given their lives to a study of phases of the subject embraced in this volume; to many friends scattered over Eastern Asia and Eastern Africa from Tokio to Bombay and Cape Town who have offered a ready and never-failing hospitality to a tired traveler; and, finally, to Nelson Trusler Johnson, Edwin Lowe Neville and Baron Serge A. Korff who have been patient and kind enough to read the manuscript critically.

Contents

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Part I. The East India Trade Chapter

I. The Beginnings of American Commerce 1

The American Ports. The Vessels Employed. Crews, Captains and Owners. Cargoes.

II. The Ports of Asia and the Pacific 24

Isle de France and India. Adventures — Mocha, Sumatra, Siam. Batavia and Manila. The Fur Trade. The Northwest Coast.

Ill, Early China Trade 44

Macao, Whampoa and Canton. Conditions of American Trade. The Americans and the British. The Human Element in the Trade. Major Samuel Shaw.

Part II. The First Treaty With China

IV. The Foundations of American Poucy in Asia .... 69 Review of Trade: 1815-1839. Relation of U. S. Government to American Citizens in China. Relations with Portuguese and English. Relations with the Chinese Government. Terranova Incident.

V. The Americans and the Anglo-Chinese War .... 91 Foreigners Imprisoned in the Factories. The Americans Petition Congress. Congress Becomes Interested. Commodore Kearny's Most-Favored-Nation Agreement. The Mission Created.

VI. The American Share in the Opium Trade 115

Turkey and India Opium. Conflict with Chinese^rthe Pledge. Commodore Kearny's Action.

VII. Preparation for the Gushing Mission 128

The Edmund Roberts Mission. Webster Consults the Merchants. Instructions to Gushing. Caleb Gushing Goes to Macao.

VIII. The Policy of Caleb Gushing 145

The Negotiations. The Immediate Application of the Principles of the Treaty. Superior Advantages of the Gushing Treaty. Extraterritoriality. Responsibility Placed on the Chinese. Divergence from British Policy.

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

X XIII.

Xxiv-

XV.

XVI.

Part III. A Period Of Confusion Page

The Far East Becomes a Political Question .... 175 The International Situation. Multiplication of American Interests in China. Commissioners and Consuls.

Settlement op the Shanghai Land Question .... 194 Early American in Shanghai. American Protests against Exclusive Concessions. The Municipal Code. Final Settlement of a Vexed Question.

Humphrey Marshall and the Taiping Rebellion . . 206 Growth of the Rebellion. The Dilemma Presented to the Foreigners. Marshall Becomes Suspicious of British Designs. Shall Shanghai Become a Free Port? Marshall Forces Dissolution of Provisional System.

The Policy op Commissioner McLanb 225

The Inspectorate of Maritime Customs. McLane Settles the American Claims. Treaty Revision. Mc- Lane and Bowring Go to the Pei-ho.

Japan and Early Pacific Trade. Edmund Roberts and Japan. Visit of the Morrison, 1837. Revival of American Interest in Japan. European Powers and Japan.

Instructions. Negotiations and Treaty. Perry's Proposals for Far Eastern Policy.

Treaty Revision — Destruction of Barrier Forts. An American Protectorate for Formosa. Disavowal by the American Government.

The Buchanan Administration and the Far East .

Increase of American Prestige under Pierce. Ebbing Distrust of Great Britain. Proposals for an Alliance with Great Britain and France. Instructions to William B. Reed.

Part IV. The Cooperative Policy

XVII. William B. Reed and the Treaty op Tientsin .... 311 The Treaties of Tientsin. The Revised Tariff — Legalization of the Opium Trade. Settlement of Claims.

XVIII. Ward and Tattnall — Exchange of Ratifications . . . 333 The Conflict Renewed. "Blood is Thicker than Water." The American Minister Goes to Peking.

%• XIX. The Poucy of Townsend Harris in Japan 347

. Appointment of Townsend Harris — Instructions and Treaty with Siam. Arrival of Harris in Japan — Convention of 1857. Harris at Yedo. Treaty and Tariff of 1858.

