had been imitated farther north, the Emperor would have had no cause for serious anxiety at all, and the island pirates would have been reduced to impotence; that, therefore, it is unfair to lay all the blame on him, instead of on the unpreparedness in the north, and the cowardice afterwards shown at Canton. Moreover, Lin earnestly recommended that foreigner should be got to fight foreigner after the fall of Ting-hai, and that the integrity of our possessions should be maintained, and the three millions at Canton spent upon ships and guns. What a pity his advice was not tried!———Wei Yüan agrees with the popular verdict that trade should not have been stopped, but with the reservation that opium should not have been included any more in the trade, and that steps should have been taken to prevent the English from taking advantage of the weakness of China's maritime preparations to act as Hideyoshi[1] once acted in Corea and Koxinga[2] in Formosa. Wei Yüan here reads a lecture upon the subject of not interfering with the man at the wheel, or with the driver of the coach who is entrusted with the reins: but this literary effort of his in no way concerns the story, and is omitted from this translation.
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