ct an
official visit from them this day at noon. The English mail arrived
yesterday.... The visit of the Commissioners went off very well. I
think that they have accepted the situation, and intend to make the
best of it.

_October 19th_.--Yesterday I returned the visit of the Commissioners,
going in state, with a guard, &c., into the city. We had a Chinese
repast--birds'-nest soup, sharks' fins, &c. I tried to put them at
their ease, after our disagreeable encounters at Tientsin. They seemed
disposed to be conversable and friendly. The Governor-General of this
province, who is one of them, is considered a very clever man, and he
appears to have rather a notion of taking a go-ahead policy with
foreigners.

[Sidenote: The tariff.]

The chief matter that remained to be arranged was the settlement of certain
trade-regulations, supplemental to the Treaty, involving a complete
revision of the tariff.

[Sidenote: The opium trade.]

A tariff is not usually a matter of general interest; but this tariff is of
more than mere commercial importance, as having for the first time
regulated, and therefore legalised, the trade in opium.[1] Hitherto this
article had been mentioned in no treaty, but had been left to the operation
of the Chinese municipal law, which prohibited it altogether. But the
Chinese would have it; there was no lack of foreign traders, chiefly
British and American, ready to run the risk of smuggling it for the sake of
the large profits to be made upon it; and the custom-house officials, both
natives and foreign inspectors, hardly even kept up the farce of pretending
to ignore the fact. At one port, indeed, the authorities exacted from the
opium traders a sort of hush-money, equivalent to a tax about 6 per cent.
_ad valorem_. It might well be said that 'the evils of this illegal,
connived at, and corrupting traffic could hardly be overstated; that it was
degrading alike to the producer, the importer, the official, whether
foreign or Chinese, and the purchaser.'

To remedy these evils two courses were open. One was effective prohibition,
with the assistance of the Foreign Powers; but this, the Chinese
Commissioners admitted, was practically hopeless, mainly owing to the
inveterate appetite of their people for the drug. The other remained:
regulation and restriction, by the imposition of as high a duty as could be
maintained without giving a stimulus to smuggling.