aty of Nankin--Opium Trade
fixed on China.

The principal advantage possessed by Hong-Kong--I shall designate the
settlement henceforth by the name assigned to it by common consent--is
the facility its position affords for carrying on the trade in opium,
which deleterious drug will continue to be introduced into China, in
spite of the strongest imperial edicts, and the severest denouncements
of punishment against its consumers, so infatuated are its users, and so
governed by the spirit of avarice its introducers.

After the celebrated destruction of all he could get possession of, by
Commissioner Lin, in June, 1839, which operated somewhat like the
Frenchman's revenge upon the bank, in destroying the bill for which he
had been refused specie, not only having to be paid for by the Chinese,
after an expensive war, but causing other imports of the drug to supply
its place; the English, naturally seeking a safe and suitable spot for a
depot, arranged so as to make its cession an article in a treaty with
High Commissioner Keshen, in January, 1841, which, although it was
abrogated, and hostilities resumed, made but little difference in the
destinies of Hong-Kong, for it is well known that wherever that nation
plants its foot, the marks of it are not easily obliterated. There can
be little doubt but that this was what gave the barren island more
importance in their eyes, than the more healthy and fertile Chousan.

The cession made, their great desire to procure an emigration of Chinese
to this point, proved a wish for consumers and distributors, and the
stationing at once of receiving ships in the Red Harbor, disclosed their
object.

In answer to orders, from Bombay and Calcutta came numerous vessels
which here deposited their poisonous cargoes, and returning for another
freight, left it to be distributed by swift-sailing and armed clippers,
throughout the dominions of an empire whose laws they had signed a
solemn compact to respect, which laws made its delivery contraband.

"But," will exclaim some, "these were not the acts of the British
Government. The crown lends no aid to such a traffic." Indeed! then let
us say that it is the act of the people of a colony under the fostering
care of that crown, with the representative of the Queen directing its
affairs. To his lordship's knowledge, I will not say to his profit, but
certainly to the pecuniary benefit of the colony, and against the most
repeated protests of the Ch