CONTENTS

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y XX. Anson Burungame 367

The Suppression of the Taiping Rebellion. Burlingame and Cooperation. The First Chinese Mission — Treaty of 1868. The Burlingame Mission in Europe and China.

< XXI. The United States and Japan : 1858-1869 391

/ Anti-foreign Agitation. Convention of 1866.

Y XXII. Seward's Far Eastern Policy 407

Seward, Budingame and China. Coercion of Japan. Alaska and Korea. Proposed Joint Expedition to Korea.

Part V. The Rise Of Japan

/ XXIII. First Steps in Japanese Expansion 425

The Politically Nebulous East. The Japanese Empire Begins Consolidation. Japan on the Verge of War. Formosa, the Lew Chews and Korea. ■if XXIV. The United States and Korea — Treaty of 1882 . . . 450 Expediency of Disturbing the Status Quo. The United States Inclines Towards Japan. Shufeldt and the Good Offices of Li Hung Chang. The Personal Views of Commodore Shufeldt.

■^ XXV. Beginning of the Contest for Korea 466

Japanese Advance. China and Great Britain Are ♦

Aroused. Korea, 1885-1894.

" XXVI. American Good Offices — SiNO-jAPANESEi War .... 489 American Mediation in the Franco-Chinese War, 1883-1884. Good Offices of the United States in Korea. Korea after the Peace of Shimonoseki.

XXVII. Treaty Revision 508

Revision in China by Interpretation and Agreement. Japanese Effort at Revision, 1872. Policy of Judge Bingham— Treaty of 1878. The Shufeldt Treaty with Korea. The Unratified Treaty of 1889. Treaties of 1894.

Part VI. The Disintegration Of The Chinese Empire

;<; XXVIII. Asiatic Immigration and American Foreign Pjolicy . .. 535

The Coolie Traffic. Chinese Labor in California. Treaties of 1868 and 1880. Growth of 111 Feeling. The Threat of Japanese Immigration.

XXIX The Missionaries and American Policy in Asia . . . 555

Missionaries as Diplomatic and Consular Officers. The Status of Missionaries under the Treaties. Missionaries and Neutrality. Persecution of Christians in China. XXX. American Trade: 1844-1898 .......... 578

Decline of American Shipping. Foreign Advisors in China, Japan and Korea. Foreign Concessions at the Treaty Ports. Telegraphs and Cables. The First Railways. Railway Construction in China after 1885. Spheres of Influence.

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CONTENTS

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XXXI. Hawaii and the Philippines 607

The Annexation of Hawaii. Suspicion of Japanese Designs in Hawaii. The Philippines in the Spanish- American War. Peace Negotiations with Spain. Debates on Hawaii and the Philippines. Significance of Senate Approval of Treaty of Paris.

XXXII. The Reassertion of the Open Door Policy 634

The Far East in 1899. Overtures for an Alliance. John Hay and the Open Door Notes. What was Obtained?

XXXIII. The United States and the Boxer Insurrection . . . 650 The Boxer Insurrection. The Desires of the American Government. Independent or Concurrent Action.

The Consular and Diplomatic Service. The Contributors to American Policy. The Cooperative Policy. Notes op Bibliography 682

Appendix 705

Table of Presidents, Secretaries of State, and of Diplomatic Representatives in China, Japan and Korea, 1842-1900.

Index 709

/ V XXXIV.

XXXV.

Chapter I The Beginnings Of Ameeican Commerce

American policy in Asia has been a development of the policy of early Americans — those pioneers who crossed the seas and sometimes set up their habitations on what were to the western world the frontiers of the East. To understand the policy in its later amplifications and applications it is very important to know something of the early trade and the conditions under which it was accomplished.

