The references to Alcock's services are so frequent in these letters, so unconventional and spontaneous, as to prove the deep and lasting impression the young surgeon had made on his companions in arms. "I am glad for all your sakes to tell you that my wounds have healed in an extraordinary manner.... I consider myself greatly indebted to Alcock both for his skill and attention." And at the close of the Portuguese campaign: "I wonder if Alcock knows that he has got the decoration of the Tower and Sword? No man in the service deserves it more, both for bravery and kindness to the wounded." "The scarcity of medicines was dreadful; but with the active and willing assistance of Alcock, and the Portuguese medical gentlemen, it is quite wonderful what has been accomplished."

The bad condition of the hospitals at Oporto is the burden of many references in both Shaw's letters and Hodges' more formal narrative; and as the only records of the campaign from Alcock's own pen happen to be in official documents connected with the medical service, we give in extenso one of his despatches, showing in an inexperienced boy of twenty-three a maturity of judgment and a broad grasp of duty, with, what is perhaps more important, a mastery of work, that would not discredit a veteran.

As the campaign in defence of the Queen of Portugal closed, that in defence of the Queen Christina of Spain opened, and their rough experiences in the former did not deter either Colonel Shaw or Surgeon Alcock from accepting service in the Spanish Legion organised and commanded by De Lacy Evans. "On my arrival in London," writes Shaw in 1836, "you may suppose how delighted I was to find my friend Alcock at the head of the medical department, as his experiences in difficulties made him decidedly the most proper man." As it is no part of our plan to trace the operations, we give one characteristic letter from Colonel Shaw. It is dated San Sebastian, 2 o'clock, May 6, 1836:—

And as an agreeable pendant to the severe strictures on the state of the Portuguese hospitals, the following may fitly close our extracts from these racy records of arduous military adventure:—

Mr Alcock retired from military service in 1837 with the rank of Deputy-Inspector of Hospitals, having received the Order of the Tower and Sword together with the war medal of the three years' service in Portugal, and the Cross of the Order of Charles III. and Commander's Cross of Isabella the Catholic, with medals for the two principal actions against the Carlists.

The six years of Peninsular experiences he declared to have been "the most stirring and attractive of his life," and in some portions of that period he had "more complete personal gratification and material happiness than could be safely anticipated in the future." He was now to have six years of quite a different experience, which led up to the turning-point in his life.

III. ENGLAND, 1838-1844.

Returns to England, 1838—Alcock resumes professional work—Prize essays and publications—Sir James Paget's testimonial—A Commissioner for adjusting Peninsular claims—Appointed Inspector of Anatomy, 1842—Imperfections of the Anatomy Act—Marriage to Miss Bacon, 1841—His enforced abandonment of a surgical career.

On his return to England in 1838 Alcock at once resumed the work of his profession. In that year he published in a small 8vo volume 'Notes on the Medical History and Statistics of the British Legion of Spain'; and in 1839, and again in 1841, he carried off the Jacksonian prizes of the Royal College of Surgeons awarded for the best essays on subjects selected by the Council. The first of these was "On Concussion or Commotion of the Brain"; the second, "On Injuries of the Thorax and Operations on its Parietes"; and naturally the value of the papers lay in the extent to which the author was able to draw on his own observation and experience of gunshot wounds during his seven years of Peninsular service.

Of these contributions to medical literature Sir James Paget remarks that "they may make one regret that he was ever induced to give up the study of surgery. For they show an immense power of accurately observing and recording facts, and of testing his own and others' opinions by the help of all the knowledge of the facts possessed by others at that time.... I doubt whether in the first half of this century better essays on gunshot wounds of the head and of the thorax had been written."

And the small volume dealing with hospital experiences in Spain has drawn from the same eminent authority the comment that "it tells in a most graphic and clear manner the difficulties which, sixty years ago, beset the practice of surgery and the care of troops during war. These difficulties may have been greater at that time in Spain than in any other country in Western Europe, and may be thought now impossible, but they may be read with great interest, and one cannot doubt that Sir Rutherford Alcock's true account of them helped to remedy them, ... contributed to the improvement of the medical department of the army in this country."

Mr Alcock joined the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society in 1839, and was appointed Lecturer in Surgery at Sydenham College, where he delivered a series of lectures on complicated injuries, amputations, &c.

