(Manchester Times – Saturday 30 November 1839)
We are told by some of the advocates of a “smugglers’ war against China, that our government has determined to send out an armament to blockade the Canton river, and compel the celestial Emperor to reimburse the opium dealers the amount of their late losses. Doubtless a few armed steamers might in a very short time clear the China coasts of their lumbering junks, and put an end to the foreign and domestic trade carried on with the port of Canton. But is it so certain that we should in the end reap, as a people, either pecuniary profit or national honour by the enterprise? Is it not possible that the Chinese government would in future see a stronger necessity for restricting the foreign commerce of its subjects, and either interdict all trade with strangers, or else, imitating the example set by Japan, confine their intercourse to one people, and that the American, Dutch, or any, rather than the English?
Let us, however, dismiss the commercial part of the question, and ask how far we are justified, by the laws of morality, in making an armed attack upon the Chinese. We are told that it is due to our national honour to chastise this people for having imprisoned our official representative and put the resident merchants into prison ; and it is asked what would be the conduct we should pursue if France were to incarcerate our ambassador in order to obtain possession of a cargo of smuggle cottons belonging to Englishmen? Now nothing can be more fallacious than the analogy which it has been attempted to set up between our relations with a European power and those with the Chinese empire. There is, in fact, no similitude between our intercourse with China and our connexion with any other country. In every other case when trading extensively with foreigners we have either treaties, or alliances, or, as in the case of Turkey, capitulation, by which certain rights and privileges are secured in return for reciprocal benefits, granted to the persons and properties of the subjects of the contracting powers. By the agreement with Turkey, British merchants are wholly exempt from the laws of that country, and subject only to the jurisdiction of our consuls. But we have no such agreement with the Chinese government ; and this constitutes the grand distinction to which the public mind, we mean the honest, Christian, disinterested public mind, ought to be especially directed.
The Chinese have always adopted the rule of excluding foreigners from their country. They have refused to hold intercourse with nations by ambassadors or otherwise ; choosing to adopt a rule of seclusion, and isolate themselves from the rest of the world. Nobody will, we suppose, deny to a people the right of adopting such a system. Europeans, however, actuated by a desire of gain, have for centuries visited this remote country. They have allowed trade under the severest restrictions, with one sea-port town only, one of the suburbs of which is set apart from their abode, beyond which they are not allowed to move. No European females are allowed to live with them in the factory, and other regulations are strictly enforced contrary to national habits of Englishmen. As the liberty to trade was a concession from the Chinese for which they asked nothing in return, it was accepted by the Europeans, along with the accompanying indignities. They have consented to lead a life of monkish imprisonment in the factory at Canton, and to be periodically lectured in proclamations as “outside barbarians,” for the sake of the profitable trade they were enabled under certain regulations to carry on. One of these regulations prohibited the traffic of opium. And the question, and, in our opinion, the only question is, whether the infringement of that law subjected the offending parties to the penalties which would have been inflicted upon native Hong merchants for smuggling. We do not hesitate to aver our belief that merchants, whether from England or elsewhere, who take up their residence in Canton under such circumstances as we have described, must be considered amenable to the laws of that country. If those laws are obnoxious to foreigners whey remain there? The Chinese do not invite them to come or offer them any temptations to stay ; and under such circumstances, it is surely more reasonable and just that a voluntary resident should conform to the laws of the country, than that the Chinese government should adapt its legislation to the tastes of every individual visitor.
We have already disposed of the argument for war, grounded on the insult offered to our official representative, by shewing that the Chinese government neither sends nor receives accredited agents, to or from any other power. Every body knows that our attempts to establish ambassadorial relations with the Court of Pekin uniformly failed. Nor must the functions or character of our present agent at Canton be misunderstood. Lord Napier was sent out doubtless under something like the character of a political agent, and he was not received as such by the Chinese government or people. Indeed he was treated with more than ordinary disrespect ; and his death was alleged to have been hastened by the indignities that were heaped upon him. Nobody who has read the proclamations addressed to our present agent under the title of the “barbarian chief,” will suppose that the Chinese regard him in any other light than as the head of our merchants. As the Chinese do not recognise our political agent, or even understand the nature of diplomacy, their treatment of Captain Elliott cannot therefore be viewed as a national insult, or considered apart from that of the merchants generally, and the question, and in our opinion the only question is, how far was that treatment justifiable by the laws of China.
