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after our two wars with China are sufficiently remarkable. By the first treaty we gained a trade of L2,000,000; by the second of L3,500,000 annually. In our commercial dealings with the Chinese we have to deal not only with "the obstructive policy of the mandarins, but also the passive and unconscious resistance of a people of stagnant ideas, of very limited enterprise, and possessing only primitive means of inter-communication."[132] For a further development of our commercial intercourse, Medhurst goes on to say, two things are wanting:--1st, access to new markets by having new ports opened and by procuring a right to navigate inland waters, and to improve the means of communication; 2nd, a full and frank acknowledgment by the Chinese at all the ports of the right of foreign goods to be covered and protected from inland dues by transit passes. Some such concessions the anti-opiumists would have us demand; but these benevolent protestors against forcing the Chinese forget that concessions of this kind, wrung from an unwilling people, would be far more galling than any importation of opium, which it is quite clear, even to them, that they need not buy if they do not wish it. Moreover, the important point seems to have been overlooked, that _India_ would lose her revenue, while the gain from increased intercourse would be wholly on the side of _England_. As it is, the native community in India can hardly believe that there is not a selfish motive at the bottom of this agitation in England, and, should this last proposal be carried out, we could hardly blame them if they pointed to this as a proof that their suspicions were well founded. We may here briefly notice[133] Li Hung Chang's latest proposal, that he should farm or purchase the monopoly of all the Indian opium; with the intention, he would no doubt himself say, of getting the control of the trade into his own hands, and limiting the import, just as on a previous occasion, in a communication to the Anglo-Opium Society, he asserted that the only object of the Chinese authorities in taxing opium was in the past, as it would be in the future, the desire to repress the traffic. Considering, then, the sudden abolition of the opium traffic as practically out of the question, and leaving out of sight the undoubtedly possible, though not likely, gradual cessation of the trade between India and China owing to the competition of the native drug, it only remains for us to
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