so vast and so new an undertaking great
difficulties occurred. In the first place, all importation of that
commodity is rigorously forbidden by the laws of China. The impropriety
of a political trader, who is lord over a great empire, being concerned
in a contraband trade upon his own account, did not seem in the least to
affect them; but they were struck with the obvious danger of subjecting
their goods to seizure by the vastness of the prohibited import. To
secure the larger adventure, they require of the China factory that
Colonel Watson's ship should enter the port of Canton as an _armed
ship_, (they would not say a ship of war, though that must be meant,)
that her cargo should not be reported; they also ordered that other
measures should be adopted to secure this prohibited article from
seizure. If the cargo should get in safe, another danger was in
view,--the overloading the Chinese market by a supply beyond the demand;
for it is obvious that contraband trade must exist by small quantities
of goods poured in by intervals, and not by great importations at one
time. To guard against this inconvenience, they divide their second,
though the smaller adventure, into two parts; one of which was to go to
the markets of the barbarous natives which inhabit the coast of Malacca,
where the chances of its being disposed of by robbery or sale were at
least equal. If the opium should be disposed of there, the produce was
to be invested in merchandise salable in China, or in dollars, if to be
had. The other part (about one half) was to go in kind directly to the
port of Canton.

The dealing at this time seemed closed; but the gentlemen who chartered
the ships, always recollecting something, applied anew to the board to
be furnished with cannon from the Company's ordnance. Some was
delivered to them; but the Office of Ordnance (so heavily expensive to
the Company) was not sufficient to spare a few iron guns for a merchant
ship. Orders were given to cast a few cannon, and an application made to
Madras, at a thousand miles' distance, for the rest. Madras answers,
that they cannot exactly comply with the requisition; but still the
board at Bengal _hopes_ better things from them than they promise, and
flatter themselves that with their assistance they shall properly arm a
ship of thirty-two guns.

Whilst these dispositions were making, the first proposer, perceiving
advantages from the circuitous voyage of the second which had escape