76 Some Views Connected with the Question of Coast Defence. 



Yet, it is not of Spain, of Italy, of Austria or Germany that 

 modern civilization has had especially to complain, for Christian 

 England has much to answer for, in permitting greed of mercantile 

 gain to lead it to the most unjustifiable exercises of power. Con- 

 sider the opium war waged by Great Britain, in the interests of 

 its merchants, upon the almost helpless Chinese : a war of spolia- 

 tion, incited by the lust of gain, which was only to be had by means 

 of the degradation and most loathsome demoralization of a people 

 whose rulers protested fruitlessly against the traffic. Fresh from the 

 conquered fields of Hindostan the English opium ships sailed into 

 Chinese ports, bringing for years their cargoes of misery to blight the 

 beginning of civilization for Asia's greatest nation. A trade which was 

 forbidden by Chinese laws as early as 1796, in a drug; whose importa- 

 tion was punished by transportation and death to the native offender; 

 was urged on by the magnificent smugglers of the greatest Christian 

 nation upon earth; protestant England; until the name of Christian 

 must have sunk in the estimation of the poor Chinese to the level of 

 the Malay pirate. While English missionaries toiled and slaved to 

 bring the gospel of salvation to the people of China, English mer- 

 chants destroyed the faith by acts faster than it could be built up by 

 words, even the most eloquent, and for the sake of the gains to be 

 had in the illegal importation of opium brought curses on the name of 

 Englishman and Christian. And what did the English government 

 do? Did it send its cruisers to arrest or turn back the English 

 violators of Chinese law, these poisoners of a nation? No. 



As in our city of Boston in 1773, the cargoes of tea which repre- 

 sented trans-oceanic tyranny were cast into the sea, so the Chinese in 

 1839 demanded the destruction of the pernicious drug which was 

 ruining their people, in violation of laws and treaties. Unlike the 

 Americans, however, they secured the assent of the British superin- 

 tendent of trade, Col. Elliot, and with his sanction the Chinese took 

 and destroyed more than 20,000 chests of opium: not seized and sold 

 as contraband, smuggled goods but, for moral reasons, utterly 

 destroyed. Such was the protest of China. What was the result? 

 The floating armaments of England descended upon those unhappy 

 coasts, shot and shell were hurled upon the defenceless inhabitants, 

 sea-port after sea-port was visited with the horrors of war, the cities 

 of the interior were entered and captured, and then, when all had 

 been done or taken that they cared to do or take, an indemnity of 

 millions upon millions of dollars was exacted from the stricken people 

 whose ravished homes in smoking ruins at length convinced them of 



