Opium in China / extracted from China; political, commercial, and social.

  • Robert Montgomery Martin
Date:
[1847?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Opium in China / extracted from China; political, commercial, and social. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    enormous expense ? A single typhoon, or one blaze of fire, and tliey are forthwith overwhelmed by the billows, or they sink amid the consuming element! These are all things very likely to hap¬ pen ! What better plan then, than at once to deliver up your opium, and to reap enjoyments and rewards by so doing? “ Fourthly. You ought to make a speedy delivery of your opium by reason of the necessity of the case. Ye foreigners from afar, in coming hither to trade, have passed over an unbounded ocean; your prospect for doing business depends entirely on your living on terms of harmony with your fellow-men, and keeping your own station in peace and quietness. Thus may you reap solid advantage, and avoid misfortune ! But if you will persist in selling your opium, and will go on involving the lives of our foolish people in your toils, there is not a good or upright man whose head and heart will not burn with indignation at your conduct; they must look upon the lives of those who have suf¬ fered for smoking, and selling the drug as sacrificed by you; the simple country folks and the common people must feel anything but well pleased, and the wrath of a whole country is not a thing easily restrained: these are circumstances about which ye cannot but feel anxious ! The men who go abroad are said to adhere bigotedly to a sense of honour. Now our officers are every one of them appealing to your sense of honour, and on the contrary we find (to our amazement) that ye have not the slightest particle of honour about you ! Are ye quite tranquil and composed at this ? And will ye yet acknowledge the necessity of the case or not ? Moreover, viewing it as an article which ought never to be sold at all, and more especially considering that it is not permitted to be sold at this present moment, what difficulty should you make about the matter? why feel the smallest regret to part with it ? Still further, as ye do not consume it in your own country, why bootlessly take it back ? If you do not now deliver it up to the government, pray what will be the use of keeping it on hand! After having once made the delivery of it, your trade will go on flourishing more abundantly than ever! Tokens of our regard will be heaped on you to overflowing. I, the high com¬ missioner, as W'ell as the governor, and lieutenant-governor, can¬ not bear the idea of being unnecessarily harsh and severe, therefore, it is that, though I thus weary my mouth, as it were, entreating and exhorting you, yet do I not shrink from the task ! Happiness, and misery, glory and disgrace, are in your own hand ! Say not that I did not give you early wrarning thereof! A special procla¬ mation, to be stuck up before the foreign factories.” “ Taoukwan, 19th year, 2nd month, 12th day. [March 26tli, 1839.]39 Commissioner Lin might as well have preached to the winds, as to the opium smugglers voluntarily to give up the drug. At six o’clock in the morning of the day following this edict