Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 3.djvu/57

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PRECONVENTIONAL PERIOD

ports of Chinese victories sent to the Emperor, a most extraordinary grievance, which, although undoubtedly consistent with facts, had never previously figured, and will probably never again figure, among reasons publicly advanced by a civilised Power for taking up arms against another State. Not one word did the document say about the opium trade. That, the real cause of the war, was carefully ignored. When the final conference took place under the walls of Nanking, the Chinese plenipotentiaries imitated this reticence. Their Emperor had proclaimed the opium trade and his repressive efforts to have been the cause of the war. But when his officers found that neither the legalising nor the sanctioning of this infamous traffic was included in the terms of peace dictated by the victor, they prudently kept silence, obeying their familiar proverb that "the way to rouse the snake is to disturb the cane-brake." Sir Henry Pottinger, however, introduced the subject as a topic for "private conversation," and what followed was this:—

They then evinced much interest, and eagerly requested to know why we would not act fairly toward them by prohibiting the growth of the poppy in our dominions, and thus effectually stop a traffic so pernicious to the human race. This he [Sir Henry Pottinger] said, in consistency with our constitutional laws, could not be done; and he added that even if England chose to exercise so arbitrary a power over her tillers of the soil, it would not check the evil, so far as the Chinese were concerned, while the cancer

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