to bring in opium except
open Port, to refrain
from
an
from expanding what is fiscally
a small matter,
into an
· international question
The interference with the Macao trade in opium, all of which passes in retail from Hongkong, with the privileges which the opium farmer has paid large sums to secure, may bring it down the Hongkong fort upon the matter. It has attracted, I know, the attention of Mr. Hennessy
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food. Hennessy, but as yet I have heard nothing from him regarding it.
Were the question reopened,
We might possibly be asked why We have ignored the claims of China, well known to us.
9
I say possibly, rather than probably. Still there are always neutral observers, as when Sir D. Forsyth's Mission was sent to Yarkand, to point out that the Sovereign rights of China have been overlooked by England.