His professional labours were soon diversified by an employment which could scarcely have been consistent with a large practice, though in the beginning of his surgical career it might not seem to involve much sacrifice except of time. But it was arduous, onerous, and absolutely gratuitous. Great trouble had arisen between the Spanish Government and the Foreign Legion in regard to pay. No settlement could be obtained, and eventually a commission was appointed to examine and adjudicate the numerous claims, to which commission Mr Alcock was appointed by express and unanimous request of the general and the field officers of the corps. His qualifications for such an office were quite exceptional, for to first-rate business capacity, which had been shown in the campaign, he added a knowledge of the language and the country which was not common, and a character which commanded universal confidence. His work on this commission extended over two years, and was brought to a satisfactory termination in 1839.

No sooner were the labours of the Spanish commission concluded than Mr Alcock was, in 1840, appointed by the Foreign Office to a similar duty in an Anglo-Portuguese commission constituted by the two Governments to adjust the claims of British subjects who had served in the Miguelite war of 1832-35. The work of that commission also was satisfactorily accomplished in 1844, and, as in the Spanish commission, Mr Alcock's labours were given without remuneration, in order, as he said, that his judgment might be unbiassed.[2]

During the course of the Spanish commission Mr Alcock was, in 1842, appointed, on the strong recommendation of Sir Benjamin Brodie, to a post under the Home Office, that of Inspector of Anatomy. It would be distasteful and of no utility to rake up the circumstances which set on foot an agitation culminating in the passing of an Act of Parliament in 1832 known as "The Anatomy Act." Like many other Acts of legislature in this country, it was a compromise by which difficulties were sought to be evaded by cunningly devised phrases whereby the thing that was meant was so disguised as to appear to be something else. "The Act failed in two most important points; it failed in honesty, and was wanting in the extent of the powers conferred." In short, after ten years' trial the Act was becoming unworkable, and a reform in its administration was imperatively demanded. It was at that critical moment that Mr Alcock was nominated as one of the two inspectors under the Act, and he entered on his duties with his well-proved practical energy. Before the end of the first year a long and interesting report was sent in by the inspectors, and we may judge by the sample of the Hospital Report in Oporto how thoroughly they exposed the difficulties and how practically they proposed to overcome them. A second report followed in 1843. But Government is a lumbering machine, always waiting for some stronger compulsion than a mere demonstration of what ought to be; and we are not surprised, therefore, to find fifteen years later, and fourteen after his connection with the Home Department had ceased, Mr Alcock still writing the most lucid and matter-of-fact memoranda on the conditions under which competent inspectors might be induced "to work a very imperfect Act of Parliament."

It was during the period under review that the most interesting episode in a young man's life occurred. On the 17th of May 1841, when he had just completed his thirty-second year, he was married to Miss Bacon, daughter of the sculptor of that name. The ceremony took place at St Margaret's, Westminster, Dean Milman, then a Canon of Westminster, officiating. His domestic bliss was unruffled, the couple being profoundly congenial.

But now "a change came o'er the spirit of his dream." The career which opened before the young surgeon was full of promise. So far as the personal factor was concerned, no man could have started with a better equipment. There were efficiency, thoroughness, enthusiasm, courage, and common-sense; there were, as we have seen in the student days, manual dexterity and exactness and artistic power of no contemptible order; there was, in short, every attribute of an accomplished surgeon, who must in the course of nature rise to eminence. A chair of military surgery was ready for him at King's College, and an assistant-surgeonship at Westminster Hospital. All that, however, had to be sacrificed and a new departure taken, in consequence of an illness which left its mark in the form of paralysis of hands and arms, and thus put an end to "all dreams of surgical practice."

This malady was a legacy from the Peninsula. Like Cæsar, "he had a fever when he was in Spain," a rheumatic fever of a particularly severe type contracted at the siege of San Sebastian. This entailed indescribable pain and misery during many months, and, in spite of partial recoveries, seems to have left its after-effects seven years later in what he calls the "mysterious" affection in his hands. It was indeed considered remarkable that he should have survived an attack of so formidable a character. He never recovered the use of his thumbs, which marred the legibility of his writing to the end of his life.

