little attention, seeing that the Chinese
themselves openly disregarded it; and it is even stated that the trade was
carried on by four boats under the Viceroy's flag, which paid regular
fees to the custom-house and military stations.[14]

In 1834 the East India Company's monopoly of trade to China came to an
end, and the trade was taken up by Her Majesty's Government, who sent out
a commission with Lord Napier at its head to apprise the Chinese
Government of the change. It had been usual up to this period for all
communications to be addressed to the Viceroy of Canton through the
thirteen "Hong"[15] merchants, in the form of a humble petition. This Lord
Napier naturally refused to do, and the Chinese Viceroy resented what he
considered the insolent presumption of the "outside barbarians." He
declined to receive the Envoy, and ordered a blockade of all the
factories. Lord Napier was forced to surrender at discretion, and was
escorted back to Macao by an insulting guard of Chinese soldiers, where he
died soon after. After this, though the trade was graciously allowed to
proceed in its existing unsatisfactory condition, an open rupture between
the two Governments was clearly only a question of time. It was evident
that the claims of the Chinese to suzerainty over all outside barbarians
could not fail to cause one of two things: either a total cessation of
intercourse between them and other nations, or a war which should bring
them to their senses. Peaceable means to conciliate the Chinese had been
tried more than once and had failed. In 1796 Lord Macartney, and in 1816
Lord Amherst, had been sent on missions to effect a peaceable arrangement
with regard to trade. Both attempts failed in their object, but served to
show the overweening pretensions of the Chinese and their thorough
contempt for foreigners.[16] "In both cases," says Sir Rutherford Alcock,
"the British mission was paraded before the Chinese population, _en route_
from the coast, as tribute-bearers." Lord Amherst was even subjected to
personal indignity and insult for refusing to perform the kotow or
prostration before the Emperor. Meanwhile, as the power of the Empress and
the reform party declined, edicts against opium followed one another in
quick succession, but were completely ineffectual in checking the
corruption and connivance of the Canton officials, until Lin was appointed
Viceroy of Canton, for the avowed purpose of coercing his countrymen and
humil