this particular juncture. Lord Napier, overcome by the heat and the strain of the negotiations, became seriously ill. The situation, consequently, did not receive the amount of attention which its importance demanded. The outcome of the negotiations with the authorities was an arrangement which enabled the Chinese to completely turn the tables on the British representatives. It was decided that the frigates should be withdrawn, and that Lord Napier should go to Macao to recruit. The step, in any event, was a measure of weakness, but as it was carried out it was a positive humiliation. Instead of proceeding as he should have done to Macao in one of the frigates, Lord Napier took passage in a native craft provided by the Chinese authorities. The Chinese, seizing the opportunity which the carelessness of the British offered, took good care to make the most of "the barbarian eye." He was represented as a prisoner of offended Chinese authority who was being sent in disgrace to Macao. The journey was prolonged in every possible way, and all sorts of minor indignities were heaped upon Lord Napier's head. When the British Superintendent did arrive at Macao he was in a state of such extreme prostration that he took to his bed and died within a fortnight. His body was interred with military honours in the Protestant cemetery at Macao, but the remains were afterwards exhumed and taken to England to find a final resting place on his native soil. This deplorable episode in British relations with China did not end with Lord Napier's death. The Emperor, on hearing of the advance of the frigates to Canton, degraded the Mandarins responsible for permitting the outrage upon Chinese authority. Afterwards, on receiving a report that Lord Napier had been driven out and the British warships "dragged over the shallows and expelled" he revoked the edict and restored most of the Mandarins. In gratitude for favours received, and in order to show that their zeal had not abated, the Chinese authorities carried their crusade against the British intruders to Macao. The Governor of that place put a number of his subordinates to the torture "to ascertain if they had been guilty of illicit connexion with the foreigners," and on his instructions several natives who had printed some papers for Lord Napier were severely bambooed and thrown into prison. Of all the blunders committed by the British in their dealings with the Chinese the thrusting of Lord Napier upon the Chinese authorities, and the acquiescence in his subsequent ignominious treatment were possibly the greatest. The mismanagement and feebleness shown in this connection gave strength to the reactionary influences in China at this period, and led to a state of affairs from which there was no outlet but war.
CHAPTER VII.
The Opium Traffic—Commissioner Lin's Campaign at Canton against the Trade—Imprisonment of the Superintendent of Trade and Merchants at the British Factory—Surrender of Opium and its destruction by Lin's orders—Withdrawal of the British to Macao and subsequently to Hongkong—Unsuccessful attack by the Chinese Fleet on the British Ships in Hongkong Harbour.
(From Allom and Wright's "China.")
Before the events narrated in the concluding portion of the last chapter had reached their tragic consummation a new factor had come into prominence to add bitterness to the relations between the Chinese Government and the British trading community. This disturbing agency was, it may be readily surmised, the opium trade. For a great many years before this period the drug had been imported into China. There are traces of the traffic well back into the eighteenth century. Until 1773 the traffic was in the hands of the Portuguese who annually imported 200 chests from Goa. Then English merchants engaged in the trade in a desultory fashion until 1781, when the East India Company took the sale of the drug into their own hands. Thereafter the traffic developed considerably. Indeed, the Chinese had become so addicted to the opium habit by 1796 that the Emperor acting at the instigation of the Canton Viceroy, "an upright, bold and rigid minister," issued a strongly worded rescript expressive of his "deep regret that the vile dirt of foreign countries should be received in exchange for the commodities and money of the Empire," and expressing fear "lest the practice of smoking opium should prevail among all the people, to the waste of their time and the destruction of their property." This denunciation was followed at irregular intervals by other edicts even more emphatic in language. But the trade increased in spite of the imperial fulminations. Their only perceptible effect was to drive the operations to a certain extent underground. The opium came in in sufficient quantity to satisfy demands, but it came in not as an ordinary import but as a contraband on which a corrupt officialdom levied a heavy toll. In the first instance the smuggling transactions were carried through at Macao, but the rapacity of the Portuguese drove the trade to the island of Lintin. There the drug was stored in armed ships and delivered to the Chinese runners on written orders from the Canton merchants to whom the money for the drug had previously been paid. Such was the perfection of the arrangements that the trade was prosecuted with the utmost smoothness, and as the nineteenth century advanced it underwent a marvellous expansion. The following figures illustrate the position as it developed in the period antecedent to Lord Napier's arrival:—
| Year. | Chests. | Dollars. | Total Dollars. | |
| 1821 | 4,628 | average price | 1,325 | 6,122,100 |
| 1825 | 9,621 | average" price" | 723 | 6,955,983 |
| 1830 | 18,760 | average" price" | 587 | 11,012,120 |
| 1832 | 23,670 | average" price" | 648 | 15,338,160 |
Thus in eleven years the importation increased fivefold. This enormous development attracted anew the notice of the Chinese Government to the habit which from the time of the Emperor Kienlung's edict had been fitfully condemned. Practical rather than moral considerations probably influenced