Nobody denies that a law was promulgated as long ago as 1796, by the Chinese government, prohibiting the trade in opium, which article had previously been viewed only as a medicine, and admitted into that country in limited quantities at a fixed duty. But it is now contended that the government was never in earnest in its proclamations, and that the contraband trade was carried on with the connivance of the authorities. Not only is there not the shadow of a proof that the imperial government lent its secret sanction to the traffic, but there is the clearest evidence in the conduct of the smugglers themselves that they were conscious of violating the laws of the empire. Instead of carrying the opium, as is the custom with every other commodity, to Whampoa, the port of Canton, and selling it through regular channels, it was kept in receiving vessels at Lintin, many miles below, and disposed of clandestinely to unauthorised traders. Not a single chest of the drug has been allowed to be brought up to Whampoa, in one of the regular traders since 1821, at which date a more rigorous plan was adopted by the imperial government for putting an end to a petty system of smuggling, which had been carried on by the officers and crews of the East India Company’s ships, by making the Hong merchants responsible with their lives and fortunes for the slightest violation of the law. From that time down to the close of trading career of the East India Company, it was a well-known rule in their service, that any officer or seaman detected in attempting to convey opium into the port of Canton, would be punished severely, and liable to be dismissed the service. Is not this evidence sufficient to satisfy every reasonable mind and the imperial government did not connive a violation of its own laws against the illicit traffic in opium?
It is however argued that the mandarins and other great officers at Canton, were in collusion with the smugglers. There is no doubt of this. Almost every edict and report of the Chinese government for the last twenty years upon the subject, complains that the “barbarian English” had corrupted with bribes the custom-house officers. But is this to be brought forward as an additional claim to our sympathy on the part of the smugglers? To what an extent must their sense of moral justice be vitiated, before they can attempt to derive an advantage from such an argument as this. Because our merchants have, by means of enormous bribes, corrupted the whole body of local functionaries at Canton, we are therefore called upon to enable them to prevail by force of arms, against the government of China also! Excellent logic, admirable morality, this!
In being clear then, that the laws of the empire were violated by the English, are we justified in going to war to resent the punishment which was inflicted upon them by the Chinese government? That punishment was, imprisonment of the whole of the English residents and threats of death until the opium on board the “receiving ships” lying at anchor at Lintin, within the Chines waters, was given up and destroyed. Doubtless a great majority of the English merchants thus imprisoned were guilty of a breach of the law ; perhaps not one was entirely innocent ; a great many of the most eminent and wealthy of them had amassed large fortunes by the trade in opium ; and so notorious had been their dealings, that several of the Chinese proclamations admonished them by name to desist, and ultimately they were ordered to leave the country. The seizure and imprisonment of these gentlemen, and their superintendent Captain Elliott, is the only ground upon which the slightest pretence for reprisals on our part can be maintained. The confiscation of the opium, a contraband article found within the waters of China, was justifiable by the laws of all nations. The mode of obtaining possession of it would not be warranted by the usages of England or any European nation. We should have dispatched our revenue cruisers and probably after a smart contest with the fleet of “receiving vessels,” they would have been captured wand with their contents forfeited to the government. The Chinese proceeded in their way ; they seized Howqua and Mowqua, the two most eminent Hong Merchants, the Baring and Rothschild of China, who were securities for the good conduct of the English, threw them into prison, and afterwards paraded them, loaded with chains and collars, before the English factory, threatening them at the same time with death, unless the “barbarians” gave up the whole of their opium to Lin, the imperial commissioner, for destruction.
Such being the treatment of two of the oldest, most wealthy, and honourable of the native merchants, who had become responsible for the English, what right had the principals in the business, the guilty parties themselves, to complain of the milder punishment of close imprisonment in their factories? The plea set up for them by interested parties here, through their jobbing advocates of the press is, that they were British subjects, and therefore ought not to have been subjected to the same treatment as the Chinese. We reiterate our opinion that the English who choose to reside in Canton, without the exemption which treaties along could give them, voluntary submit themselves to the laws of China. To maintain on the contrary, that every foreigner who sets his feet uninvited upon the coast of China, shall be governed according to the laws of the country he has voluntarily quitted, is to impose upon the Chinese law-makers the task of studying and administering every code under the sun. Such a principle is as monstrously unjust in principle, as it would be impossible in practice.
Insights
Firstly, it’s worth noting that when reviewing the British press of the time there were many voices strongly opposed to the immorality of the opium trade and the invasion of Chinese sovereignty, it was by no means clear which way events could have unfolded, yet in the end, as often happens, economic interests took precedence. We sometimes have the impression that “The British Empire” was centrally planned, organised and heterogenous, and this is not the case.
More relevant to our Huelva Chronicles is the figure of Mr. Hugh Mackay Matheson who was instrumental in the purchase and formation of the Rio Tinto Company Limited in March 1873 by organising an international consortium to purchase the mines. Let it be clear, according to the sources consulted, that Matheson, a deeply religious businessman, was expressly against the opium trade and considered it immoral. He even convinced his brother Donald to stay out of this end of the family business. Nevertheless, the huge sums of money generated by his uncle, James Sutherland Matheson, together with William Jardine when they formed Jardine, Matheson and Company of Canton in 1832, was used to capitalise Matheson & Company in 1843. In 1848 Mr. Hugh Matheson, future chairman of Rio Tinto Company Limited took charge of a family company (Matheson & Company) that would not have come into being and would not have been able to diversify its investments without the huge amounts of capital that flowed from the opium trade to China at Canton.
