BRIDGMAN, Elijah Coleman.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Death of the Righteous: A well-preserved copy, with a highly desirable association, of this rare printing of the funerary sermon for the ninth Lord Napier, Palmerston's leading trade envoy in China, with his son and heir's armorial bookplate on the front pastedown. Only a small number of copies were struck for private circulation to friends and family; of these, we have traced just five in institutional collections (SOAS, National Library of Scotland, UC Berkeley, Brown, and the library of the American Philosophical Society).William John Napier (1786-1834) was a British naval officer struck down by illness in his prime. Enlisting in 1803, he was present at Trafalgar onboard Captain Hope's Defence. For the next decade, he served with a number of ships, retiring with post rank in 1814. After succeeding to the peerage in 1823, he was appointed by Palmerston to the chief superintendency of trade in China and tasked with both safeguarding commerce through Canton and opening up other Chinese ports to foreign merchants. Following failed attempts to open direct negotiations with government officials, Napier became the first British representative in China to suggest the military seizure of Hong Kong, a course of action that was ultimately impossible due to a lack of British forces in the region. His further China adventures were cut short by his death from sickness in Macao in October 1834. "A brave and determined man, he had been sent out to do a job that required a degree of sk

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