ch are thus
disastrous are unchangeable, being like the successive rolling of the
waves of the sea. Is not your conduct egregiously strange? We the governor
and Fooyuen have three times and five times again and again remonstrated
with and exhorted you, giving you lucid warning. Surely, you are indeed
dreaming, and _snoring_ in your dreams!' These multiplied edicts, and the
offers of _rewards_, to 'encourage repentant and fear-stricken hearts,'
seem to have led to a little trickery on the part of certain cunning
mandarins, if we interpret aright this clause in an ensuing 'lucid
warning:' 'The opium-pipes which are delivered up must be distinguished
clearly as to whether they are real or false. Those having on the outside
of them the marks of use, and within the oily residue of the smoke, are
the genuine ones; and those which are made of new bamboo, and merely
moistened with the smoky oil, are the false ones.' A 'spec.' had evidently
been made by means of false 'smoking-implements.' But the most amusing
portions of these volumes are the vermillion edicts against the 'outside
barbarians,' who had irritated the sacred wrath to the cutting off of
their trade. The estimates of the Fooyuen, it will be seen, are of that
vague kind usually designated among us as 'upward of considerable.'
Alluding to the 'blithesome profits' which had accrued from an intercourse
with China, he says: 'I find that during the last several tens of years
the money out of which you have duped our people, by means of your
destructive drug, amounts I know not to how many tens of thousands of
myriads. Your ships, which in former years amounted annually to no more
than several tens, now exceed a hundred and several tens, which arrive
here every year. I would like to ask you if in the wide earth under heaven
you can find such another profit-yielding market as this is? Our great
Chinese Emperor views all mankind with equal benevolence, and therefore it
is that he has thus graciously permitted you to trade, and become as it
were steeped to the lips in gain. If this port of Canton, however, were to
be shut against you, how could you scheme to reap profit more? Moreover,
our tea and rhubarb are articles which ye foreigners from afar cannot
preserve your lives without; yet year by year we allow you to export both
beyond seas, without the slightest feeling of grudge on our part. Never
was imperial goodness greater than this! Formerly, the prohibitions of our
empire