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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    by peaceable means—by Lord Macartney’s mission in 1793, and Lord Amherst’s in 1816, and each time unavailingly. In both cases the British mission was ostentatiously paraded before the Chinese popula- tion, en route from the coast, as tribute bearers ; and in Lord Amherst’s person the mission was treated with great indignity, because he refused to perform the kotow, and prostrate himself or do obeisance to the Emperor as Chinese Suzerain. Again, when the East India Company’s monopoly of the China trade was cancelled in 1834, another effort was made, by the appoint- ment of Lord Napier as a Chief Commissioner, to enter into communi- cation with the authorities at Canton, for the regulation of all matters connected with the British trade and interests upon a rational footing ; and indignities were heaped upon the King’s representative, and all communication with the Viceroy indignantly refused, unless in the form of a petition sent through the Hong merchants ! Neither the measures taken at that time by Lord Napier under the instructions of his Govern- ment, nor those instructions, were very wisely or judiciously conceived, any more than were the steps taken by his successor, Captain Elliot. But still the same spirit of arrogance and violence which dictated the treatment Lord Napier received at the hands of the Viceroy, and later on, his successor—until it culminated in Commissioner Lin’s sequestra- tion of the foreign commodity—could not have failed to bring on a rup- ture and reprisals, as the only remedy for unbridled violence and mis- rule. The opium trade was only one of many causes—and not the chief of these—even though, as matters fell out, it stood in the fore- front, of the motives for Chinese violence. The state of our relations, and all our intercourse, social, political, and commercial, during the whole period of the East India Com- pany’s trade, under the committee at Canton, which terminated by the abolition of their monopoly in 1834, is very truly and tersely described by the latest of their representatives, Sir John Davis, afterwards the Chief Superintendent of Trade and Minister Plenipotentiary in China. After long experience, and with all the advantage of a knowledge of the Chinese language, a most rare accomplishment fifty years ago, he writes, referring to the grievances suffered by our trade as far back as 1747, and which continued with little alteration for the better, nearly a century later, “ The principal points were the delay in unloading the ships, the plunder of goods on the river ; the affiches annually put up by the Government, accusing the foreigners of terrible crimes, and in- tended to expose them to the contempt of the populace ; the extor- tions, under false pretexts of the inferior officers, and the difficulty of access to the mandarins.” It is remarkable how persistently, for a hundred years, the Chinese continued the same vexatious course, and identical modes of harassing and insulting the foreign traders, even to the posting of offensive placards, the sole object of which was to hold all foreigners indiscrimi- nately up to contempt, and excite the hatred of the people—to serve which purpose no slander was too gross to blacken and vilify them. Long after regular and official intercourse had been established by treaties, the same odious practices continued, leading to outrages and massacres of foreigners, as I shall have to show. Up to this period of 1840, where is the evidence of force on the part