William Hall - Narrative of the Voyages and Services of the Nemesis from 1840 to 1843

Other acts of atrocity and bad faith had also been committed by the Chinese authorities; but it is remarkable that Captain Elliot, whose personal courage and natural ability have never been questioned, seems to have entered no public protest, nor addressed any strong remonstrance to the commissioner, either upon this subject, or upon that of his own imprisonment, or rather confinement, at Canton. The probability is, that he thought it useless to do so, unless he were prepared to back his remonstrance by a demonstration of force. Nevertheless, after the foreigners were released, he issued a notice that all trade on the part of his countrymen with the Chinese should be stopped. And this notice was repeated in still stronger terms after the departure of the Larne; for he declared that "he saw no prospect of such an arrangement of existing difficulties as to admit of British ships proceeding within the Bocca Tigris, under the sanction of his authority, until the opinion of her Majesty's government could be made known to him." And at a later period, he thought it necessary to warn all the merchants, (dated the 29th of July,) "that he had moved her Majesty's and the Indian governments to forbid the admission of tea and other produce from China into Great Britain and India, during the existence of the preceding prohibition in Canton, unless their manifests were signed in his presence."

The stoppage of the trade by Captain Elliot irritated Lin excessively. It was turning the tables against himself, defeating him with his own weapons; it savoured of presumption in his sight; and, moreover, it materially diminished his revenue. It proved that, however bombastic and ridiculous their professions of indifference to the trade of foreigners might be, they really stood very much in need of it themselves, and, in fact, they felt the stoppage of it on our part quite as much as we ever did on theirs. It made Lin actually spiteful; he tried every art to induce the English to act contrary to Elliot's orders; and, subsequently, when he went down to Macao to see with his own eyes what the Portuguese were about, he went so far as to make it a matter of accusation against Elliot, that "he had prevented the merchant ships of his country from entering the port of Canton."

Such gross inconsistency, probably, was never before presented to view in so short a period of time by any public man. Lin was, in fact, completely at bay, and he, moreover, had probably heard by this time that more than one British man-of war was expected. Nevertheless, he by no means relaxed in his feelings of bitter hostility; he listened to everything that was said or written against the English and against opium; he so alarmed the Portuguese, as to make them expel all the English, out of the town, (or, what is the same thing, he threatened to attack the town if the English remained in it;) and he made them prohibit the importation of opium, which had formerly been permitted upon payment of duty; though, to this day, the traffic is continued by them in full vigour at the outer anchorages, and in the Typa near Macao, although it is prohibited to be landed at the town, under the eye of the authorities. Nevertheless, a sufficient quantity of it is brought into the town for local consumption.

Lin now appeared to have reached the pinnacle of his power. He flattered himself that his schemes had been all successful; his power appeared irresistible, because no effectual opposition to it had yet been offered. The more concessions were made to him, the more exacting he became; and having got the English out of Macao, and made the Portuguese submissive to his will, he then assumed a very bland and condescending tone.

In the interim, it was very evident that a storm of a new kind was brewing, which was likely soon to burst upon his head. Moreover, all the attempts he had made to control his own people failed; his executions, his denunciations, and his moral lectures, were alike unavailing. He gave the people a year, within which they were to break off the habit by degrees, and to reform their manners; and, at the end of that time, he vowed he would execute every man amongst them that persisted in it. In the meantime, he hit upon the last and darling expedient of every Chinese statesman and philosopher, that of making men mutually responsible for each other. Thus the whole people were to be divided into tens, as they were elsewhere in the days of Alfred the Great, and each one of the party was to be made personally responsible for the good behaviour of all the rest with whom he was associated.

Notwithstanding all these strong measures, urged with all the sincerity of an enthusiast, they both failed at the time, and have failed ever since to eradicate the evil. The demand for the drug increased with the difficulty of procuring it; the indulgence became dearer owing to the danger which attended it; and, after all that was said and done, opium continued to be sought and enormously paid for. It was more generally used than ever; and even attention became directed to the cultivation of the poppy on Chinese soil, when the difficulty of procuring it from abroad became more urgent.

Lin rose into high favour, for a time, with the Imperial court, as might naturally be expected, and he was appointed governor of the second province in the empire. But long before the time came for him to remove to his new post, his star began to wane, his difficulties increased, and ultimately his fall was as great as his rise had been rapid.

For several months, as I have before stated, no British ship of war was present in the Chinese waters. It was in this interval – namely, in the month of July, 1839 – that the great difficulty arose which excited so much attention at the time, and has done so since, arising out of the death of a Chinaman, by name Lin Wiehe, at Hong-Kong, during an affray with some British merchant seamen. This event was eagerly taken advantage of by the commissioner to attempt to enforce certain claims against the foreigners. Without entering into tedious details, many of which are already well known, it will suffice to mention that the man's death was really occasioned by a drunken row at a village near Hong-Kong; that the commissioner, in accordance with what had formerly been done on a similar occasion at Canton, demanded the surrender of the murderer to be tried by Chinese judges, and that Captain Elliot denied the jurisdiction altogether; but, at the same time, he himself preferred an indictment for murder against a seaman before a British grand-jury at Hong-Kong, who ignored the bill. But several men were ultimately found guilty of an assault only, and it appeared that one party was just as much to blame as the other.

The commissioner then grew more angry than ever: he caused the few English who still remained at Macao to be still further persecuted, and it was only through the friendly assistance of individual Portuguese families that they were enabled to obtain their daily food. The result was, that the whole British community left the place, together with Captain Elliot, and went to live on board the different merchant ships in harbour.

Things could not remain long in such a state of embarrassment; and, fortunately, on the 11th of September – that is, about three months and a half after the Larne had left those seas – the Volage, under Captain Smith, arrived. That gallant officer immediately perceived that active steps of some kind must be taken, and he accordingly issued a notice of blockade of the port of Canton, upon the ground "that the regular supplies of food had been prohibited to her Majesty's subjects; that the Chinese people had been ordered to fire upon and seize them wherever they went; and that certain of her Majesty's subjects had been actually cut off."

The immediate effect of this notice was to bring the Chinese, in some measure, to their senses; their proclamations against Englishmen were withdrawn – provisions were no longer prohibited; and, consequently, Captain Smith very properly withdrew his notice of blockade. Negotiations were entered into, and it was at length agreed that trade should be resumed outside the port of Canton.