Captain Elliot and the Founding of Hong Kong

by Captain Elliot

  become necessary to instruct the Governor to consider carefully before the Estimates for another year are prepared what reductions may be necessary in the expenditure, as it is manifestly impossible to continue the system which appears to have existed and to vote year after year Estimates [of expenditure] exceeding the Revenue of the Colony.24

  Senior officials at the Colonial Office during 1855 included not only Lord John Russell (Secretary of State), but Elliot’s brother (Thomas) Frederick, and his lifelong friend Henry Taylor. Taylor agreed with Elliot’s view that for the present Crown Colony status was appropriate for Trinidad, but sensing the danger of growing confrontation, Russell wanted from Elliot some proposals for bolstering confidence in the Legislative Council.25 The Governor did not come up with anything new; in an upbeat report in early June, covering the (rather late) submission of the Blue Book for Trinidad for 1854, he merely expressed the hope that recent changes – by which he meant mainly the introduction of ward unions – would ‘gradually furnish safe and convenient means of introducing a new admixture of the representative principle into the constitution of the Council of Government’.26

  In Trinidad the momentum for reform was maintained. In October a public meeting in Port of Spain chaired by the mayor passed what amounted to a vote of no confidence in the legislature. It decided to set up a standing committee with a watching brief, to be known as the (Trinidad) Reform Association. From then on positions on both sides – colonial government and would-be reformers – hardened. The Reform Association began direct communication with the Secretary of State for the Colonies, now Henry Labouchere, articulating its opposition to higher taxation and maintaining that if unavoidable it should be levied on the whole population according to their ability to pay. The Association’s Chairman, Anthony Cumming, sent Labouchere a note of four resolutions passed at a public meeting, which had been followed by a meeting of the Association’s Committee on 20 November.27 Concurrently, Elliot was writing to Sir George Grey, now Home Secretary, complaining at length about troublesome minorities. ‘As an old servant of the Crown in these regions and rather stagnant communities, in which criticism is out of all proportion more plentiful than performance’ he contemptuously alluded to

  those phases of perverse mischief (more or less chronic in these contracted communities) springing from that combination of idleness, extravagant self-importance, disregard of public time, and scramble for notoriety, on the part of a handful of persons, which forms the basis of what passes current under the sounding description of public opinion, in these little societies…. Their real purpose is to get the public finances under their management. Truly influential members of the Community who are steadily occupied, have neither time nor disposition to take an active share in clamorous agitation and in indiscriminate abuse.28,29

  More in the same vein followed early in the new year. In a place in which most adults had been born into slavery, he said, it was inevitable that there were many ‘uninstructed, dependent and … very idle people … too easily impressionable by any handful of unscrupulous persons who may seek for their own Ends to practise upon their ignorancies and their Conflicting religious and Caste prejudices’; all of which meant that in Elliot’s view there was not yet anything in the colony that could properly be called public opinion.30

  While the Secretary of State endorsed Elliot’s plans to consolidate various offices in Trinidad to reduce expenditure, not everyone in the Colonial Office was unequivocally in support of the Governor. Perhaps because he knew Elliot so well and sensed an uncharacteristic level of animosity on his part, it was Henry Taylor who took issue over the role of the Reform Association, which Elliot had described ‘an unauthorised association permanently organised for the purpose of watching the Government and Legislation of the Colony’.31 Taylor held that ‘in the absence of a representative polity or of the means of forming one, the educated portion of the Colonists shd. not be discouraged fm. watching the course of public affairs & expressing their opinions’, then adding ‘though they would doubtless do so with more credit to themselves and more public usefulness if their opinions were carefully and dispassionately formed and expressed with temper and propriety’.32

  During this tetchy correspondence Charles Elliot, on 26 February 1856, tendered his resignation, as he had confided to his sister two months earlier that he might. The strain of his personal and professional responsibilities had been taking its toll for many months and his health was a continual problem. In April he told Emma that he was ‘perfectly free of fever, but convalescing, I think, more slowly than I have done after any of my terrible attacks’.33

  Elliot’s judgement seems to have been affected by these pressures such that problematic professional issues were allowed to engender personal antagonisms. One involved the Reform Association member and first elected Mayor of Port of Spain, James Kavanagh, ‘a wicked Irish Rebel’ Clara called him, ‘who has [?] acted as though he [was] the Governor’.34 Like Henry Taylor, Elliot could not abide incivility. Of Kavanagh he wrote that ‘Persons who have known him long acquaint me that his vehement malignancy of language … almost amounts to madness, and it is charitable to hope that his rancour does spring from a disturbed judgement, and not from deliberate wickedness.’35