His professional career being thus rudely closed, it might well have appeared to a man of thirty-five that his life was shipwrecked ere the voyage was well begun. It would have been in accord with the short-sighted judgment which men usually form of their own fortunes. But

and Alcock learned, what many before and since have learned, that prosperity and adversity oft visit men in disguise, and are liable to be mistaken the one for the other. Providence employs for its favourites an alchemy whereby the very ashes of their misery may be transmuted into pure gold; and what looks like disaster is but the rending of the veil which concealed a world of richer promise than that which they abandon with regret.

CHAPTER II.

SENT TO CHINA.

Importance of appointment—New position created by Treaty of Nanking—Exceptional responsibility of the new consuls—The evolution and scope of foreign intercourse—Pioneer traders—Mutual experiences of Chinese and foreigners—Results—English inheritors of the record—An intolerable state of things—Drastic remedy—Where it failed—Chasm between Eastern and Western ideas—Commerce alone supplied a safe medium of intercourse—Its healing qualities—But social and political concomitants created friction—Arbitrary interferences of Chinese Government—Their traditional mode of treating barbarians—Denial of human rights—Absence of law in their intercourse—Spasmodic resistance to Chinese tyranny aggravated the evils—East India Company submitted for the sake of gain—Close of the Company's charter—Followed by endeavour of British Government to establish official intercourse—Determined resistance of Chinese—Lord Napier, first British envoy, not received—Loaded with insults—Contradictory instructions given by British Government—To conciliate Chinese as in days of Company, and at same time to open diplomatic relations—Lord Napier's appeal to experience—His death at Macao—Captain Ellis, a third envoy, reverts to the policy of submission—Has no success.

When thus thrown upon his beam-ends in 1844, an appointment was conferred on Mr Alcock which was not only honourable to him but creditable to the Government which selected him. He was among the five chosen to fill the office of consul in China under the treaty of Nanking, which had been concluded in 1842. And if any event in human life be deserving of such distinction, the opening thus provided for the talents of Mr Alcock is on many grounds entitled to rank as providential. To the end of his days he himself recognised that his previous training had not been thrown away, but "had been unconsciously preparing him for the great work of his life." The Minister responsible for the appointment may be excused if, while selecting a man of proved capacity for a post of unknown requirements, he did not realise the full value of the service he was rendering to his country. Governments are not always so perspicacious in gauging the merits of the uncovenanted, and other nominations made under circumstances not dissimilar have shown how easily the efficiency of the candidate may be subordinated to considerations extraneous to the public weal.

The China consulates were a new creation, a venture into the unknown, a voyage without landmarks or chart, where success depended on the personal qualities of the pioneer navigators—their judgment, resourcefulness, and faculty of initiative. Great issues hung upon the opening of the new world of the Far East, the success of which was largely in the hands of the agents who were employed, for they were practically beyond the reach of instructions. There was no telegraph, and the so-called Overland Route to India was just beginning to be exploited for the conveyance of mails and passengers. Nor was it possible for even the wisest Government to frame general instructions providing for eventualities out of the range of common experience. The conditions of service were therefore such as to constitute an ordeal under which a bureaucratic official would shrivel into uselessness or worse, while to a strong man they were a powerful stimulant, the very breath of life.

It was therefore a matter of serious consequence who should be intrusted with the actual inauguration of the new relations with China; and in the course of the present narrative it will probably appear that it was a happy accident by which the country lost one distinguished surgeon among many and gained in exchange a political representative whose services must be considered unique.

FOREIGN RELATIONS WITH CHINA.

To understand fully the state of our relations with China created by the treaty of Nanking, the whole history not only of our own commercial intercourse, but of that of the nations who were our forerunners in the Far East, would have to be kept in mind. For much as we tried and hoped then, and ever since, to confine the international question to a few bald propositions respecting trade, personal protection, and so forth, it is impossible to eliminate the historical, the human, and the general political elements from the problem. For both good and evil we are the necessary outcome of our own antecedents, as are the Chinese of theirs, and if we had acquired a stock of experience of the Chinese, no less had they of us; indeed, if we fairly consider the matter, theirs was the more comprehensive. For to the Chinese we represented not ourselves alone, nor the East India Company, nor a generation or two of timid traders, but Christendom as a whole—our Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch precursors, the Romish propaganda, and all the abortive missions to Peking.

