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the attack upon them was confessedly a precaution against eventualities. The junks, as was inevitable, suffered severely. A convenient breeze enabled the British frigates to sail up and down the line of these frail craft, raking them with port and starboard broadsides of heavy guns, and the Chinese, though fighting stoutly, failed to inflict any appreciable injury on their assailants.

Lin now played the last card in his losing game. He obtained an imperial edict interdicting British trade altogether. Other nationals were suffered to continue their commerce at Canton, but against the British absolute discrimination was enforced. No appeal now remained except to the sword. The Governor-General of India received authority to declare war and to make provisions for waging it.

When the above facts are reviewed, it becomes plain that this conflict, the first open war between China and an European Power, had its remote origin, primarily, in Great Britain's failure to organise any machinery for the control of her nationals trading in China, and, secondarily, in her objection to their control by Chinese machinery; and had its proximate cause in an ill-judged attempt on the part of the Chinese to terminate by hasty and heroic measures a trade which had attained large dimensions through the corrupt connivance of her own officials. Morally the Chinese were altogether in the right. Tactically they blundered. No nation ever entered the