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eluded, and several attempts were made to extend the sphere of commercial operations to points along the eastern coast. These essays were usually unsuccessful except in the matter of opium, for which a market could always be found on a more or less limited scale.

So long as the East India Company controlled the bulk of the trade with China, some small semblance of order was maintained even in the realm of bribery and corruption. Not that the company actually trafficked in opium. That is one of the curious features of the story. The directors of the great corporation, recognising the capacities of the Chinese market for opium, manufactured the drug in India with express reference to Chinese taste and derived an immense revenue from its export. But they never carried an ounce of it in their own vessels after the close of the eighteenth century. Private adventurers were left to manage that part of the business. Thus the officers of the company in Canton and its board of directors in London could always, with some semblance of sincerity, profess a desire to respect the laws of China. But although nominally standing aloof from the opium trade and its lawless methods, the company's orderly and powerful influence was felt in that realm also; and thus, as its authority grew weaker in the closing years of its chartered existence, while, on the other hand, vicious indulgence in the poison claimed a constantly in-