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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    themselves thus carried between two domestics, or chair-bearers.” Of the English as a nation, they were accustomed to speak as an amphi- bious people, who lived on the water, and were very fierce, but quite incapable of fighting on shore. Nor was this ignorance confined to the uneducated, or the millions away from the coast and the seat of war, who had no opportunity of coming in contact with us. Mr. Meadows, the late consul at Newchwaug, in his Notes on China, written at Canton after the signing of the Treaty of Nanking, in 1843, effectually dis- poses of this idea, by showing what the Cantonese, with whom there had been intercourse for more than two centuries, thought about us and our ways. Even after a war so disastrous to them, in which defeat was the invariable result of any attempt at resistance by land or sea on the part of their own forces, the people in and about Canton, he tells us— “now confidently believe that although we beat the regular soldiers during the war, their own volunteer corps could expel us from the country ; and only look upon the war as a rebellious irruption of a tribe of barbarians, who, secure in their strong ships, attacked and took some places along the coast, and an important point on the grand canal, and then constrained the Emperor to make them some concessions.” While in more familiar matters, daily under their observation, the same incapability of understanding even what they saw was constantly manifested. Foreigners, long forbidden to enter the city of Canton, or wralk beyond the narrow limits of the factory grounds, naturally took such exercise as was in their power, by pacing up and down the garden walks in front of the factory, which was enclosed with iron railings, to prevent intrusion. Here, day by day, idle and curious natives habitually watched the proceedings, much as country visitors at the Zoological watch the wild animals, and being quite unable from their own ex- perience to conceive that these foreigners were doing, what the lowest Chinese coolie never does, walking for pleasure or exercise and without an apparent object, came to the conclusion that the foreigner, in his inability to use a Swanpcm or Abacus, reckons up his accounts in this way, or that it is a religious observance ; and the common answer to any inquiry made of one thus engaged, is, that the foreigner is walking his “ thousand steps.” It is only by recalling these facts, that we can understand their assumptions of superiority, and high-handed acts of spoliation or contempt—and how they lightly risked another war, rather than open the gates of Canton to the resident foreigners in daily intercourse with them After the first. As in the previous time, they would only permit a temporary residence to the East India Company’s Committee in the factory out- side the city walls, during certain months in the year, and peremptorily prohibited their wives, or any female relatives, living within their precincts. We need not be surprised, after this, to hear that to this da}7', whatever may be the admitted merit of our progress in science, or intellectual achievements—in point of morality, and the higher civilization, we are considered very much their inferiors. How can a foreigner who does not know, and cannot even read, the works of Confucius, lay any claim to respect or consideration as a man of culture ? They believe, as Mr. Meadows observed, “ that we had, it is true, the power to do some great and extraordinary things, but so have the elephants and other wild animals the Chinaman occasionally