He Wished To Achieve The Complete Humiliation Of The Foreigners, And Nothing Less Would Satisfy Him.

Within a week of his arrival at Canton he issued an edict denouncing the opium trade; throwing all the

Blame for it on the English, and asserting what was absolutely untrue; viz., that "the laws of England prohibited the smoking of opium, and adjudged the user to death." The language of the edict was unfriendly and offensive. The Europeans were stigmatized as a barbarous people, who thought only of trade and of making their way by stealth into the Flowery Land. At the same time that he issued this edict he gave peremptory orders that no foreigner was to leave Canton or Macao until the opium question had been settled to his satisfaction. Even then English merchants and officials, who felt no great sympathy with the opium traffic, saw that these proceedings indicated an intention to put down the trade in other articles, and to render the position of foreigners untenable. Lin's demands culminated in the request for all stores of opium to be surrendered to him within three days. By the efforts of some of the merchants about a thousand chests were collected and handed over to the Chinese for destruction; but this did not satisfy Lin, who collected a large rabble force, encamped it outside the settlement, and threatened to carry the place by storm. In this crisis Captain Elliot, who had declared that his confidence in the justice and good faith of the provincial government was destroyed, and who had even drawn up a scheme for concentrating all his forces at Hongkong, called upon all the English merchants to surrender to him, for paramount considerations of the lives and property of every one concerned, all the stores of opium in their possession. 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. Not only did Commissioner Lin and the Canton authorities claim the right to condemn and punish British subjects, but they showed in the most insolent manner that they would take away their liberty and lives on the flimsiest and falsest pretext. Captain Elliot, weak and yielding as he was on many points, declared that "this law is incompatible with safe or honorable continuance at Canton." Apparently the Chinese authorities acted on the assumption that so long as there remained even one offending European the mass of his countrymen ought to be hindered in their avocations, and consequently petty restrictions and provocations continued to be enforced. Then Captain Elliot, seeing that the situation was hopeless and that there was no sign of improvement, took the bold, or at least the pronounced, step of ordering all British subjects to leave Canton or to stay at their own peril. It was on this occasion that he explained away, or put a new interpretation on, his action with regard to the opium surrendered for destruction, which most of the merchants thought represented an irrecoverable loss. It will be best to give the precise words used in his notice of the 22d of May, 1839. "Acting on behalf of her Majesty's Government in a momentous emergency, he has, in the first place, to signify that the demand he recently made to her Majesty's subjects for the surrender of British-owned opium under their control had no special reference to the circumstances of that property; but (beyond the actual pressure of necessity) that demand was founded on the principle that these violent compulsory measures being utterly unjust _per se_ and of general application for the enforced surrender of any other property, or of human life, or for the constraint of any unsuitable terms or concessions, it became highly necessary to vest and leave the right of exacting effectual security and full indemnity for every loss directly in the queen." Unfortunately, Captain Elliot's language at the time of the surrender of the opium had undoubtedly led to the conclusion that he sympathized with Commissioner Lin, and that he took the same view as the Chinese officials of the moral iniquity of selling or using opium. 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.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 96 of 188
Words from 96827 to 97834 of 191255