es of fraudulent traders and smugglers. This is
the truth, and I apprehend the only question at issue between the
governments and nations of Great Britain and China. It is a general,
but I believe altogether a mistaken opinion, that the quarrel is
merely for certain chests of opium, imported by British merchants
into China, and seized by the Chinese government for having been
imported contrary to law. This is a mere incident to the dispute,
but no more the cause of war than the throwing overboard of the tea
in Boston harbor was the cause of the North American Revolution.

"The cause of the war is the pretension on the part of the Chinese
that in all their intercourse with other nations, political or
commercial, their superiority must be implicitly acknowledged, and
manifested in humiliating forms. It is not creditable to the great,
powerful, and enlightened nations of Europe, that for several
centuries they have, for the sake of a profitable trade, submitted
to these insolent and insulting pretensions, equally contrary to the
first principles of the law of nature and of revealed religion--the
natural equality of mankind--

"'_Auri sacra fames, quid non mortalia pectora cogis?_'

"This submission to insult is the more extraordinary for being
practised by Christian nations, which, in their intercourse with one
another, push the principle of equality and reciprocity to the
minutest punctilios of form."

This lecture concludes with a sketch of the treatment of Lord Macartney
by the Chinese emperor, in 1792, when sent to that court as ambassador
from Great Britain, illustrating and supporting its general argument.
The remarks of Mr. Adams upon the distinction with a very small
difference between "the bended knee" and "entire prostration," as a
token of homage,--admitted as to the first, denied as to the last, by
the British ambassador,--are characteristic.

"The narrative of Sir George Staunton distinctly and positively
affirms that Lord Macartney was admitted to the presence of the
Emperor Kienlung, and presented to him his credentials, without
performing the prostration of the Kotow--the Chinese act of homage
from the vassal to the sovereign lord. Ceremonies between superiors
and inferiors are the personification of principles. Nearly
twenty-five years after the repulse of Lord Macartney, in 1816,