This delicious phrase, a true touch of human nature, is solemnly recorded in one of the despatches, and may still be seen in the correspondence on the subject in the Blue Book for the year.
It is only fair to point out that it was Robert Hart who stated that "the ability of the Inspector-General is great; that he possesses a mind which embraces the minutest details, and is therefore fully competent to make the necessary arrangements with a more than satisfactory result," when he might so easily have used his great and growing personal influence with the Chinese (he was a _persona grata_ with them from the beginning) to undermine his chief.
How the fleet "of genuine materials" came out with all despatch under the celebrated Captain Sherard Osborne and various other officers lent by the Admiralty, is a matter of history. The reputations of its commanders--for all were men of distinction--should have ensured its success if anything could have done so. But from the very moment the fleet reached Shanghai there were misunderstandings. Captain Osborne found himself subject to local officials whose control he resented.
The truth was Lay had somewhat altered the regulations drawn up by Robert Hart and approved by Prince Kung, and had then told Captain Osborne that of course the Chinese would agree to anything he wished. Subsequent events proved him wrong, and showed that he had made the fatal mistake of committing his employers too far. Perhaps this was not unnatural considering that he was just then receiving the most flattering notice from the British press and a C.B. from the British Government for his services--yet it was none the less disastrous.
In May 1863 Lay returned to Shanghai, and, Robert Hart's acting appointment having come to an end, he was made Commissioner at Shanghai, with charge of the Yangtsze ports, the position being specially created for him by Prince Kung in order to give him more authority than would belong to the simple Commissioner of a port. That same autumn the Sherard Osborne affair came to a crisis. Returning from a trip up the Yangtsze, Hart found Lay and Li Hung Chang at daggers drawn. The former had just peremptorily demanded a large sum of money to provision the fleet, and the latter had flatly refused to put his hand in his pocket without official orders to do so, Robert Hart, who very shrewdly guessed at the real cause of the misunderstanding, offered to go and see Li and explain. Very tactfully he told Li that all Lay and Captain Osborne wanted was his formal sanction to present at the bank, as without this the transaction would not have the necessary official character. Li agreed readily enough when the matter was presented in this light; what he had objected to was Lay's abrupt demand to pay so many thousand taels out of his own pocket immediately.