their quaint Orientalism, they boiled down to the simple
principle that China recognized no law of earth or heaven which could
force her to admit foreign traders, foreign ministers, or foreign
religions if she preferred to live by herself and mind her own business.
That China has minded her own business and does mind her own business is,
I think, indisputable.

The notions which animated the English were equally simple. Stripped of
their quaint Occidental shell of religion and respectability and theories
of personal liberty, they seem to boil down to about this--that China was
a great and undeveloped market and therefore the trading nations had a
right to trade with her willy-nilly, and any effective attempt to stop
this trade was, in some vague way, an infringement of their rights as
trading nations. In maintaining this theory, it is necessary for us to
forget that opium, though a "commodity," was an admittedly vicious and
contraband commodity, to be used "for purposes of foreign commerce only."

In providing that there should be a "lasting peace" between the two
nations, it was probably the idea to insure British traders against
attack, or rather to provide a technical excuse for reprisals in case of
such attacks. But for some reason nothing whatever was said about opium in
the treaty. Now opium was more than ever the chief of the trade. England
had not the slightest notion of giving it up; on the contrary, opium
shipments were increased and the smuggling was developed to an
extraordinary extent. How a "lasting peace" was to be maintained while
opium, the cause of all the trouble, was still unrecognized by either
government as a legitimate commodity, while, indeed, the Chinese, however
chastened and humiliated, were still making desperate if indirect efforts
to keep it out of the country and the English were making strong efforts
to get it into the country, is a problem I leave to subtler minds. The
upshot was, of course, that the "lasting peace" did not last. Within
fifteen years there was another war. By the second treaty (that of
Tientsin, 1858) Britain secured 4,000,000 taels of indemnity money (about
$3,000,000), the opening of five more treaty ports, toleration for the
Christian religion, and the admission of opium under a specified tariff.
The Tientsin Treaty legalized Christianity and opium. China had defied the
laws of trade, and had learned her lesson. It had been a costly
lesson--$24,000,000 in money, thou