in which he says: "I take the liberty likewise to suggest the expediency of this government now taking the opium trade to China under its own management, and consigning the whole quantity that may be required for that market to the company's supercargoes at Canton." This proposal was accompanied by an offer of his ship, the "Nonsuch," to take the opium to China. His offer was accepted, and soldiers, cannon, and medical stores supplied by the company. A contract was also made with one Mr. Thornhill, the same year, to take 1,490 chests of opium to the Straits of Malacca and to China, and he sailed in advance of Colonel Watson, with 22 guns (six-pounders) and 100 men. These were nothing less than bold smuggling adventures, deliberately entered into by the government of British India; for said government was then entirely in the hands of the East India Company, the officials at Calcutta receiving their orders from the directors of the company in England.

This smuggling enterprise was, however, very unsuccessful. One of the vessels was seized by the French, and the cargoes which reached China became the source of great embarrassment to the company's supercargoes there, who say to their superiors in Calcutta, "The importation of opium being strongly prohibited by the Chinese Government, and a business altogether new to us, it was necessary to take our measures with the utmost caution." They then show how they were obliged, after protracted secret negotiations with two of the hong merchants, to accept the low price of $210 a chest. The Court of Directors in London, very properly, condemned the expedition, saying, "Under any circumstances it is beneath the company to be engaged in such a clandestine trade; we therefore hereby positively prohibit any more opium being sent to China on the company's account." The Governor-General of India at the time was the notorious Warren Hastings, and this opium-smuggling enterprise was under his direction. Among the charges on which he was tried by the House of Commons in 1786 was one on this subject, accusing him of causing a loss of $100,000 to the company; and affirming

That every part of this transaction, from the monopoly with which it commenced to the contraband dealing with which it concluded, criminates the said Warren Hastings with willful

disobedience of orders and a continued breach of trust; that every step taken in it was attended with heavy loss to the company, and with a sacrifice of their interest to that of individuals; and that if, finally, a profit had resulted to the company from such a transaction, no profit attending it could compensate for the probable risk to which their trade with China was thereby exposed, or for the certain dishonor and consequent distrust which the East India Company must incur in the eyes of the Chinese Government by being engaged in a low, clandestine traffic prohibited by the laws of the country.

This first stage of British opium monopoly is a dark and damning page in the history of the times. It was "conceived in sin and born in iniquity;" and it had such a career as might be expected from its origin. It sullied the reputations of all who were connected with it, and brought deep and lasting disgrace to the British name. Would that there had been wisdom and piety enough to see the disgrace, and to atone for it by subsequent righteous dealing! But later years have only intensified the iniquity of earlier times, and shrouded in deeper darkness the historic page.

The records show that the Governor-General, the company's representatives in India, and the Court of Directors in London, all bent their energies to increasing the production and sale of the baleful drug. No questioning as to its destructive effect upon their fellow-men, or as to their moral responsibility for the evils of the traffic, seems to have entered into their counsels. They gloat over the increasing demand with intense satisfaction, and lay their plans for pushing sales in new regions with an earnestness and vigor worthy of a better cause. In 1787 the Governor-General, Hastings, congratulates the company on the success of his plans, as shown by the fact that "the price has progressively risen at the company's sales from year to year, while the quantity has almost doubled, an evident proof that it is either become an article of more general consumption than formerly, or that new markets have been opened for it.”

China was looked to, with increasing interest, as the most inviting field for a large increase in the traffic. The unscrupulous Governor-General proposes to the directors to employ an agent in some suitable port who should be "intrusted to act in concert with the company's supercargoes in China in settling the contract for the annual quantity of opium to be FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXV.—46

delivered at Macao to the Portuguese or to the Chinese." He knew that the whole trade was illicit, and that not a pound of the drug could be got into China except by smuggling and in defiance of the laws of the empire; and yet he deliberately proposes a system by which the company shall find a market in China, and thus increase its ill-gotten gains. The directors, in their reply, take the precaution to observe at the outset that they "would on no account wish to be concerned in an illicit trade;" and then, with that peculiar sort of consistency that characterizes their entire history, they continue:

Were we once possessed of a firm establishment to the eastward, there would be little doubt of the success of the undertak; ing. We might meet there with a market for the whole produce of our opium farms, to be paid for in dollars, or in tin and pepper, and such other articles as might be very profitably disposed of at Canton. And whatever opium might be in demand by the Chinese, the quantity would readily find its way thither without the company being exposed to the disgrace of an illicit commerce.

