All about opium / edited by Hartmann Henry Sultzberger.

Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: All about opium / edited by Hartmann Henry Sultzberger. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Parian eye ” ou whom it was incumbent to “ obey and keep the laws sind statutes.” “ There has never been such a thing as outside bar- barians sending in a letter,” wrote the Governor in great wrath to the Ilong merchants. It was evident the two pretensions—the one to the supremacy of a Suzerain State, and the other equality—could not be reconciled, and in effect admitted, under the circumstances, of no compromise. Lord Napier accordingly, in order to prevent further injury to the trade, and personal danger to those in the factory, was compelled to return to Macao, surrounded by an insulting guard of Chinese soldiers, where lie shortly after died, harassed in mind and worn out by fever brought on by confinement during several weeks at the factory in a tropical heat. The Chinese were jubilant and triumphant, and graciously allowed the trade to proceed again as usual. From this time, however, to Lin’s proceedings in 1839, all our relations became more and more strained, and in an unsettled condition. As regards opium, the depot ships continued without serious interference at Lintin, or elsewhere between Macao, Hong Kong, and Canton. But the authorities of both countries, after Lord Napier’s mission, were in a false position, and frequent difficulties and threats of interruption to the trade were the consequence ;—that being the usual resource, in those days of the Chinese local authorities, to compel obedience from the “ outside bar- barians.” This troubled period culminated in Commissioner Lin’s imprisoning the foreigners in Canton until he extorted the surrender of all opium in Chinese waters, though quite beyond his reach, and otherwise out of his power to seize, by any other exercise of force or authority. The war which followed and terminated in the Treaty of Nanking, in 1842, established our relations, official and commercial, for the first time on a reasonable and well#-defined footing. It has commonly been called the “ Opium War ; ” and it was, no doubt, as so often asserted “ intimately connected with the illegal traffic in opium ”—and yet, had there been .no opium or illegal trade of any kind in question, the same causes would have lead to the same results. The causes were in operation during the whole period the foreign trade at Canton existed. Violent and arbitrary measures of a kind both oppressive and utterly unjustifi- able, were so frequent that they must have lead to a total rupture and war, sooner or later, as the only way of remedying a condition of things .altogether intolerable. The war and the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 left the trade in opium •on the same footing as before—an unrecognised, and therefore, so far ;as Chinese legislation was concerned, a prohibited and illegal trade, with power untouched to deal with it as the Government of China might deem best—by the seizure of ships in their waters, or of the drug, when landed on their shores ;—and any other repressive and penal measures they might see fit to apply to their own subjects. What they did under these circumstances we shall see presently. If we now trace the progress of the trade in opium, from the year 1790, to 1820, during which period the import of the drug had never exceeded 5,000 chests, and rarely amounted to more than 4,000; and thence on to 1840, when the war commenced, we find that in 1830 the importation