the Committee, though by no means approving of the opium traffic, gave it as their opinion that it did not seem advisable to abandon so important a source of revenue in the East India Company's monopoly of opium in Bengal.
Captain Elliot, the Government's representative in China, personally abhorred the opium trade, root and branch, and did not diguise his views either in his relations with the merchants in Canton or in his communications to the Government. He stated the perfect truth when he wrote to Lord Palmerston (November 16, 1839) that, if his private feelings were of the least consequence upon questions of a public and important nature, he might assuredly and justly say that no man entertained a deeper detestation of the disgrace and sin of this forced traffic on the coast of China; that he saw little to choose between it and piracy; and that in his place, as a public officer, he had steadily discountenanced it by all the lawful means in his power, and at the total sacrifice of his private comfort in the society in which he had lived for years. But he also stated perfect truth, and in this respect Chinese history supports him, when he wrote to Lord Palmerston (February 2, 1837), that the opium trade commenced and subsisted only by reason of the hearty concurrence of the Chief Authorities of the southern provinces of China and indeed also of the Court at Peking; that no portion of the foreign trade to China more regularly paid its entrance duties than this opium traffic; and that the least attempt to evade the fees of the Mandarins was almost certain of detection and severe punishment. Captain Elliot further stated, on the same occasion, that a large share of these emoluments reached not merely the higher dignitaries of the Empire, but in all probability, in no very indirect manner, the Imperial hand itself. The fact that, for centuries past, the principal trade revenue office at Canton (that of the Hoppo) has always been, as it still is, the monopoly of officers of the Imperial Household, lends force to this surmise. But what prevented Elliot's taking official proceedings against the opium trade, which he personally loathed, was the same consideration
