More Than 20,000 Chests, Of An
Estimated Value Of $10,000,000, Were Placed At His Disposal, And In Due
Course Handed Over By Him To Commissioner Lin For Destruction.
This task
was performed at Chuenpee, when the opium was placed in trenches, then
mixed with salt and lime, and finally poured off into the sea.
After this
very considerable triumph, Lin wrote a letter to Queen Victoria - whose
reign has witnessed the most critical periods of the China question and
its satisfactory settlement - calling upon her Majesty to interdict the
trade in opium forever. The letter was as offensive in its tone as it was
weak in argument, and no answer was vouchsafed to it. Before any reply
could be given, the situation, moreover, had developed into one of open
hostilities.
But great as were the concessions made by Captain Elliot, in consequence
of the threatening attitude of Commissioner Lin, the Chinese were not
satisfied, and made fresh and more exacting demands of those who had been
weak enough to make any concession at all. They reasserted their old
pretension that Europeans in China must be subject to her laws, and as the
sale of opium was a penal offense they claimed the right to punish those
Englishmen who had been connected with the traffic. They accordingly drew
up a list of sixteen of the principal merchants, some of whom had never
had anything to do with opium, and they announced their intention to
arrest them and to punish them with death.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 358 of 704
Words from 97128 to 97381
of 191255