Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 3.djvu/35

year from China greatly exceeded her sales to her, and consequently some millions sterling of specie should have been sent annually from London to Canton. Here it was that opium performed such a cardinal function. India discharged her debt to England with opium, and this being carried by British merchants to China, England in turn discharged her debt to China with the drug. Thus, in fine, the flow of specie from India to England and from England to China was avoided, and to complete the economic advantage the British Government of India derived a bulky item of revenue by taxing the opium before its shipment for China. If the magnitude of a sacrifice on the altar of international morality excuses reluctance to make it, there is much to extenuate England's offence. If the vastness of the material interests involved imposes upon statecraft any obligation of circumspection in dealing with them, the reckless precipitancy of Commissioner Lin's attempt to kill this giant commerce by a thunder-clap process of extinction, deserved the fate that overtook it.

The incidents of wars have little permanent interest except in so far as they illustrate racial characteristics or reveal the origin of history-making forces. This Anglo-Chinese war, which lasted for nearly three years in the form of a series of more or less disconnected operations, was chiefly remarkable for the smallness of the force