Bowring, SIR JOHN

Bowring, SIR JOHN, born in Exeter in 1792, on leaving school entered a merchant's office, and there pursued that course of polyglot study whereby, as he afterwards boasted, he knew two hundred, and could speak a hundred, languages. The national poetry of different peoples had special attractions for him, and he rendered great service to literature by translating both the more ancient and the more modern popular poems of almost all the countries of Europe. In 1821 he formed a close friendship with Jeremy Bentham, and in 1824 became the first editor of his radical Westminster Review, to which, as beseemed the descendant of an old Puritan stock, he contributed many articles on freedom in religion and politics, as well as on literary subjects. In 1828 he visited Holland; and his Sketch of the Language and Literature of Holland (1829) procured for him the degree of Doctor of Laws from the university of Groningen. Subsequent travels were undertaken by him, on a commission from the British government, to inquire into the commercial relations of certain states. He visited Switzerland, Italy, Egypt, Syria, and finally the countries of the German Zollverein, and everywhere found materials for valuable reports. He sat in parliament for Kilmarnock from 1835 to 1837, for Bolton from 1841 to 1849, and actively promoted the adoption of free trade. In 1849 he was appointed British consul at Hong-Kong, and superintendent of trade in China. He returned in 1853, and in the following year was knighted and made governor of Hong-Kong. In 1856, an insult having been offered to a Chinese pirate bearing the British flag (the 'affair of the lorcha Arrow'), Bowring, without consulting the home government, ordered the bombardment of Canton, a proceeding which excited grave dissatisfaction at home, and nearly upset the Palmerston ministry. In 1855 he concluded a commercial treaty with Siam, in 1858 made a tour through the Philippine Islands; and his accounts of those two visits are about the most readable of his thirty-six works. He retired with a pension in 1859, and died at Claremont, Exeter, 23d November 1872. See his Autobiographical Reminiscences (1877).