Captain Elliot's Proceedings Were Marked By The
Inconsistency That Springs From Ignorance.
The more influential English
merchants, touched by the appeal to their moral sentiment, or impressed by
the depravity of
Large classes of the Canton population, of which the
practice of opium-smoking was rather the mark than the cause, set their
faces against the traffic in this article, and repudiated all sympathy and
participation in it. The various foreign publications, whether they
received their inspirations from Mr. Gutzlaff or not matters little,
differed on most points, but were agreed on this, that the trade in opium
was morally indefensible, and that we were bound, not only by our own
interests, but in virtue of the common obligations of humanity, to cease
to hold all connection with it. Those who had surrendered their stores of
opium at the request of Captain Elliot held that their claim for
compensation was valid, in the first place, against the English government
alone. They had given them up for the service of the country at the
request of the queen's representative, and, considering the line which
Captain Elliot had taken, many believed that it would be quite impossible
for the English government to put forward any demand upon the government
of China. 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!
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