When Sir Thomas Wade in 1880 asked what he was to do in face of a palpable Chinese desire for an alliance, the Foreign Office ignored his query. This was significant. An alliance with China would have involved risks, She would: certainly want a territorial guarantee, and this might have provoked a coalition against us. Typical of the British Foreign Office's drifting habit of mind at that time, were the instructions given to Sir Harry Parkes when he went to Peking. He was told to "cultivate the friendliest rela-officered Customs Service, but he declined, fearing that the Imperial Maritime Customs might fall into wrong hands. His acceptance would not have been popular with the foreign powers,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.