any ships smuggling opium may be confiscated with their cargoes:" i.e. they dared not ask for either the opium indemnity or for Hongkong, as had been promised to them by K‘ishen. Yang Fang ordered them back out of the Bogue; to which Elliot replied:—"The ships will retire when the Decree authorizing trade is received;"—which was duly reported to the Throne by Iliang and Yang Fang.
The enemy was now at our gates; our soldiers were routed, the people flying, and we had no arms; and so there was no other way of obtaining a truce and the retirement of the enemy but by temporarily giving way: and, as neither the opium indemnity nor a port was demanded, China could have done so with much better grace than before K‘ishen's degradation. This is the sixth turning-point in Canton affairs.
Yang Fang, on his way to Canton, had heard that peace was likely to be made; so that, in order to back up K‘ishen in anticipation, and secure his own position, he had separately recommended to the Emperor that a "haven for stowage should be granted," which proposal had considerably shaken the Emperor's confidence in him. And now, as he did not take the ground in his reports that the pirates had since been admitted, that he had been defeated, and that some compromise was necessary to get rid of the foe; nor the ground that the foreigners were by this time awe-stricken, that China's dignity had been
