Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/297

also bonds pledging their signatories never again to traffic in the drug under penalty of death. Doubtless having obtained the opium which represented an immediate sacrifice of large dimensions, he anticipated no serious difficulty about the bonds, and thought that they could be secured by exercising a little further pressure. Ultimately, however, he seems to have deemed it inexpedient to continue the confinement of the foreigners on that account, and the siege was raised independently of the bonds. But it appears hardly just to call him "false and perfidious" because, guided by the light of experience, he declined to attach any value to foreign promises pending their fulfilment.