  A continuing clash with the Italian Vincent Spaccapietra over his appointment as Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Port of Spain was more serious. Spaccapietra had taken up his post in April 1855, the first non-British or Irish prelate to head the Roman Catholic Church in Trinidad, but whereas for previous appointments Rome had first informed the Colonial Office, no such notification had occurred this time.36 Relations between the British and the Vatican became less than cordial. The deterioration did not last, however, except in Trinidad itself, where Governor Elliot refused to countenance the support of a non-UK national from colonial funds. Despite a Colonial Office assurance that there was no objection to such an arrangement, Elliot was adamant and the archbishop gave no ground either.37 There was agitation and public protest from the Catholic community, which considered Elliot’s policy to be contrary to the spirit of the 1797 Articles of Capitulation in which freedom of religious practice was guaranteed. The ‘Catholic Committee’ played a prominent role in the dispute under the leadership of its president, James Kavanagh, whose anti-English feeling was well known. The hostile reaction to the stance of the Governor and the Legislative Council was full of foreboding for Elliot, who feared that if Spaccapietra were recognised ‘Trinidad would probably become the transient residence of a succession of the most intriguing and dangerous Italian and other foreign ecclesiastics’.38 Elliot was convinced that such foreign influences would inevitably generate hostility to British interests, especially so far as language was concerned. He firmly believed that people should use the language in which the laws they live under are written, maintaining that ‘Nothing could be better calculated to obstruct such a result than habitual intercourse with a foreign priesthood, ignorant of the English language and quite naturally less friendlily disposed to the Government and constitution of England than of their own countries.’39 Whether or not this confrontation triggered Elliot’s resignation, it did nothing for Elliot’s reputation in the Colony, since Spaccapietra had become a well-respected and popular figure, not least as a result of his work in caring for those affected by the cholera epidemic.40

  Though he had resigned, Elliot did not leave Trinidad until October. In April Labouchere wrote to him acknowledging that his many years of service in the tropics entitled him to relief from any further employment in the West Indies.41 He was perhaps aware of Elliot’s unheeded earlier preference, set out in a minute from Taylor ‘that he would go as a point of duty and in obedience to orders wherever he might be sent, but he wished it to be known that he did not wish to be sent to British Guiana or Trinidad’.42 Labouchere did not now rule out service elsewhere, but probably treated Elliot’s resignation as an intention to retire. The award of a KCB at this time, announced officially in The L
ondon Gazette on 22 July, was consistent with such a view on the part of the Secretary of State. In one of his periodic resentful reflections on China Elliot later implied, cynically, that if he had been less conscientious he could have achieved higher honours, but for now he was delighted, and was clear whom he had primarily to thank: ‘Nothing can have been more handsome than the manner in which this [?business] has been communicated to me…. The person to whom I am really indebted for this and for almost all that of good has befallen me in life is my dear old friend Taylor.’43

  Towards the end of June Elliot told his sister he expected to sail for Europe the following month, an expectation which proved unduly optimistic.44 In the remaining months of his Governorship the stand-off with members of the Reform Association continued. In a confidential letter written, unusually at this stage in his career, in his own rapidly deteriorating handwriting, Elliot dismissed them as having ‘cast themselves into complete discredit amongst the respectable portion of this community by their unscrupulousness of assertion, and violence of abuse’.45 Whatever the ‘respectable’ members of society thought, and whether or not they were justified in so doing, the Reform Association took advantage of Elliot’s impending departure. Its Chairman, Anthony Cumming, visited London in September to convey the Association’s concerns direct to the Secretary of State. Among other things, misuse of funds and general financial mismanagement, it was claimed, made it essential that the system should be changed to allow popular representation in decision-making on taxation and expenditure, and in the framing of legislation. These demands were not met, but Labouchere required Elliot to change the Colony’s budget plans for 1857 to eliminate the possible use of reserves, and to sort out with the Council the contentious question of the level and funding of immigration.46

  Elliot’s planned exit in July having proved impractical, his departure was further postponed by a renewed outbreak of cholera in September. It was thankfully short-lived, and the Elliot family left the island in the last week of October. The usual farewell addresses from sections of the community, delivered with due formality, were as noteworthy for the responses they elicited from the Governor as for their own content. With the Council, Elliot took the opportunity to draw attention to a marked improvement in the colony’s financial position. He attributed this to an upturn in trade, reduced public expenditure, and the re-imposition of export duty. Better crop yields had been responsible for the first, but Elliot himself took credit for the last two – the export levy against vigorous opposition from the planters and landowners.47 To the clergy, the Governor stressed the value of education. In reply to an address from a group of former slaves, who considered themselves to have benefited from Elliot’s Governorship, he was happy to extol the virtues of local self-government. As a result of recent changes in legislation, he said, public affairs and finances were being successfully managed locally, with those in Port of Spain and San Fernando now wholly under local control and without central government supervision. Gratified by the ex-slaves’ address, Elliot followed it by telling his masters in London that the emancipated class had been decorous in trying times; there had been much ‘inflammatory public declamation’.48

