By 1808 the EIC had concluded that mounting a Chinese fluent corps of clerk would add value to its enterprise. On the one hand there was the example of George Staunton, whose language aptitude was the basis of commendations on more than a few occasions. Beginning in 1810 a succession of writers (clerks) began to study Chinese, and by 1830 this list had 20 names.[33]  Moreover the EIC ended up being the host for Robert Morrison whose calling as a missionary was in fact hidden by his appointment to the EIC staff as a translator. Thomas Manning the intrepid Englishman who was first to visit the Dalai Lama and who also had begun studies of Chinese in Paris, visited Canton in 1806 with the goal of studying Chinese under the protection of the EIC staff. In 1811, Staunton’s standing as a Chinese scholar perhaps became entrenched with publication of his translation of the Law Code of the Qing Dynasty. Staunton supported the continuing efforts of Morrison, who wrote a grammar for students of Chinese (1811), translated the Bible into Chinese (1823), and compiled a Chinese English Dictionary (1824). Carter’s ambition to serve the US Consul in China as an interpreter was in part prompted by his view that Britain’s superior standing in Chinese eyes owed something to its ability to represent itself in Chinese, and his own confidence that his continued study of the language made him competent to play a similar role for America. Carter’s time in Canton was spent in the close company of his fellow Rhode Islanders, and Carter hoped his connections would help to realize his dream. The total American contingent in China was not large, twenty and fewer before 1820, and his Rhode Island compatriots Snow and Carrington were the nominal leaders of the American community for a decade, a decade when no other Americans seemed interested in learning the language.[34]

The case on Carter’s behalf begins by identifying him as a certifiable reader of Chinese:  “...the first and only American who has studied the Chinese grammatically so as to be able to read the works of Confucius and Mencius in the original, to write the characters and to translate from English into Chinese."[35] In a comparative perspective this is like saying that reading Cicero and Virgil are tantamount to fluency in Latin, a debatable proposition. In advocacy for a position Carter unfurled his patriotic colors:

The British who are established in Canton regard the Americans with jealousy and are apt to encroach on our privileges without quarter. Having an interpreter of their own nation there they are able at all times to write what they please to the viceroy while we cannot help ourselves; we can neither contradict their misrepresentations nor obtain any redress for the injuries we sustain.”[36]

However, Carter and other Americans coexisted with their British compatriots in the factories on an amicable enough basis and Carter’s sentiments about the quality of life in Britain were quite positive. It is difficult to pinpoint when or over what period of time Carter raised the idea of his appointment, because so many pieces in the Carter archive are undated. Some seem to have coincided with the latter years of Carrington’s service as consul, certainly a period when Carrington would have had leverage promoting such an idea. Carrington was actively concerned with continuing harassment at the hands of British gunboats from 1805 until 1811. Harassment on the high seas occurred not only in the China seas.  This pre-occupied Thomas Jefferson’s government, leading to the Embargo of 1807, an unsuccessful attempt to push the British and French into respecting American neutrality and their privilege to trade with either side in war. Merchants vehemently opposed the Embargo and Carter’s letters of this time express a deep seeded enmity to Jefferson, an enmity that was deepened by the Embargo. So Carter’s political affinities did not weigh in favor of his appointment while Jefferson and his political successors held office. Regardless Carter’s hopes for an appointment and to create a framework for training young men to work as interpreters in Canton never came to fruition. When Carter left Canton in 1805 he was imagined a life as an interpreter. But having a “handsome competence,” he was able to consider other options. The bitter overtones of Carter’s feelings for Jefferson, perhaps pushed him to seek a life outside the United States. He had counseled his brother, who encountered a personal crisis, to think about settling in England. The brother did not, but in 1807 Carter followed his own advice. 

England offered a superior environment for learning Chinese. George Staunton’s reputation as linguist, the emergent accomplishments of Robert Morrison, and support from a coterie of English explorers and intellectuals created some dialogue about Chinese in the pages of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. In those Transactions, we know that Carter viewed Staunton’s contributions as worthwhile.[37] He was less complimentary to others. He thought that the calligraphy was “mostly badly” or “miserably executed” and that explanations of the language for a new student of Chinese are “abounding in mistakes” and “of no use to a learner."[38][39] Grammar books and dictionaries are only available in Latin and are confined to the “cabinets of the curious” and were inaccessible.[40] He often complained that the writings from London’s Philosophical Transactions were too often “conjectures on the language” that are mostly wrong.  For example, while Fourmont’s Meditationes Sinicae at Paris is “the best work ever published, it was written by someone who had never been to China and did not understand the language and Carter adds that it is full of “mistakes” and “many puerile remarks."[41] Carter champions further scholarly study of the language, saying: “Chinese literature, though little cultivated in Europe, justly merits greater attention from the intrinsic excellence of the language which may be made subservient to many valuable purposes."[42] He was himself a Sinophile in the making.

From 1807 to 1815 Carter lived in England. His paths crossed with Joseph Banks and other intellectual luminaries of the time. Although we cannot state with certainty, it appears that Carter’s China interest and experience led to a web of connection that built on itself.  And it is clear that Carter availed himself of libraries and publications to further his knowledge. Waterloo and the end of British-French conflict made it possible for him to go to Paris where he spent a year in the company of Remusat. It is believed Carter continued to work on Chinese. As late as 1828, he was cajoling his Canton compatriot Edward Carrington to speak on his behalf to the government about an interpreter’s job. He imagined still a world where the knowledge of words and translation would make his life’s mark.