Can't have always been the main obstacles to an extended peaceful intercourse, it is plain that every reasonable means should be adopted to win its confidence and abate its fears.
I may now venture, My Lord, upon the momentous question of Countenancy Opium at Hong Kong as connected with the prospects of a revenue for that Colony. It is the experienced effect of the opium Shaughai trade to render all other trade languishing with it.
My numerous despatches, and those of Capt. Elliot, in the Blue Book of the Session of 1840, all bear witness to this - with every temptation that may exist to make opium a subject of revenue for Hong Kong (after it has already been taxed in India), if it can be shown that the trade in that drug has always flourished most when left to itself in its own floating warehouses; if our opium merchants would naturally prefer an untaxed trade out of Hong Kong, to a taxed trade in it; if the tendency, at least, of the tax would be to make them evade our duty, as well as the Chinese prohibition; and its still worse tendencies would be to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the late Treaty of Peace and...