For three centuries and more what may be called the foreign education of the Chinese had been proceeding: their habits were being formed in so far as their dealings with strangers were concerned, and their judgment was being trained by the authentic data with which they had been plentifully supplied. European intercourse, in short, had been one long lesson to the Chinese in the art of managing men from the West. Without meaning it, we had been teaching them how to treat us, just as we train animals to perform tricks; and the worst we can say of the Chinese is that they have bettered the instruction, to their loss perhaps as well as ours.

In the chronicles of that long history there are many deeds worthy of remembrance, as well as many of another hue, neither being confined to one side. There were good and bad among the early adventurers, as there are at all times in every other section of mankind. Of two brothers, for example, connected with the very early times, the first comer ingratiated himself with the Chinese, and left such a good impression behind him that the second was received with open arms: very soon, however, he abused the liberality of the natives, committing outrages upon them, which led ultimately to his forcible expulsion from the country and to restrictions on the outlets for trade. Taking it as a whole, the record of the pioneers in China is rather a despicable one, in which violence, cupidity, and cowardice formed large ingredients.

The English, as latest comers, being served heirs to the turpitudes of all Europe, paid the penalty for the misdeeds and shortcomings of their predecessors and their neighbours, as well as for their own. The penalty was the intolerable degradation they had been made to endure, with ever-increasing aggravation, at the only port where they were permitted to trade—Canton.

As there are forms of impurity which can only be cleansed by fire, so there was no possible remedy for the miseries of Anglo-Chinese intercourse short of open war. The hostilities begun in 1839, and brought to a conclusion by the treaty of Nanking in 1842, were naturally held as a drastic liquidation of long-standing grievances and the harbinger of a new era of peace and mutual respect. Why even the decisive and one-sided war should have proved an inadequate solvent of the perennial strife may partly appear as our story proceeds.

The chasm between the Chinese and the Western world, as then represented by Great Britain, was in fact much too deep to be bridged over by any convention. Intercommunion between bodies so alien was as the welding of heterogeneous metals, contact without fusion. From one point of view, indeed, circumstances were highly favourable to a sympathetic attachment, for there is no safer medium of intercourse between nations than the commerce which blesses him that buys and him that sells. It was the pursuit of commerce alone that drew men from afar to the Asiatic coasts, and the reciprocal desire on the part of the natives which opened for the strangers, be it ever so little, the gates of the Chinese empire. The purely commercial relation left little to be desired on the side of mutual goodwill. The impression of it left on the mind of old residents in Canton is thus recorded by Mr W. C. Hunter, an American merchant, who lived there from 1824: "From the facility of all dealings with the Chinese who were assigned to transact business with us, together with their proverbial honesty, combined with a sense of perfect security to person and property, scarcely a resident of any lengthened time—in short, any 'Old Canton'—but finally left them with regret."

Mr Hunter goes further and testifies to the "vigilant care over the personal safety of strangers who came to live in the midst of a population whose customs and prejudices were so opposed to everything foreign."

Why, then, was it that on the ground-level of common material interest, and under the sunshine of the protection spontaneously accorded by authority, the parties failed in two hundred years to evolve between them a modus vivendi? The solution of this riddle can only be found in a patient survey of events both before and after the war.

It would carry us far beyond our limits even to summarise the history of foreign intercourse with China. Nor is such a task necessary, since our concern lies mainly with those later developments which culminated in the war of 1839-42, a glance at which seems essential to any fair appreciation of the sequel.

That there was no material cause of difference between the Chinese Government and people on the one hand and the foreign traders and their representatives on the other was made manifest by the persistence and continuous growth of their mutual commerce. And their common appreciation of the advantages of the trade is shown by the readiness of each in turn to resort to the threat of stopping business as a means of pressure on the other side. It is not therefore the substance, but the accidents and conditions, of the intercourse that generated the friction which led through outrage to reprisals; and the two conditions most fruitful in conflict were the necessary absence of law and the inevitable incomprehension of each others status.

Left to themselves, the traders on either side, though without law, would have been a law to themselves, both parties having been habituated to a discipline of custom more potent within its sphere than any code, commercial or penal. But as no problem in life can ever be isolated, so in this case the twofold interference of the State and the populace constantly obstructed the genial flow of commercial intercourse.

