If I am not very much mistaken, 1837 was the first of those years ending with '7' which have become proverbial as attended with great commercial troubles in the Western world.
In the year 1838 (November) Mr. William Jardine took his departure from Canton. He founded in 1832 the house of Jardine, Matheson, & Co., on the closing up of that of Magniac & Co., which until then had been under the management of Mr. Hollingworth Magniac. Mr. Jardine had been a surgeon in the marine service of the Honourable East India Company, and had made several voyages to Bombay and China. He had made the acquaintance of the celebrated 'Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy,' that prince of Eastern merchants, that philanthropist—the building of the hospital which now bears his name, and the construction of the Bund from the island of Bombay to Basseen, being amongst the numerous works which were carried out at his own expense for the comfort and welfare of his countrymen. He was, moreover, the first native inhabitant of the Presidency, and I think of India, on whom was conferred the dignity of Baronet by the British Government. The business transactions of Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy with Jardine, Matheson, & Co. became of a colossal scale.
The vast commercial operations of Mr. Jardine Seemed to be conducted with sagacity and judgment. He was a gentleman of great strength of character and of unbounded generosity. To him belongs the shipping of the first cargo of 'free teas' to London, at the end of the two hundred years of close monopoly of the East India Company. As a peculiarity of his character, it may be mentioned that, in his own private office in the Creek Factory, a chair was never seen—a hint to any who may be bothered with gossips or idlers during business hours!
A few days before Mr. Jardine's departure from Canton, the entire foreign community entertained him at a dinner in the dining-room of the East India Company's Factory. About eighty persons of all nationalities, including India, were present, and they did not separate until several hours after midnight. It was an event frequently referred to afterwards amongst the residents, and to this day there are a few of us who still speak of it.
Mr. Jardine was succeeded in the management of the house by Mr. (the late Sir James) Matheson, who finally left China on March 10, 1842, after a residence of about fifteen years. He was a gentleman of great suavity of manner and the impersonation of benevolence. As the 'Chinese Repository,' in noting his departure from Macao, said: 'On his leaving the foreign community lost one of its most enterprising, able, and liberal members.'
On February 26, 1839, execution of a Chinese, said to be an opium-dealer, took place in front of the American Factory. The officers had chosen the hours of the afternoon when nearly all the foreigners were away in their daily walks or on the river. The man was tied up and strangled in a twinkling, and all had rapidly returned up Old China Street with the body. On landing from our boats we found the few who had not been away collected in the Square, and heard from them what had happened. The only public notice that could be taken of this affair was to discontinue the daily hoisting of the national flags before our doors; nor were they re-hoisted until March 22, 1842.
The appointment of a 'Kin-Chae', or Imperial Envoy, to Canton, for the express purpose of putting a stop to the opium trade, had now become known. This appointment—only made on an occasion calling for extreme measures—was conferred upon Lin-Tsih-Soo, and involved control not only over all the Canton authorities, but those of the southern and south-eastern provinces. His Excellency 'Lin' was the son of an independent gentleman of Tseuen-Chow in the province of Fuh-Keen who lived on the revenues of a porcelain manufactory, in which he himself had worked as a day labourer it was said.