One hundred" years ago,"nearly to a day, the Imperial High Commissioner, Lin Tse-lis, started a train of events of which the reverberations are still being felt to this day. When on March 18, 1839, he issued his famous edict at Canton ordering the surrender of all the English-owned opium, he could have little imagined the tremendous re~ percussions this act of his was to have on the future of his country and of the Manchu Dynasty. Least of all could' he have im= gained that it would be the direct cause of opening the country to foreign intercourse, which was the one thing of all others that desired to prevent.
Commissioner Lin, as he was called by foreigners, arrived at Canton on his fateful mission on a Sunday morning, March 10, at half past eight. One of the few foreigners to see his arrival gives the following ac~ count He was seated on board a large official boat, with a few red and blue bution Mandarins standing a little to the rear, so. that we had an excellent view of him personally. He had a dignified air, rather a harsh or. firm expression, was a large, corpulent mon, with heavy black moustache and long beard, and appeared to be about sixty years of age. His own boat was followed by a great many others on the sides of which, on a black ground, were painted in gold letters the rank St. the principal occupants, while flags of various colours were displayed abaft.
3 ly. dressed in-new uniforms fof red trimmed with white, and conical rat tan hats of the same colours. These boats contained the principal offers of the city, civil and military, from the Viceroy to the Superintendent of the Salt Department.
The walls of the Red Fort, nearly opposite the factories on the Honam shore, were tined with soldiers, as were those of the "Dutch arrayed in bright new uniforms. Both river, every door and window, and every spot of standing ground, were Uhlek with people, Everyone was observing the novel scene quietly and as curiously as ourselves, No other boat of any description Was moving. about; all' were ying close to the shores. and a Universal silence prevailed.
besides my companions and myself, not a oreign barbarian" was to be seen' in the vast gathering.
The Commissioner, whatever his faults, had the courage of, his convictions, and be~ fore many hours had passed had made it clear to the officials of Canton and to the Chinese Security Merchants that this time the meant business and that the opium trade was going to be put an end to.
On March 18 he issued an edict ordering that all stocks of opium on board the supply ships at Lintin Island were to be surrender~ ed, and that foreigners were to sign a bond undertaking to discontinue the trade opium under penalty of death. In order to enforce his commands, he stopped all ship~ ping up and down the river, put " cordon of troops round the factories—the compounds in which the foreign communities ived—and cut off all food supplies and vice, Under this threat of starvation and possibly worse, the British community had no alternative but to surrender their stocks of opium, which was completed by May 23. Thereupon the Commissioner withdrew the blockade restrictions and graciously announced that trade could be continued.
Much to his surprise and annoyance, however, the English barbarians now turned sulky and refused to play ball. They embarked on their ships, left Canton and withdrew to Macao and, when they were turned out of there, to the then-bare island of Hongkong, and instituted a trade boycott of Canton, This was not quite the disciplining. of the English barbarians that Commissioner Lin had hoped for, and so he set forth to complete his task. There ensued, as a re~ sult, several months of wrangling with creasingly sharper demands from the Chinese side and indignant protests from the English, with ever-growing irritation, until the two countries had gradually drifted into war, Much nonsense of the Pecksniffian kind has been written by anti-Imperialists about this so-called Opium War. Even today you will find such writers insisting that, as Commissioner Lin called on the English merchants to hand over their opium, they were the only ones who had been dealing in the drug, and secondly that the British Government fought the war for the purpose. of foreing opium on an unwilling China. Both statements are entirely devoid of truth. In the first place, as a matter of fact, the Americans were just as involved, in the opium trade, as were the English, only to a lesser amount, corresponding with their! very much smaller share of the total trade. Gri this question Commissioner Lin himself! is a good witness, who stated that, as re gards the trading' in opium by the Ameri-. cans, French and Hollanders, "it has not been less than that of the English." While an American businessman, Mr. W. C, Hunter, who was in Canton at the time and himself took a hand in the trade says quite
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.