The interference of the Chinese bore no resemblance to the restrictions imposed on trade by Western Governments, for these, even when most oppressive, are usually specific and calculable. There is a tariff of duties, there are harbour and police regulations, and there are the laws of the land. The peculiarity of the Chinese official supervision of foreign trade was that it was incalculable and arbitrary, governed by cupidities and jealousies, and subject to individual caprice. Having barbarians to deal with, the Chinese authorities followed the maxims of their ancient kings and "ruled them by misrule, which is the true and the only way of ruling them." And finding the barbarians submissive, they grew accustomed to practise on them such indignities as a wanton schoolboy might inflict on a captive animal, unrestrained by any consideration save the risk of retaliation. The Chinese had no conscience to be shocked by the persecution of foreigners, for in relation to them justice and injustice were meaningless terms. Such arrogance was not so much the result of any formulated belief as of a traditional feeling lying at the bottom of their moral conceptions; and just as the Chinese people to-day speak of foreigners, without consciousness of offence, as "devils," so did the best educated officials in the days before the war sincerely regard strangers as an inferior, if not a degraded, race. As late as 1870 a British representative writing to the Chinese Prime Minister complained that "the educated class, both by speech and writing, lets the people see that it regards the foreigner as a barbarian, a devil, or a brute." And there has been no change since except what is enforced by prudence. To the absence of law in their intercourse was therefore superadded a special negation of human rights, naturally accompanied by an overbearing demeanour on the side of the natives. The strangers were in effect outlawed. The attempts made from time to time to assert their independence resembled the spasmodic kicking of the ox against the goad which led rather to aggravation than amelioration of the pain. The prevailing tone was that of submission, inviting more and more aggression, until the cup overflowed and war ensued.

If we ask how it could happen that Britons of any class came to submit to such ignominy, the only answer forthcoming is that they did it for the sake of gain. And if, further, we try to press home the responsibility to any particular quarter, there is very little doubt that the principal blame must be laid at the door of the East India Company, which ruled and monopolised the English trade with China until the expiration of their charter in 1834. The Board of Directors in Leadenhall Street demanded remittances, and cared nothing for the indignities which their distant agents might be forced to undergo in order to supply these demands. "The interests at stake were too valuable to be put at issue upon considerations of a personal nature, ... and the Court leave the vindication of the national honour to the Crown." Such was their unchanging attitude. The agents on their side, balancing the pros and cons, concluded that at any cost they must retain the favour of the omnipotent Board. By this course of procedure the prestige which would have protected British subjects from outrage was bartered away; the Chinese were induced by the subservience of the Company's officers to practise constantly increasing insolence, and small blame to them. The demeanour of the Company's representatives was that of men carrying out instructions against their better judgment. Occasionally, indeed, their judgment got the better of their instructions, and they would attempt to make a stand for their rights. A case occurred in 1831 when new restrictions on the export of silver were imposed by the Chinese authorities. Mr H. H. Lindsay, head of the Company's committee, resented the proceeding, and threatened to stop the trade. In the event, however, the committee gave way, and in token of surrender delivered the keys of their factory to a Chinese mandarin.

The process which had been consecrated by time naturally did not stop when the principal cause of it was removed. It continued uninterrupted after the monopoly of the Company had ceased. Indeed the case became much aggravated when the British agents, beginning with Lord Napier, became representatives of the Crown instead of the Company. And so little was the position understood by the authorities in Great Britain that, yielding to considerations of convenience, they appointed some of the very men whom the Chinese had been long accustomed to treat with contumely to be the representatives of the King. But the Chinese had a true presentiment of the nature of the changes which this new departure threatened. They had learned from Captain Weddell, Commodore Anson, and others what were the pretensions of the commander of a Kings ship; and then justly inferred that a King's representative would stand on a wholly different footing from a Company's superintendent. They resolved, therefore, to nip in the bud every effort to open international relations, employing to that end all the weapons which were familiar to them. The viceroy of Canton not only declined communication with the British envoy, but imprisoned him and intercepted his letters, so that a naval force was required to release him from captivity. Yet it was not malevolence but policy that guided the hand of the Chinese authorities—the settled policy of keeping foreigners at arm's-length at all costs.

