The faithful account of the same shall be transmitted as soon as it is ascertained.
Captain Elliot did not even give himself time to verify the figures, and in his haste committed himself to the delivery of more opium than was actually in being. The consequence was that he could not deliver until fresh importations arrived, when he was obliged to enter the market as an opium merchant and purchase sufficient to enable him to fulfil his engagement.
II. THE SEQUEL TO THE SURRENDER OF OPIUM.
Captain Elliot complains of his lengthened imprisonment—The continued cruelties of Commissioner Lin—Subservience of the Portuguese—English merchants driven from their homes in Macao to seek refuge on shipboard—Pursued by the vengeance of the Commissioner—Chinese claim absolute jurisdiction over person and property—Demand for an English seaman for execution.
The interesting question in all this is how the Chinese authorities were impressed with the magnanimous sacrifice of over £2,000,000 sterling worth of private property as a ransom for the liberties of British subjects. They were certainly not impressed favourably, for Captain Elliot, together with the whole community, was detained for many weeks after the delivery of the opium close prisoners in Canton, and cut off from all outside communication. A week after the surrender Captain Elliot wrote to Lord Palmerston, "The blockade is increasing in closeness.... This is the first time in our intercourse with this empire that its Government has taken the unprovoked initiative in aggressive measures against British life, property, and liberty, and against the dignity of the British Crown." On the same day the Imperial Commissioner threatened to cut off the water-supply from the beleaguered merchants. A week later Captain Elliot wrote, "The blockade is not relaxed, ... the reverse is the case;" and he was constrained, though with evident reluctance, to characterise "the late measures as public robbery and wanton violence." Commissioner Lin's "continuance of the state of restraint, insult, and dark intimidation, subsequently to the surrender, has classed the case amongst the most shameless violences which one nation has yet dared to perpetrate against another." And there is a forlorn pathos in his confession, a fortnight later, of the futility of "remonstrances from a man in my present situation to a high Chinese officer determined to be false and perfidious."
Nor did the Chinese appetite for cruelty cease to grow by what it fed upon even after the crisis of the Canton imprisonment was over. The British community, when forced to seek safety on board of their ships, were pursued from anchorage to anchorage by the implacable vengeance of the Imperial Commissioner. The natives were by proclamation ordered to "intercept and wholly cut off all supplies" from the English, some of whom "had gone to reside on board the foreign ships at Hongkong, and it was to be apprehended that in their extremity some may land at the outer villages and hamlets along the coast to purchase provisions," in which case the "people were to drive them back, fire upon or make prisoners of them." "Even when they land to take water from the springs, stop their progress and let them not have it in their power to drink." Another proclamation stated that "poison had been put into this water; let none of our people take it to drink." During the summer of 1839 many murderous outrages were perpetrated by the Commissioner's orders on English small craft wherever they were found isolated or defenceless.
It is not necessary to pursue these barbarities in detail. Sufficient has been advanced to illustrate the spirit in which the Chinese Government, in a time of peace and without a vestige of provocation, drove the retreating and absolutely submissive English to desperation. And their characteristic manner of recompensing servility was illustrated with cynical humour in a long memorandum drawn up during the progress of the war by Commissioner Lin, the author of the savage proceedings just referred to. "Since," he says, "the English are so eager for the recommencement of their traffic, let us couple the grant with another stipulation, that they present us with the head of Elliot, the leader in every mischief, the disturber of the peace, and the source of all this trouble"—the last statement containing more truth than probably the writer himself fully realised.
Under such conditions it was obviously impossible to place the persons and property of British subjects at the mercy of Chinese officials. Yet this is what the authorities at Canton insisted upon,—"full submission to Chinese penal legislation, involving capital punishment by Chinese forms of trial." This was no new claim. The Chinese were simply following the precedents. English, French, and Americans had each in turn given up their men to be strangled on the demand of the Chinese authorities, and though the right had not been exercised for nearly twenty years, Lin evidently thought the occasion favourable for reviving it. He furnished a clear explanation of what a Chinese trial would be by demanding of the British representative the unconditional surrender for execution of the alleged murderer of a Chinese. To Captain Elliot's almost penitential protestations, that he had been unable to discover the assumed murderer among the numerous liberty men of ships of more than one nationality who had been in the scuffle, the Chinese authorities paid no regard whatever. The Queen's representative was publicly denounced in scurrilous language by Commissioner Lin for concealing and failing to deliver up an offender, and for criminal violation of the laws of China as "shown by our reiterated proclamations and clear commands." This truculent proclamation being followed by an ultimatum giving ten days for the surrender of the unknown murderer under threat of the extermination of the British community, the latter had to escape in a body from Canton to seek refuge in Macao, whence they were expelled by the authorities of that settlement at the behest of the Chinese commissioner. This act of loyalty on the part of the Portuguese was duly acknowledged by the Imperial Commissioners reply, through his subordinate officials, in the following terms:—
We have received from his Excellency the Imperial Commissioner a reply to our representation that the English foreigners had, one and all, left Macao, and that the Portuguese Governor and Procurador had ably and strenuously aided in their expulsion, and faithfully repressed disorder. The reply is to this effect:—