  For Charles Elliot Trinidad had been an uncomfortable experience. Lord Harris’ term immediately before him had been less financially constrained. Harris had been popular with the white Creole community, in part because he had succeeded in implying that much of the responsibility for the colony’s ills lay with the British government.49 Elliot recognised the difficulties the planters had in remaining competitive against slave-owning economies such as Brazil and Cuba. He sought with some success to alleviate this problem through mass immigration from Asia, consolidating the relevant legislation in the Immigration Ordinance of 1854; but his background and experience of empathy with slave populations and of the intransigence of planters predisposed him to significant hostility from the Trinidad elite, drawing sustained criticism from its leading members.50 One of these, Dr L.A.A. de Verteuil, a reformer and author who was prominent in the Roman Catholic and French communities, was especially forthright. He wrote of the Spaccapietra affair that Elliot’s ‘partial and vexatious policy has been condemned here, not by the catholics only, but, it may be said, by the whole community…. The measures adopted by the governor are viewed with extreme jealousy and suspicion by the catholics, and may prove an unhappy source of ill-feeling’.51 De Verteuil’s treatise on Trinidad conveyed his own strongly reformist and partisan messages, but there seems no doubt that a sense of unfair treatment and relative neglect by Britain extended beyond narrow sectional interests. Elliot had not managed the discontent well. He was by instinct a conciliator, but as Governor of Trinidad his approach became confrontational. After little more than two years the various stresses affecting his performance – illness, family anxieties, fatigue, and the strain of governing a colony under financial pressure from London and with vigorous opposition from its most influential inhabitants – had become too much.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Intermission

  Rear Admiral Sir Charles and Lady Elliot and their daughter Emma Clara reached the south coast of England on 14 November 1856. Despite his earlier intention to sail to France rather than direct to England, and perhaps because of the delays in leaving Trinidad, going to continental Europe was postponed. They met up with Charles’s sister Emma, and remained in London over Christmas and New Year. In the midst of family reunions and social engagements, Charles was in correspondence with Labouchere about the financial situation in Trinidad.1 By April the Elliots had travelled to Switzerland, to the Hotel des Bergues, Geneva.

  Pleased and relieved though they had been to return home, Charles and Clara Elliot’s priority now was rest and recuperation. Charles, at least, felt he had made a good start. With guilty apologies, probably for not communicating sooner, Clara wrote to her sister-in-law:

  By this time you will have [?abused] me to your heart’s content – with good cause – but you will have [?] how little I am to be depended upon in my [?] and dilapidated condition…

  Charles is in raptures, declaring that he would be well satisfied to pass the remainder of his days here, but he is an old Fox and wishes to persuade us to be satisfied. We remain at this Hotel until the 1st.2

  As Charles will have been well aware, their luxury existence in the Hotel des Bergues could not continue.3 The family transferred in May to the comfortable but more modest Hotel du Faucon in Lausanne, on the north shore of Lake Geneva. It was, as Charles put it to Emma, ‘a pleasant and quiet hotel, and though the place appears to be very dull, I think we are all better & satisfied.’4 During the rest of the summer in Lausanne Charles’s correspondence with Emma was taken up not only with domestic matters, but also with China, specifically the Canton campaign and Charles’s role in it. China had often impinged during the years since 1841, but with time now to reflect at greater length, it became a major preoccupation. As Charles and Clara began to feel some benefit from their new-found lifestyle, they received worrying news from their son Hughie, of which Emma was immediately informed.

  You will hear with great sorrow that we have just received a letter from dearest Hughie … giving a disquieting account about his health. He has been examined by a committee of medical men, and they have [?with concern said] that one of his lungs does not act well, as he phrases it. He says that he had for some months past been troubled with a nasty cough.5

  There was a better outlook some five weeks later, though Charles warned that Hughie would need constant care. Concern about Hughie was to some extent balanced by a visit from Freddy, who had completed his time at Haileybury and was to take up a position in the Indian Civil Service the following year. He left Switzerland for England on 8 September, his father a little presumptuously alerting his Aunt Emma: ‘thinking it very doubtful whether you will be in town I have directed Freddy in that case to invade the ‘Elliot Circus’ in Chester Square.’6 Clara was subsequently annoyed to find that whatever he had been tol
d, Freddy had not gone directly home. He had broken his journey in Paris and was still there at the end of December, so failing to convey in time and in person his mother’s Christmas good wishes to his aunt.7

  As summer gave way to autumn Charles, and presumably Clara, decided they would feel better if they moved on. He wrote from an hotel in Montpellier near the south coast:

  this weather has taken a churlish turn, and an [?] sky and wet atmosphere … have persuaded me to break up my commitments and get me gone to either [?] or … to Bordeaux, where I have some old friends who I should be pleased to shake by the hand again before we all go to sleep.’8

  Bordeaux it was. For Charles and Clara this was a nostalgic return to a city they had last visited before the assignment in British Guiana. For Clara Bordeaux was of particular significance as the birthplace of her mother, Marie Magdeleine Jouve. The Elliots stayed initially at the Hotel de France, from where Charles duly reported to his sister:

  I have assembled my force here, and after 27 years of absence, and many strange accidents by fire and flood, we shall on Monday next (D.V.) occupy an hour in my old friend [?…’s] property, distant about a mile from the Palace that we inhabited in days of yore, where my dearest Hatty eat grapes and bread nobbed with garlick to make her fat.’9,10