The rule of conduct enjoined by the British Government on the first representatives of the Crown in China was emphatically conciliation, as in the time of the East India Company and its superintendents. They were to "cautiously abstain from all unnecessary use of menacing language, or from making any appeal for protection to our military or naval force (except in extreme cases), or to do anything to irritate the feelings or revolt the opinions or prejudices of the Chinese people." That article of the "Sign-manual Instructions to the Superintendents of Trade in China" was faithfully carried out; while the one ordering the envoy to "take up your residence at the port of Canton" could not be obeyed because the Chinese provincial authorities placed their veto on it. The conciliatory demeanour of the British representative was met by the refusal, accompanied by the grossest insults, of the Chinese to receive or acknowledge him. And not by insults only, such as perverting the phonetic rendering of his name by the substitution of characters bearing odious meanings, and by various indignities offered to his person, but by interference with his domestic servants, and even cutting off his food-supply, did they coerce him into abandoning his post at Canton. Their conduct evoked the opinion from Lord Napier, in reporting the incidents to his Government, that "the viceroy of Canton was guilty of an outrage on the British Crown calling for redress," which drew from the Duke of Wellington (February 2, 1835) the chilling comment that "it is not by force and violence that his Majesty intends to establish a commercial intercourse between his subjects and China, but by the other conciliatory measures so strongly inculcated in all the instructions which you have received." Lord Napier's despatches prove that he understood the situation perfectly. "What advantage or what point did we ever gain," he wrote, "by negotiating or humbling ourselves before these people, or rather before their Government? The records show nothing but subsequent humiliation and disgrace. What advantage or what point, again, have we ever lost that was just and reasonable, by acting with promptitude and vigour? The records again assure us that such measures have been attended with complete success." And he recommended his Government "to consult immediately on the best plan to be adopted for commanding a commercial treaty, or a treaty which shall secure the just rights and embrace the interests, public and private, of all Europeans,—not of British alone, but of all civilised people coming to trade according to the principles of international law."

Driven to death by Chinese official barbarities, and by the discouragement of his own Government, Lord Napier was succeeded first by one then by another of the East India Company's old staff, who could only maintain themselves by sinking their character as British national envoys and submitting to the indignities which the Chinese more than ever delighted in imposing on them, increasing in virulence in proportion as the resistance to them grew weaker.

The line of policy inculcated upon Lord Napier was, in fact, scrupulously followed after his death, notably by Captain Charles Elliot, the third in succession, who received the King's commission in 1836. That officer indeed went far beyond his instructions in his efforts to conciliate the Chinese; for though repeatedly ordered by Lord Palmerston to communicate with the authorities direct, and not through the Hong merchants;[3] and not to head his communications with the word "petition"; and notwithstanding his own reiterated opinion in the same sense, Captain Elliot entirely yielded to the Chinese pretensions. He communicated through the Hong merchants, and explicitly received the "commands" of the authorities with "reverence." As was natural, the more he conceded the more was exacted from him, until conciliation reached the point of exhaustion and there was nothing left to give up. Matters had nearly reached this stage when the British envoy could thus address the Governor of Canton (through the Hong merchants) in 1837: "The undersigned respectfully assures his Excellency that it is at once his duty and his anxious desire to conform in all things to the imperial pleasure." The result of this extreme humility was that Captain Elliot was forced to strike his flag at Canton and withdraw to the Portuguese settlement of Macao, on the ground that he was unable to maintain intercourse with the authorities on the conditions prescribed for him by her Majesty's Government.

CHAPTER III.

ANTECEDENTS OF THE WAR.

I. THE OPIUM TRADE.

Its increase caused alarm to Chinese Government by throwing the balance of trade against China—English manufacturers deplored the same fact—Drain of silver—Government opposition to the importation of opium—Official participation in the trade—The reign of sham—Illustrated by Mr Hunter—Captain Elliot volunteers to prevent smuggling—Rebuffed by Canton authorities—The principal patrons of the opium trade—Imperial Government and the opium traffic—Proposals to legalise it—The Empress—Commissioner Lin appointed to suppress trade—His uncompromising proceedings at Canton—Imprisonment of the foreign merchants, and of the British envoy—Surrender of opium by Captain Elliot.

