there were
about 20,000 chests of opium stored in these hulks. In that same year the
Chinese emperor sent a powerful and able official named Lin Tse-hsu from
Peking to Canton with orders to put down the traffic at any cost.
Commissioner Lin was a man of unusual force. He perfectly understood the
situation in so far as it concerned China. He had his orders. He knew what
they meant. He proposed to put them into effect. There was only one
important consideration which he seems to have overlooked--it was that
India "needed the money." His proposal that the foreign agents deliver up
their stores of "the prohibited article" did not meet with an immediate
response. The traders had not the slightest notion of yielding up 20,000
chests of opium, worth, at that time, $300 a chest. Lin's appeals to the
most nearly Christian of queens, were no more successful. He did not seem
to understand that China was a long way off; it was very close to him.
Here is a translation of what he had to say. To our eyes to-day, it seems
fairly intelligent, even reasonable:

"Though not making use of it one's self, to venture on the manufacture and
sale of it (opium) and with it to seduce the simple folk of this land is
to seek one's own livelihood by the exposure of others to death. Such acts
are bitterly abhorrent to the nature of man and are utterly opposed to the
ways of heaven. We would now then concert with your 'Hon. Sovereignty'
means to bring a perpetual end to this opium traffic so hurtful to
mankind, we in this land forbidding the use of it and you in the nations
under your dominion forbidding its manufacture."

Her "Hon. Sovereignty," if she ever saw this appeal (which may be
doubted), neglected to reply. Meeting with small consideration from the
traders, as from their sovereign, Commissioner Lin set about carrying out
his orders. There was an admirable thoroughness in his methods. He
surrounded the residence of the traders, Captain Elliot's among them,
with an army of howling, drum-beating Chinese soldiers, and again proposed
that they deliver up those 20,000 chests. Now, the avenues of trade do not
lead to martyrdom. Traders rarely die for their principles--they prefer
living for them. The 20,000 chests were delivered up, with a rapidity that
was almost haste; and the merchants, under the leadership of the agent,
withdrew to the doubtful shelter of their own guns, down the river.
Commissioner Lin, still with that exasperatingly thorough