The Ten Million Dollars, According To These Large-Hearted And
Unreflecting Moralists, Would Have To Be Sacrificed By The People
Of
England in the cause of humanity, to which they had given so much by
emancipating the slaves, and the
Revenue of India should, for the future,
be poorer by the amount that used to pay the dividend of the great
Company! The Chinese authorities could not help being encouraged in their
opinions and course of proceeding by the attitude of the English. Their
most sweeping denunciations of the iniquity of the opium traffic elicited
a murmur of approval from the most influential among the foreigners. No
European stood up to say that their allegations as to the evil of using
opium were baseless and absurd. What is more, no one thought it. Had the
Chinese made sufficient use of this identity of views, and shown a desire
to facilitate trade in the so-called innocent and legitimate articles,
there is little doubt that the opium traffic would have been reduced to
very small dimensions, because there would have been no rupture. But the
action of Commissioner Lin revealed the truth that the Chinese were not to
be satisfied with a single triumph. The more easily they obtained their
objects in the opium matter the more anxious did they become to impress
the foreigners with a sense of their inferiority, and to force them to
accept the most onerous and unjust conditions for the sake of a
continuance of the trade. None the less, Captain Elliot went out of his
way to tie his own hands, and to bind his own government, so far as he
could, to co-operate with the emperor's officials in the suppression of
the opium traffic. That this is no random assertion may be judged from the
following official notice, issued several months after the surrender of
the stores of opium. In this Captain Elliot announced that "Her Majesty's
flag does not fly in the protection of a traffic declared illegal by the
emperor, and, therefore, whenever a vessel is suspected of having opium on
board Captain Elliot will take care that the officers of his establishment
shall accompany the Chinese officers in their search, and that if, after
strict investigation, opium shall be found, he will offer no objection to
the seizure and confiscation of the cargo."
The British expedition arrived at the mouth of the Canton River in the
month of June, 1840. It consisted of 4,000 troops on board twenty-five
transports, with a convoy of fifteen men-of-war. If it was thought that
this considerable force would attain its objects without fighting and
merely by making a demonstration, the expectation was rudely disappointed.
The reply of Commissioner Lin was to place a reward on the person of all
Englishmen, and to offer $20,000 for the destruction of an English man-of-
war. The English fleet replied to this hostile step by instituting a close
blockade at the mouth of the river, which was not an ineffectual retort.
Sir Gordon Bremer, the commander of the first part of the expedition, came
promptly to the decision that it would be well to extend the sphere of his
operations, and he accordingly sailed northward with a portion of his
force to occupy the island of Chusan, which had witnessed some of the
earliest operations of the East India Company two centuries before.
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