Commerce itself had also for some time been a source of disquietude, and it is an interesting circumstance that it was the same feature of it which caused anxiety to both sides. The balance of trade was against China, which in the year 1838 had to provide bullion to the amount of upwards of £2,000,000 sterling to pay for the excess of imports over exports. English manufacturers deplored the fact that the purchasing power of China was restricted by the paucity of her commodities suitable for foreign markets, while the Chinese authorities saw with genuine alarm a yearly drain of what they deemed the life-blood of their national wealth; for not only was silver and gold bullion exported in what to them were large amounts, but the vessels which brought raw cotton and opium from India were frequently ballasted for the return voyage with the copper coinage of the country. Crude, arbitrary, and quite ineffectual devices were resorted to by the Chinese for the arrest or mitigation of the leakage of the precious metal. Opium, being the commodity which the people most imperatively demanded, was always paid for in hard cash, while ordinary merchandise might be bartered against Chinese produce. It is not therefore difficult to understand how, without prejudice to moral or political considerations, the article opium should have become so conspicuous a factor in the agony which preceded the war.

In characterising the relations then subsisting between the Chinese and foreigners as lawless, it is not meant that China is a country governed without law, although it is true that even in the purely domestic administration of the State legality is systematically travestied. But in connection with foreign relations, and almost as a necessity of the case, every trace of legality was obliterated in practice, and the merchants were constantly entangled in a labyrinth of illusions and pitfalls. No regulation was, or was ever intended to be, carried out as promulgated; it was generally something quite different that was aimed at, and it is literally true that the law was more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

Many Chinese eagles swooped on the carcass of foreign trade; various authorities competed for the spoil; and the constantly changing orders were often merely stratagems by which one set of officials sought to steal an advantage over another. The rules of the game were perfectly understood, and the loftiest professions of public duty were the invariable concomitant of the most corrupt practice.

The two principal trade authorities in Canton were the viceroy of the two provinces, and the hoppo, who held an independent commission from Peking as superintendent of the customs. Smuggling was of course systematic. Though there were severe dormant laws against it whereby unwary individuals might on occasion be entrapped, yet the practice was openly carried on in every department of traffic, its chief patrons being the viceroy and the hoppo. The importation of opium was officially prohibited, but no branch of trade was so effectually protected. The depot ships lay in what was regarded as the outer waters of China—that is, the archipelago in the estuary of the Canton river. But the drug was brought to land in the viceroy's own boats and to his profit. The traffic was conducted under a fluctuating arrangement between the native merchants and the authorities, the latter taking frequent occasion to pick quarrels with the former in order to have a pretext for extortion. The fees levied upon the opium-dealers were divided among the officials, but they could never trust each other to deal fairly in the distribution of the takings. By way of check on sharp practice a Chinese war-vessel was in the habit of visiting the receiving ships, taking from them an account of their deliveries, and at the same time making a small levy for the commanders personal behoof, for which a formal receipt was granted.

A new hoppo came to Canton in 1837, and, as had been the custom with his predecessors, he inaugurated his commission by issuing drastic edicts, in concert with the viceroy, against the sale of opium, even going through the form of arresting some of the dealers. This demonstration, like all that had gone before, was merely intended to cover a heavier exaction than had yet been levied. The dealers and boatmen refused the terms, and by way of protest the latter burned their boats. Whereupon the two high officers built boats of their own, which, with the Government ones already employed in the business, brought the whole of the opium to Canton. In this manner was the trade resumed after a temporary stoppage caused by the strike of the dealers and boat-owners against the extortions of the viceroy and hoppo. Nor was there ever any secret in Peking respecting these proceedings. Indeed the occasion of any high official travelling to the capital was always marked by a great enhancement of the market price of opium, of which the official or his retinue invariably carried a large quantity for sale there. This circumstance was published in the trade circulars printed in Canton, without the least concealment of the name of the mandarin under whose protection the drug was transported. The hoppo was, and still is, an imperial protégé, and it was, and is still, perfectly understood that he divides the proceeds of his Canton harvest with his patrons. It is for that purpose that he receives the appointment. And this was a trade proscribed under extreme penalties by imperial edict! It is needless to trace the network of elusion in which the administrative ingenuity of Chinese officialdom was exercised, and the specimen given above may be taken as typical of the system. "Nevertheless, during the year 1838 very serious and determined measures began to be adopted by the Chinese authorities, directed generally against the trade in opium; and imperial edicts threatened death as the punishment for both the dealers in and smokers of the drug."

It is hardly possible outside of China to realise the systematic make-believe under which public affairs are carried on.