perfect
tranquillity what the Duke of Wellington thought that it would have been
right to do in a time of trouble.

And now, Sir, I come to the fourth charge, the only real charge; for
the other three are so futile that I hardly understand how the right
honourable Baronet should have ventured to bring them forward.
The fourth charge is, that the Ministers omitted to send to the
Superintendent orders and powers to suppress the contraband trade, and
that this omission was the cause of the rupture.

Now, Sir, let me ask whether it was not notorious, when the right
honourable Baronet was in office, that British subjects carried on an
extensive contraband trade with China? Did the right honourable Baronet
and his colleagues instruct the Superintendent to put down that trade?
Never. That trade went on while the Duke of Wellington was at the
Foreign Office. Did the Duke of Wellington instruct the Superintendent
to put down that trade? No, Sir, never. Are then the followers of the
right honourable Baronet, are the followers of the Duke of Wellington,
prepared to pass a vote of censure on us for following the example of
the right honourable Baronet and of the Duke of Wellington? But I am
understating my case. Since the present Ministers came into office, the
reasons against sending out such instructions were much stronger than
when the right honourable Baronet was in office, or when the Duke of
Wellington was in office. Down to the month of May 1838, my noble friend
had good grounds for believing that the Chinese Government was about
to legalise the trade in opium. It is by no means easy to follow the
windings of Chinese politics. But, it is certain that about four years
ago the whole question was taken into serious consideration at Pekin.
The attention of the Emperor was called to the undoubted fact, that the
law which forbade the trade in opium was a dead letter. That law had
been intended to guard against two evils, which the Chinese legislators
seem to have regarded with equal horror, the importation of a noxious
drug, and the exportation of the precious metals. It was found, however,
that as many pounds of opium came in, and that as many pounds of silver
went out, as if there had been no such law. The only effect of the
prohibition was that the people learned to think lightly of imperial
edicts, and that no part of the great sums expended in the purchase
of the forbidden luxury came into the imperial treasury. These
cons