We now come to the period of the famous Commissioner Lin's appointment to Canton. This was indeed the climax of all the perplexities. Lin himself was the Robespierre, the terrorist, the reckless despot, who represented a certain party in the empire, who conscientiously believed that they could terrify not only their own countrymen, but even foreign nations, into patient submission to their will.
This singular man seems to have been composed of good and bad qualities in equal proportions, but always of a violent kind. In any other country than China, he would have been either distinguished as a demagogue or branded as a tyrant, precisely as circumstances chanced to lead him into a particular channel. He was reckless of consequences, so long as he could carry out his will without control. He was violent, yet not selfish; changeable, yet always clinging to his original views; severe, and even cruel and inexorable, in the measures by which he sought to gain his ends; yet, in reality, he is believed to have meant well for his country, and to have had the interests and the wishes of the emperor, his master, always at heart. He certainly believed that he could control both the people under his own government, and the foreigners who came into contact with them, by force; and his very errors seem to have arisen from excess of zeal in the cause which he adopted. His talent was unquestionable.
Lin became intoxicated with his own success (for the time, at all events) in whatever he undertook; and expected all his orders to be executed with the same energy and facility with which he gave them utterance. It is said, moreover, that he procured a copy of a remarkable work called a "Digest of Foreign Customs, Practices, Manners," &c., in which bad deeds rather than good ones, and even the names of individual merchants, were brought forward; and that he studied this book with constant pleasure.
On the 10th of March, 1839, this redoubtable commissioner reached Canton, having travelled with extraordinary speed from Pekin, whither he had been called to receive his appointment at the hands of the emperor himself; who is said to have even shed tears, as he parted with him.
He lost not a moment, upon his arrival at Canton, in setting all the powerful energies of his mind to work, to devise means of accomplishing his ends. He determined to endeavour to put a complete stop to the traffic in opium, both on the part of his own people and on that of foreigners; and his great aim was to "control, curb, and humble," the foreign community generally.
From this time forth, it became very evident, that great and complicated events must be looked for upon the political horizon. Even Captain Elliot himself could hardly hope that his little star of diplomacy could light the road to a solution of the difficulties, without an ultimate resort to arms.
It is true, that for a brief interval previous to Lin's arrival, the prospect seemed to brighten considerably. Captain Elliot had partially succeeded in establishing direct official intercourse with the governor of Canton; for it had been at length agreed, that all sealed communications coming from the chief superintendent, should be delivered into the hands of the governor, and the seal broken by him only. This was a great point gained; and Elliot seems to have managed it with considerable tact. Nevertheless, the correspondence could not be said even now, to be carried on upon terms of "perfect equality;" and even this concession was quite as much a matter of necessity to the governor, as it was to Captain Elliot; for the cessation of intercourse had been a source of equal embarrassment to them both.
This Governor Tang was a crafty, cringing, self-interested man; he derived immense sums from opium, and his own son was said to be employed in the clandestine traffic, against which, the father was uttering severe denunciations, followed by severer persecutions.
Lin afterwards suspected, and, perhaps, even discovered his delinquencies; and Tang became a willing and submissive instrument, if not a cringing sycophant. But his day of punishment came at last.