The purpose of the directors to stimulate the traffic as much as possible, to make it a source of increasing revenue, and yet to shield the company from any charge of directly violating the laws of China, is here clearly set forth; and on this policy they acted as long as the company retained control in India. Externally, they conformed to the law. In reality, they encouraged and promoted smuggling in various ways. Toward the close of the last century we find them prohibiting any of their servants, on penalty of immediate dismissal, from carrying the drug to China. Their authority over British subjects in China was such that they could thoroughly enforce any order they chose to issue. Their power was vested in the supercargoes, who constituted a sort of council, or band of officers for the company, always resident at Canton. Every officer of a British vessel sailing to China was obliged to sign a bond that he would obey their orders. They had equal control over British subjects in India. No British ship could trade with China without a license from them, and the license became void in case of any failure to obey the orders of the supercargoes. Never had any body of men more complete power to prevent smuggling than had the East India Company. Yet

at the same time that they were prohibiting it by their public orders they were continuing to grow opium for the Chinese market, and to sell it to the smugglers, whom they freely licensed to trade with Canton. They ascertain, in 1829, that a great preference is shown in China for the Behar opium, and they immediately order an inquiry to discover what are the qualities that have obtained for it this preference, with the purpose of adapting their opium to the taste of their Chinese customers. The payments made to the poppy growers in India were increased from time to time, with the avowed purpose of inducing them to extend its cultivation; and Sir George Staunton refers to measures of this kind taken by the company about 1831 as suddenly almost quadrupling the supply.

Much of the illegal trade was carried on for many years through the Portuguese settlement of Macao; but eventually the Portuguese, thinking that the British were making too much money through the use of their port, took measures to confine the trade of that port to Portuguese subjects. The British merchants then tried to establish their trade at the port of Whampoa; but the attempt was unsuccessful, as the virtuous Chinese officials stoutly resisted the introduction of the forbidden drug, while the vicious ones demanded exorbitant bribes. At the mouth of the Canton River lies the island of Lintin. Its ample harbors afford a safe anchorage at all seasons of the year. Ships would be safe both from the vicissitudes of the weather and from the attacks of Chinese man darins. So Lintin became the home of the "opium fleet." The receiving-ships stationed there were strongly armed, and increasing quantities of opium stored in them, until, in 1834, the amount had risen to more than twenty thousand chests. The vessels that brought supplies to these store-ships were the finest clippers that floated on the sea; and the ships of rival houses frequently raced from India to China, often making over three hundred miles a day, winged messengers of beauty, but carrying death and destruction to China.

The method of carrying on the trade was as follows: Natives wishing to make purchases would apply through brokers to British merchants at Canton, who would issue orders on the receiving-ships. Carrying boats armed with guns, and manned by crews of desperate character, plied between Lintin

and the city. They were popularly designated "fast crabs," or "scrambling dragons." These boats, with more or less connivance by the Chinese authorities, delivered the illicit drug to the purchasers at Canton. The illegal traffic was not allowed to progress, however, without frequent and vigorous protests. Honest and patriotic officers would frequently take strong measures for its suppression, and on various occasions imperial edicts were issued against it. Among these, a notable instance is that of the Emperor Tao-kwang, in 1821, on the occasion of the confiscation of certain cargoes at Canton because of opium smuggling. In his edict, referring to the export trade in tea and other articles as beneficial to foreigners, he says:

Yet these foreigners feel no gratitude, nor wish to render a recompense, but smuggle in opium, which poisons the empire. When this conduct is referred to the heart, it must be disquieted; when referred to reason, it is contrary to it. In broad day on earth there is the royal law; in the shades after death are gods and demons. These foreign ships pass an immense ocean; they likewise go through gales of wind, boisterous seas, and unknown dangers, entirely preserved by the condescending protection of the celestial gods; and, therefore, they should hereafter rouse themselves to zealous reflection, to bitter repentance, and to reformation, and alter their inhuman, unreasonable conduct.

Subsequent history, up to the time when the British Government abolished the control of the East India Company over British subjects in China, in 1834, is but a repetition of that already given. It is a history, on the one hand, of a company of professedly high-minded English gentlemen, vested with extraordinary powers, proclaiming in their public documents hearty acquiescence in the laws against opium, and ostentatiously forbidding all connection with it on the part of their agents, while secretly stimulating and encouraging the traffic in every possible way, and complacently pocketing the enormous gains of the nefarious trade. Before the traffic passed from the control of the company, opium had cost China $11,618,167, while she received for her tea supplied to the whole of Great Britain only $9,133,749.

In 1834 the British Government abolished the East India Company's monopoly of trade in China, and threw it open to all British subjects. The company, in retiring from China, tried to quiet their consciences by saying, "Were it possible