Directory_and_Chronicle_1842 — Page 422

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Review of Public Occurrences During the

Aud.

note to the governor, dated at Macao, on the 23d March, and a copy of which reached the keunmin fú on the same day, by the avowal of the chief pilot whose duty it was to deliver it, I would ask, upon what admissible principle the govern- ment could make a prisoner of me? It was my fixed purpose, my lord, when I left Macao, to afford every reasonable satisfaction concerning the immediate with- drawal of this property, unquestionably drawn here by a long course of encourage. mont on the part of this government; and either to cause the merchants of my country, engaged in trade at Canton, to make solemn promises that they would abstain from connection with the opium traffic in future, or myself, on the part of her majesty's government, to undertake that no reclamation should be made if they were forthwith expelled.

“I must confess, that I had contemplated these gravest responsibilities with intense uneasiness; but for the sake of the considerations I have noticed, and mindful of the character of the trade, I should not have shrunk from them, if I could have drawn from this government reasonable securities for the future, and moderate explanations concerning the past, But, my lord, when I arrived at Whampoa, on the 24th ultimo, and learnt that this intemperate man had abso- lutely begun to work out the dark threats involved in his edicts, against the mer- chants of my country; I saw that there was no hope of accommodation by such nieans as I had considered. His purposes were plain; and it was my clear duty to let them reach me, and not the merchants acting principally for absent men, and therefore wholly incapable of taking consentaneous courses, or any other than those which would lead to separate and ruinous surrenders of all this immense mass of property.

"The surrender of the property at the first public summons was founded upon the clear perception, that the demand without alternative of any kind, under the circumstances of strictest and most unprovoked restraint, faithfully described in my public no ice of March 30th (See Chi. Rep. vol. VII., p. 633), was an act of forcible spoliation of the very worst description, justly leaving to her majesty the right of full indemnity and future security. The situation of this peculiar property has been entirely altered by the high commissioner's proceedings; and his con- tinuance of the state of restraint, insult, and dark intimidation, subsequently to the surrender, has certainly classed the whole casc amongst the most shameless violences which one nation has ever yet dared to perpetrate against another. It is not by measures of this kind that the Chinese government can hope to put down a trade, which every friend to humanity must deplore; great moral changes can never be effected by the violation of all the principles of justice and moderation. The wise course would have been to make the trade shameful, and wear it out by degrees in its present form. The course taken will change the manner of its pursuit at once, cast it into desperate hands, and with this long line of unprotected coast, abounding in safe anchorages, and covered with defenceless cities, I fore. see a state of things terrible to reflect upon.

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Perhaps, indeed, the chief mischief of the actual proceedings, is the evil feel. ing of revenge they will unquestionably produce in the minds of the class of men, otherwise disposed to engage in the traffic for the mere love of gain; they will seem to justify, in the consciences of such persons, every species of retaliation. Indeed, I fcel assured, that the single mode of saving the coasts of the empire from a shocking character of warfare is interference of her majesty's government for ne just vindication of all wrong, and the effectual prevention of crime and wretch-