Lord Elgin then paid an official visit to Japan, where he was well received and succeeded in negotiating the Treaty of Yeddo, which was a decided advance on all previous arrangements with that country, and prepared the way for larger relations between it and England.  On his return to bring the new treaty to a conclusion, he found that the commissioners who had gone to obtain their emperor’s full consent to its provisions, seemed disposed to call into question some of the privileges which had been already conceded, and he was consequently forced to assume that peremptory tone which experience of the Chinese has shown can alone bring them to understand the full measure of their responsibilities in negotiations with a European power.  However, he believed he had brought his mission to a successful close, and returned to England in the spring of 1859.

How little interest was taken in those days in Canadian affairs by British public men and people, is shown by some comments of Mr. Waldron on the incidents which signalized Lord Elgin’s return from China.  “When he returned in 1854 from the government of Canada,” this writer naively admits, “there were comparatively few persons in England who knew anything of the great work he had done in the colony.  But his brilliant successes in the East attracted public interest and gave currency to his reputation.”  He accepted the position of postmaster-general in the administration just formed by Lord Palmerston, and was elected Lord Rector of Glasgow; but he had hardly commenced to study the details of his office, and enjoy the amenities of the social life of Great Britain, when he was again called upon by the government to proceed to the East, where the situation was once more very critical.  The duplicity of the Chinese in their dealings with foreigners had soon shown itself after his departure from China, and he was instructed to go back as Ambassador Extraordinary to that country, where a serious rupture had occurred between the English and Chinese while an expedition of the former was on its way to Pekin to obtain the formal ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin.  The French government, which had been a party to that treaty, sent forces to cooeperate with those of Great Britain in obtaining prompt satisfaction for an attack made by the Chinese troops on the British at the Peilo, the due ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin, and payment of an indemnity to the allies for the expenses of their military operations.

The punishment which the Chinese received for their bad faith and treachery was very complete.  Yuen-ming-yuen, the emperor’s summer palace, one of the glories of the empire, was levelled to the ground as a just retribution for treacherous and criminal acts committed by the creatures of the emperor at the very moment it was believed that the negotiations were peacefully terminated.  Five days after the burning of the palace, the treaty was fully ratified between the emperor’s brother and Lord Elgin, and full satisfaction obtained from the imperial authorities at Pekin for their shameless disregard of their solemn engagements.  The manner in which the British ambassador discharged the onerous duties of his mission, met with the warm approval of Her Majesty’s government and when he was once more in England he was offered by the prime minister the governor-generalship of India.