The term 'East India Trade' itself belongs to the generation which immediately followed the close of the American Revolution. One finds it in the literature of the day and in the speeches in Congress. The use of the term is important. The Americans viewed Asia as a whole and called it the East Indies. The trade so described included all the comliherce the destination or origin of which lay in either the Indian or western Pacific oceans. There was not, for example, at the time Adam Seybert wrote (1818) any one section of the trade so conspicuous as to overshadow other parts; the Calcutta, Sumatra, Northwest Coast and Canton trade stood side by side. They were all more or less related to each other and interdependent and, in turn, were all so much a part of the South American, West Indian and European commerce that the separate trade reports can never be untangled. The East India trade was merely a part of the fabric of the foreign commerce of the United States, and yet it was conducted under certain distinctive and unique conditions, political and economic, which gave rise to separate policies. Even the earliest American traders had to have a policy in Asia and the policy which necessity as well as wisdom dictated became the foundation of subsequent policies adopted by their government. Mod-

I ern American policy in Asia is largely a body of precedents ' which have accumulated from decade to decade since the close of the war of the American Revolution. These precedents have a remarkable consistency due in large measure to the unchanging geographical and slowly changing economic and political conditions under which American trade with Asia has been conducted.

This trade may best be understood when one visualizes, the scenes of the activities — the economic condition of the colonies at the close of the Revolution, the ships, their owners, officers and crews, the departure from the Atlantic seaboard, the barter for goods, the return cargoes, and the life of those who tarried for a few years in the Eastern ports.

Previous to the Revolution the American colonists knew of Asia only through the tea which found its way to such ports as Boston harbour, or was smuggled in from Holland ; ^ through the small amount of expensive silks and the larger amount of Chinese and Indian cottons which wore well; and through the tales of the pirates who seventy-five years earlier had stalked through the streets of their ports.^ At the close of the war we cannot call by name more than one or two native born Americans who had ever been on the coasts of Asia, and in 1784 probably there were not a half dozen people on all the Atlantic seaboard who had any first hand knowledge whatever of the other side of the world. Where the first charts came from by which the' American vessels sailed to the East is a mystery .

In the last Captain Cook expedition to the Pacific, which left England in July, 1776, and returned in 1781, were two Americans, John Gore of Virginia and John Ledyard of Connecticut.^ They were the first lieutenant and corporal of the marines, respectively, on the Resolution. Of Gore nothing else is known, but Ledyard's service to his country was considered in later years of sufficient importance to merit the attention of Jared Sparks, the biographer of Washington. Ledyard had entered Dartmouth College in

^ Small numerals in text and notes refer to bibliographical references at ends of chapters.

1772 to prepare himself to be a missionary to the Indians, but had retired after a few months to go to sea. Working his way back to America in the British navy, he deserted in 1782 and made his way home to Connecticut for a brief period, and then ordained himself a missionary to American merchants to convert them to trade with Asia, the limitless possibilities of which had been impressed upon him when he had seen fur^skins,_purchased on the Northwest coast of America for a sixpence, and sold in Canton for $100.

Ledyard urged the advantages of the trade upon merchants in New York, Philadelphia and Boston. At least twice he was within sight of success, once at New London, where the frigate Trumhell was actually engaged for the purpose and then diverted elsewhere, and also in New York where Daniel Parker was employed, presumably by Robert Morris of Philadelphia, to purchase a ship for a trial voyage. The ship was purchased, named the Empress of China,^ and sent to Canton in February, 1784, but Ledyard, whose zeal and enthusiasm did not qualify him, perhaps, for great responsibilities, was never permitted to carry out the great plans of which he was the author.

Within the next four or five years we hear of certain Englishmen ^ who drifted to America after some years of experience in the East, but none of them appear to have been recognized as important assets in teaching the Americans the arts of the new trade. American trade with Asia was begun without the direct assistance of any others than Americans and made its way, needless to say, in the face of no inconsiderable opposition from British competitors, notably the East India Company, as well as with the blessing of a few Englishmen who welcomed any undermining of the East India Company monopoly.

Of general causes leading to the initiation and development of the East India trade little need be said. This branch of the commerce of the new nation was merely a part of a lively expansive movement which burst the bounds at every possible point and spread over the face of the earth in search of produce, trade, capital and wealth. At the close of the Revolution there were idle ships just in from their privateering; there were sailors; there was a market in America for the produce of Asia, which had formerlycome in British vessels ; *^ and there was a market in China, as the Americans already knew from the pre-revolutionary trade, for at least one American product — ginseng, a root utilized by the Chinese in medicines/ Furthermore, there was the potent urge of poverty. As a non-manufacturing people, shut up in a limited area which was not producing many essential articles of diet, and impoverished by a costly war, the United States was as far as possible removed from economic self-sufficiency. The first Americans went to Asia because they had to go^they had to go everywhere. In later years, when this necessity was removed, they showed their preferences by electing to remain at home.

