The Whole Mercantile Community Adopted Captain Elliot's Counsel, And The English Factory At Canton, Which Had Existed For Nearly Two Hundred Years, Was Abandoned.

At the same time a memorial was sent home begging the government to protect the English merchants in China against "a capricious and corrupt government," and demanding compensation for the $10,000,000 worth of opium destroyed by Commissioner Lin.

Pending the reply of the home government to that appeal, nothing could be more complete than the triumph of Commissioner Lin. The Emperor Taoukwang rewarded him with the important viceroyship of the Two Kiang, the seat of which administration is at Nankin.

But the limit of endurance had been reached, and the British government was on the point of taking decisive action at the very moment when the Chinese triumph seemed most complete and unthreatened. Even before the action of the home authorities was known in the Bogue the situation had become critical, and the sailors in particular had thrown off all restraint. Frequent collisions occurred between them and the foreigners, and in one of them a Chinaman was killed. Commissioner Lin characterized this act as "going to the extreme of disobedience to the laws," and demanded the surrender of the sailor who committed the act, so that a life might be given for a life. This demand was flatly refused, and in consequence of the measures taken by the Chinese at Lin's direction to prevent all supplies reaching the English, Captain Elliot felt bound to remove his residence from Macao to Hongkong. The Chinese called out all their armed forces, and incited their people along the Canton River to attack the foreigners wherever found. An official notice said, "Produce arms and weapons; join together the stoutest of your villagers, and thus be prepared to defend yourselves. If any of the said foreigners be found going on shore to cause trouble, all and every of the people are permitted to fire upon them, to withstand and drive them back, or to make prisoners of them." This appeal to a force which the Chinese did not possess was an act of indiscretion that betrayed an overweening confidence or a singular depth of ignorance. When the mandarins refused to supply the ships with water and other necessaries they carried their animosity to a length which the English naval officers at once defined as a declaration of open hostilities. They retaliated by ordering their men to seize by force whatever was necessary, and thus began a state of things which may be termed one of absolute warfare. The two men-of-war on the station had several encounters with the forts in the Bogue, and on November 3, 1839, they fought a regular engagement with a Chinese fleet of twenty-nine junks off Chuenpee. The Chinese showed more courage than skill, and four of their junks were sunk. It is worth noting that the English sailors pronounced both their guns and their powder to be excellent. While this action deterred the Chinese fleet from coming to close quarters, it also imbittered the contest, and there was no longer room to doubt that if the Chinese were to be brought to take a more reasonable view of foreign trade it would have to be by the disagreeable lesson of force.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 188 of 366
Words from 97750 to 98299 of 191255