54  THE  CHINESE  EMPIRE
the  attributes  reserved  to  the  government  established  at
Peking.  The  central  government  may  be  said  to  criticise
rather  than  to  control  the  action  of  the  twenty-one  provincial ­
  administrations,  wielding,  however,  at  all  times  the
power  of  immediate  removal  from  his  post  of  any  official
whose  conduct  may  be  found  irregular,  or  considered
dangerous  to  the  stability  of  the  State.”
These  words  strike  the  keynote  for  the  part  played  by
the  Emperor’s  Ministers  at  the  capital  ;  but,  written  in
1877,  they  take  too  little  account  of  the  centralising  policy
forced  upon  the  government  by  the  importance  of  its
foreign  relations,  and  facilitated  by  the  improvement  in
the  means  of  communication.  In  its  pristine  form  the
government  was,  a  generation  only  back,  as  Mayers  describes
it.  When  Lord  Napier  first  introduced  the  element  of
national  sovereignty  into  China’s  foreign  relations,  he  found
no  member  of  the  central  administration  or  envoy  of  the
Emperor  to  deal  with  ;  he  was  not  even  allowed  to  come
in  touch  with  the  Viceroy  or  the  Governor  at  Shiuhing,  but
was  ordered  to  communicate  through  the  authorities  at
Canton,  the  Co-Hong  and  the  Hoppo.  The  British  treaty
of  1842  was  signed  by  the  Tartar  General  of  Canton  and  the
Lieutenant-General  of  Chapoo,  who,  being  responsible  for
resistance  to  aggression  on  the  coasts  of  Kwangtung  and
Chekiang,  transferred  their  headquarters  to  Nanking  to
settle  matters  with  the  aggressor  ;  and  to  them  was  joined
in  the  signature,  though  not  mentioned  as  plenipotentiary
in  the  preamble,  the  Viceroy  at  Nanking,  within  whose
jurisdiction  the  negotiations  for  peace  were  conducted  ;  no
envoy  was  sent  direct  from  the  central  government.  The
American  treaty  of  1844  was  negotiated  and  signed  by  the
Viceroy  at  Canton  (who  alone  was  named  in  the  preamble)
and  the  Tartar  General  ;  and  the  French  treaty,  later  in  the
same  year,  was  signed  by  the  Viceroy  alone,  the  Mancfin
Commandant  having  meantime  died.  Then  ensued  &amp;
period  of  foreign  friction  ending  in  the  second  war  ;  and  the
four  treaties  negotiated  in  1858—the  British,  French,
American,  and  Russian—were  signed  by  two  members  of  the