leable, and re-exported. By 1790, however, the importation into China
amounted to 4,054 chests yearly, at which number it remained nearly
stationary for thirty years. It was in 1793 first that the ships engaged
in the traffic began to be molested, chiefly by pirates, but partly also
through the hostility of the Chinese officials. One ship was then sent to
Whampoa, an island twelve miles from Canton, where she lay for fifteen
months entirely unmolested.

In 1796, however, the first year of Keaking's reign, the importation of
opium was prohibited by the Government at Pekin, under heavy penalties,
for the alleged reason "that it wasted the time and property of the people
of the Inner Land, leading them to exchange their silver and commodities
for the vile dirt of the foreigner."

Up to this time, though opium was being imported for the space of more
than forty years, not a word had been said against it, and now, when
exception _was_ taken to it, it was on the ground of the worthless, not
the poisonous, nature of the drug, for which so much sycee silver was
bartered. This law, like sumptuary laws in general, proved wholly
inoperative as far as the Chinese were concerned. The East India Company,
however, did so far regard it as to forbid their own ships from engaging
in the trade, and their mandate was obeyed. Nevertheless, the trade went
on in private ships, and from Whampoa, the headquarters of the trade, the
smuggling (if what went on under the very eyes of the custom-house
officials can be called smuggling) continued uninterruptedly along the
coast, being carried on openly and in the light of day. For though the
Government might fulminate against it from Pekin, the officials on the
spot, by their undisguised connivance,[8] caused the trade to be
established on something like a regular footing. Under which conditions
the trade continued for the next twenty years or so with little
variation.

In 1816 the Bengal drug first began to suffer from competition with Malwa
and Turkey opium, the latter brought from Madeira in American as well as
British ships. In 1821 the exportation of Bengal opium had sunk to 2,320
chests, when the Chinese commenced vigorous proceedings against smugglers,
and drove the contraband trade to Lintin, an island forty miles from
Canton.[9] This seems to have given a fresh impetus to the trade, for the
export rose at once to 6,428 chests, and by 1831 to more than 20,000: at
which number it remained ti