The Emperor Taoukwang Rewarded Him With The Important
Viceroyship Of The Two Kiang, The Seat Of Which Administration Is At
Nankin.
But the limit of endurance had been reached, and the British government
was on the point of taking decisive action at the very moment when the
Chinese triumph seemed most complete and unthreatened.
Even before the
action of the home authorities was known in the Bogue the situation had
become critical, and the sailors in particular had thrown off all
restraint. Frequent collisions occurred between them and the foreigners,
and in one of them a Chinaman was killed. Commissioner Lin characterized
this act as "going to the extreme of disobedience to the laws," and
demanded the surrender of the sailor who committed the act, so that a life
might be given for a life. This demand was flatly refused, and in
consequence of the measures taken by the Chinese at Lin's direction to
prevent all supplies reaching the English, Captain Elliot felt bound to
remove his residence from Macao to Hongkong. The Chinese called out all
their armed forces, and incited their people along the Canton River to
attack the foreigners wherever found. An official notice said, "Produce
arms and weapons; join together the stoutest of your villagers, and thus
be prepared to defend yourselves. If any of the said foreigners be found
going on shore to cause trouble, all and every of the people are permitted
to fire upon them, to withstand and drive them back, or to make prisoners
of them." This appeal to a force which the Chinese did not possess was an
act of indiscretion that betrayed an overweening confidence or a singular
depth of ignorance. When the mandarins refused to supply the ships with
water and other necessaries they carried their animosity to a length which
the English naval officers at once defined as a declaration of open
hostilities. They retaliated by ordering their men to seize by force
whatever was necessary, and thus began a state of things which may be
termed one of absolute warfare. The two men-of-war on the station had
several encounters with the forts in the Bogue, and on November 3, 1839,
they fought a regular engagement with a Chinese fleet of twenty-nine junks
off Chuenpee. The Chinese showed more courage than skill, and four of
their junks were sunk. It is worth noting that the English sailors
pronounced both their guns and their powder to be excellent. While this
action deterred the Chinese fleet from coming to close quarters, it also
imbittered the contest, and there was no longer room to doubt that if the
Chinese were to be brought to take a more reasonable view of foreign trade
it would have to be by the disagreeable lesson of force. And at the end of
1839 the Chinese were fully convinced that they had the power to carry out
their will and to keep the European nations out of their country by the
strong hand.
A short time after the action at Chuenpee an Englishman named Mr. Gribble
was seized by the Canton officials and thrown into prison. The English
men-of-war went up the river as far as the Bogue forts, which they
threatened to bombard unless he was released; and, after considerable
discussion, Mr. Gribble was set free, mainly because the Chinese heard of
the large force that was on its way from England. Before that armament
arrived the Emperor Taoukwang had committed himself still further to a
policy of hostility. A report of the fight at Chuenpee was duly submitted
to him, but the affair was represented as a very creditable one for his
commander, and as a Chinese victory. The misled monarch at once conferred
a high honor on his admiral, and commanded his officers at Canton "to at
once put a stop to the trade of the English nation." This had, practically
speaking, been already accomplished, and the English merchants had taken
refuge at Macao or in their ships anchored at Hongkong.
Before describing the military operations now about to take place, a
survey may conveniently be taken of events since the abolition of the
monopoly, and it may be pardonable to employ the language formerly used.
From an impartial review of the facts, and divesting our minds, so far as
is humanly possible, of the prejudice of accepted political opinions, and
of conviction as to the hurtful or innocent character of opium in the
mixture as smoked by the Chinese, it cannot be contended that the course
pursued by Lord Napier and Captain Elliot, and particularly by the latter,
was either prudent in itself or calculated to promote the advantage and
reputation of England. 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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