Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/263

which in fact they not only tolerated but even encouraged.

On the other hand, the relations between foreign traders and Chinese officialdom were of an eminently unsatisfactory kind. No efficient machinery existed for preserving order, checking abuses, or punishing crime on the part of foreigners, nor had the latter access to any competent court of appeal against the exactions of local officials or the insults and assaults of truculent natives. That there were wrongs on both sides, and even that the balance of wrong was largely on the foreign side, will be gathered from what has been written above. But without attempting to cast up the account accurately, it is evident that a commerce subject to such violent and arbitrary dislocations could not fail to become more and more inconsistent with the civilisation of the nineteenth century, and would have required radical readjustment even though no other evil had been associated with it. There was such an evil, however; an evil that increased in dimensions and in flagrancy from the beginning of the century, finally culminating in a war which has probably been more condemned and more condoned, more denounced and more defended, than any incident in history.

An exhaustive essay on "The Poppy in China," compiled by the eminent sinologue Dr. Edkins, shows that the plant is mentioned in several Chinese books from the eighth century onwards.