1842.
Adams' Lecture on the War with China,
231
carry on a foreign trade." And yct, because every one has a right to buy, and every one an equal right to refuse to sell, therefore every nation, having exclu- sively, or in preference to all other considerations, regard to its own interest, has a right to interdict all commerce with other nations. Here is a manifest inconsistency between the two principles. The vital principle of commerce is reciprocity; and although in all cases of traffic, each party acts for himself and for the promotion of his own interest, the duty of each is to hold commercial intercourse with the other-not from exclusive or paramount consideration of his own interest, but from a joint and equal moral consideration of the interests of both. If the object of any particular traffic is advantageous to one party, and injurious to the other, then the party suffering has an unquestionable right to interdict the trade, not from exclusive or paramount consideration of his own interest, but because the traffic no longer fulfills the condition which makes commercial intercourse a duty. The fundamental principle of the Chinese empire is anti-commercial. It is founded entirely upon the second and third of Vattel's general principles, to the total exclusion of the first. It admits no obligation to hold commercial intercourse with others. It utterly denies the equality of other nations with itself, and even their independence. It holds itself to be the centre of the terraqucous globe, equal to the heavenly host, and all other nations with whom it has any relations, politi- cal or commercial, as outside tributary barbarians reverently submissive to the will of its despotic chief. It is upon this principle, openly avowed and inflexibly maintained, that the principal maritime nations of Europe for several centuries, and the United States of America from the time of their acknowledged indepen- dence, have been content to hold commercial intercourse with the empire of China. It is time that this enormous outrage upon the rights of human nature, and upon the first principle of the rights of nations, should cease. These principles of the Chinese empire, too long connived at and truckled to by the mightiest Christian nations of the civilized world, have at length been brought into conflict with the principles and the power of the British empire; and I cannot forbear to express the hope that Britain, after taking the lead in the abolition of the African slave trade and of slavery, and of the still more degrading tribute to the Barbary Afri can Mohammedans, will extend her liberating arm to the farthest bound of Asia, and at the close of the present contest insist upon concluding the peace on terms of perfect equality with the Chinese empirc, and that the future commerce shall be carried on upon terms of equality and reciprocity between the two communities, parties to the trade, for the benefit of both, each retaining the right of prohibition and of regulation, to interdict any article or branch of trade injurious to itself, as, for example, the article of opium; and to secure itself against the practices of fraudulent traders and smugglers.
This is the truth, and 1 apprehend the only question at issue between the go. vernments and nations of Great Britain and China. It is a general, but I believe altogether mistaken opinion, that the quarrel is merely for certain chests of opium imported by British merchants into China, and scized by the Chinese government for having been imported contrary to law. This is a mere incident to the dispute; but no more the cause of the war, than the throwing overboard of the tea in Boston harbor was the cause of the North American revolution.
The cause of the war is the pretension on the part of the Chinese, that in all their intercourse with other nations, political or commercial, their superiority must he mmplicitly acknowledged, and manifested in humiliating forms. It is not credit.
36
VOL. XI NO V