meditated by the Chinese, they have recurred
to some old historical tradition (perhaps fabulous, perhaps not), of an
emperor, Tartar or Chinese, who, rather than submit to terms of
equitable reciprocity in commercial dealings with a foreign nation, or
to terms implying an original equality of the two peoples, caused the
whole establishments and machinery connected with the particular traffic
to be destroyed, and all its living agents to be banished or beheaded.
It is certain that, in the contemplation of special contingencies likely
to occur between themselves and the British, the high mandarins dallied
at intervals with this ancient precedent, and forbore to act upon it,
partly under the salutary military panic which has for years been
gathering gloomily over their heads, but more imperatively, perhaps,
from absolute inability to dispense with the weekly proceeds from the
customs, so eminently dependent upon the British shipping. Money, mere
weight of dollars, the lovely lunar radiance of silver, this was the
spell that moonstruck their mercenary hearts, and kept them for ever
see-sawing--

'Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike.'

Now, upon this--a state of things suspected at times, or perhaps known,
but not so established as that it could have been afterwards pleaded in
evidence--a very grave question arose, but a question easily settled:
had the Chinese a right, under the law of nations, to act upon their
malicious caprice? No man, under any way of viewing the case, hesitated
in replying, '_No_.' China, it was argued, had possessed from the first
a clear, undoubted right to dismiss us with our business unaccomplished,
_re infecta_, if that business were the establishment of a reciprocal
traffic. In the initial stage of the relations between the two powers,
the field was open to any possible movement in either party; but,
according to the course which might be severally pursued on either side,
it was possible that one or both should so act as, in the second stage
of their dealings, wilfully to forfeit this original liberty of action.
Suppose, for instance, that China peremptorily declined all commercial
intercourse with Britain, undeniably, it was said, she had the right to
do so. But, if she once renounced this right, no matter whether
_ex_plicitly in words, or silently and _im_plicitly in acts (as if, for
example, she looked on tranquilly whilst Great Britain erected elaborate
buildings for the safe hou