The American Ports

The American ports especially concerned in the East India trade were Salem and Boston, Providence, a few of the ports of Connecticut, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and to a slight extent Norfolk. It is difficult to assign to each of these ports its exact relative place in the growing trade, for the relative positions were constantly changing, and each city, from Philadelphia north, possessed at some time or other its own peculiar eminence. To regard the trade as having in any way been limited to any single state is misleading. New York could claim the distinction of the first completed voyage ; Philadelphia, as was in accord with its wealth and population, had for a while the largest tonnage; Salem and Boston were distinguished for their ship owners; and eventually the trade showed a tendency to concentrate in the Port of New York, whither Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Maryland sent their agents to buy and sell, irrespective of what state claimed ownership of the capital invested, or of the ships employed.

The Empress of China was owned and fitted out jointly by Robert Morris of Philadelphia and a group of New York merchants represented by the firm of Daniel Parker which went bankrupt in 1785. The captain was John Green, who had probably commanded a privateer in the Revolution. The supercargo was Major Samuel Shaw of Boston, who had served with distinction in the war and who, but for his untimely death in 1794 en route from China, would probably have risen to eminence in the life of the young nation. The Empress of China left New York February 22, 1784, sailed directly to Canton and returned directly, arriving home May 12^785. She was furnished with the customary sea-letter with the rather inclusive introduction to the "most Serene, most Puissant, High, Illustrious, Noble, Honorable, Venerable, Wise and Prudent, Lords, Emperors, Kings, Republicks, Princes, Dukes, Earls, Barons, Lords, Burgomasters, Councillors, as also Judges, Officers, Justiciaries and Regents of all the good cities and places, whether ecclesiastical or secular, who shall see these patents or hear them read." ^ The cost of vessel (360 tons), the outfit, and the expenses of the voyage are reported to have been $120,000.*^ The cargo, what there was of it, consisted of something over forty tons of ginseng. The profits of the voyage were reported as $37,727 — in Major Shaw's estimation hardly enough to go around, and certainly very modest when compared with the reported profits of the expedition which followed.

The return of the Empress of China created, nevertheless, something of a sensation. To James Madison a correspondent ^'^ wrote:

"I imagine you have heard of the arrival of an American vessel at this place in four months from Canton in China, laden with the commodities of that country.

"It seems our countrymen were treated with as much respect as the subjects of any nation, i. e., the whole are looked upon by the Chinese as Barbarians,' and they have too much Asiatic hauteur to descend to any discrimination. Most of the American merchants here are of the opinion that this commerce can be carried on, on better terms from America than Europe, and that we may be able not only to supply our own wants but to smuggle a very considerable quantity to the West Indies. I could heartily wish to see the merchants of our state engage in the business.

"Don't you think that an exemption from duty on all goods imported immediately from India in (American) bottoms to our state might have a good effect?"

This agitation so soon begun for protection legislation for the China trade did not lapse. Both Pennsylvania and New York^^ adopted protective duties, and by 1791 the federal government had extended to the China trade such favors as now seem almost incredible when one comes to consider their value. The China traders not only enjoyed the protection of the navigation act of 1789 which imposed a discriminating tonnage tax of forty-six cents per ton on foreign bottoms, and the protection of the tariff act of the same year which gave to the American importer a 121/2 per cent, protection in duties on East India imports other than tea, and on tea a protection which absolutely excluded importation in any but American bottoms; but they also enjoyed the special favor of a warehousing system with drawbacks for reexportation and, most important of all, a two years' delay in the payment of tea duties.^" Tea duties equalled or exceeded the prime cost of the tea at Canton.^^ When one adds to these favors the liberal credits extended to the Americans in India and China it is not difficult to see why the trade prospered.