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Government refused to give satisfaction, an imperial edict declared all the trade rights of the English as void and abolished, threatening with dire punishment the subjects of all other nations who would attempt to continue to import English goods into China.—John Bull, (national personification of England) who thus felt wounded in his most sensative spot, the money-bag, declared the edict as casus belli. At the instigation of the "East India Company" there appeared a strong English fleet of thirty-five men-of-war and seventy-five transports, which blockaded first of all the harbor of Canton and the island of Tshousan opposite Ningpo. In 1841 the fleet shelled the forts around the Bocca Tigris, and also the cities of Amoy, Tshinghai, Ningpo, Tshapu, Shanghai and Tshingkiang. When the English made ready to also bombard Nanking, the Chinese Government, to save this Southern capital from destruction, sued for peace. China was forced to pay $21,000,000 in war indemnity and cede Hongkong as well as open the harbors of Amoy, Futchou, Ningpo and Shanghai to the English trade. The most humiliating of the conditions forced upon the Chinese Government was that the latter had to revoke the edict against the opium trade. And moreover the English inserted the following paragraph into the treaty: "English smugglers shall be exempt from all punishment except the confiscation of such goods as are real contraband." And further: "British subjects and ships as well as Chinese subjects who have fled aboard British vessels shall be under English—not Chinese jurisdiction." After the "East India Company" had thus thrust, by force, the opium upon the Chinese and opened gate and door to lawlessness it turned with might and main to the profitable Opium-trade. How successful the Company was in her endeavors is evidenced by the statement in the Encyclop. Brit. that the Opium import into Chinese ports amounted in 1850 to 52,925 picul at 133 lbs. and increased in 1880 to 96,839 picul or 12,911,866 lbs. which resulted from this enormous consumption of Opium. Europeans have often enough described the terrible effects which resulted from this enormous consumption of Opium. The English physician Willamson, who, in 1874 with his own eyes, saw the ravages caused by the use of Opium in Southern China, branded the Opium import "as the greatest outrage of the 19th Century, which had destroyed already the health and welfare of over ten million people." He writes: "The Chinese Government still hopes to stop further importation of Opium; and it is the wish of all well meaning foreigners that it may succeed. The Government is afraid of the further distribution of the narcotic. And this is the chief reason, why it is opposed to build railroads and permit free intercourse with the interior
