When Commissioner Lin Resorted To Force And Violence
Some Years Later The Auspicious Moment For Expelling All Foreigners Had
Passed Away, And The Weakness Of The Government Contributed In No Small
Degree To This Result.
Taoukwang, although his claims as occupant of the
Dragon Throne were unabated, could not pretend to the power of a great
ruler like Keen Lung, who would have known how to enforce his will.
For
was it possible after 1834 to continue the policy of uncompromising
hostility to all foreign nations whose governments had become directly
interested in, and to a certain extent responsible to, their respective
peoples, for the opening of the Chinese empire to civilized intercourse
and commerce. Up to this point Taoukwang's only experience of the
pretensions of the foreign powers had been the Amherst mission, in the
time of his father, which had ended so ignominiously, and the Russian
mission which arrived at Pekin every ten years to recruit the Russian
college there, and to pay the descendants of the garrison of Albazin the
sum allotted by the czar for their support. But from these trifling
matters Taoukwang's attention was suddenly and completely distracted to
the important situation at Canton and on the coast, the settlement of the
questions arising out of which filled the remainder of his reign.
CHAPTER XVII
THE FIRST FOREIGN WAR
AT the very time that the Emperor Taoukwang, by the dismissal of the
Portuguese astronomers at Pekin and by his general indifference to the
foreign question, was showing that no concessions were to be expected from
him, an unknown legislature at a remote distance from his capital was
decreeing, in complete indifference to the susceptibilities of the
occupant of the Dragon Throne, that trade with China might be pursued by
any English subject.
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