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In making the above remarks let us not be misunderstood. We are no advocates of smuggling in any kind or degree; and if the moral guilt can be increased by the peculiar nature and properties of the article smuggled, it would certainly be so by those of a pernicious and demoralising drug like opium. Holding it when used in the manner the Chinese use it, that is, not as a medicine but as a luxury, to be in the last degree hurtful to the physical, moral and intellectual nature of man, we wish most heartily that they had put down the trade-had effectually stopped the importation in a regular and justifiable manner; we wish so for their sakes. as well as for our own. The blunder made by the Chinese authorities was in putting coercion upon others besides those who were or possibly might be engaged in the trade. If they had shut up all the opium merchants and agents, if they had even threatened them with death unless they surrendered the opium under their control,—we do not think that upon principles of general equity they could have been called upon to account for what they did. But in shutting up or keeping in confinement, in other words putting coercion upon, Her Britannic Majesty's superintendents and others of Her Majesty's subjects who had and could have no concern with the opium smuggling, they made their quarrel with the smugglers a quarrel with the British nation. Now in this case the British nation either is an opium smuggler or she is not. If she is, she is not on that account the less likely to resent being treated as a smuggler, and to demand redress and indemnity for her losses and the wrongs. If she is not, she will justly demand redress for the injurious treatment she has received; and one shape in which that redress may in part be effected, may be indemnity for the property lost. If the Chinese had carefully selected only those who were engaged in the opium trade, putting coercion upon them, but leaving free passage to all others, they and those who support them would most undoubtedly have had a much better case than they have at present; though even then their conduct would have had very much the effect of punishing by an ex post facto law. For the suffering a law to lie for years as a dead letter, and then all at once.

bringing it into violent operation, has the same effect as an ex post facto law. A few years ago Governor Yuen succeeded in driving away opium smuggling from Whampoa by the simple exercise of the known Chinese law, that whenever foreigners prove refractory their hatches shall be closed (i, e. their legal trade suspended) until they obey. It may be asked, why did he not go on enforcing that law? It would have been more easy to destroy the trade when the importation was only 5000 or 6000 chests, than when it was nearer 30,000. Among the many reasons for thinking that the Chinese were not sincere in professing to stop it then, one is, that the flow of silver was into the empire at that time. The balance of exports and imports and consequently of exchanges did not turn against them until 1829-30. Yuen retired from the Emperor's Council of Four (Nuy-Ko) only last year; and his retirement seems to have been the signal for the violent party in the imperial councils to enter upon those proceedings which Lin is now following out.

But admitting that an insult has been offered to the British people, in the force put upon the persons of British subjects, and more especially of the superintendent of the British commerce, there are other considerations to be taken into account by a rational and civilized state besides the mere consideration of the shortest way to avenge that insult. It may be said that if the Chinese do not wish for our trade we have no right to force it upon them: and it may be said also, with a good colour of truth, that the supply even of all the British empire with tea is but a part of the Chinese trade in tea (considering the vast supplies of that article required by the eastern parts of Europe and vast tracts of Northern Asia), and consequently the Chinese might not be disposed to make any great sacrifice to retain the British trade; moreover that there are the Americans ready to avail themselves of our quarrel with the Chinese to become the instruments of supplying all the British dominions with tea. But all this is no answer to the objection. It is undeniable that for two hundred years the Chinese have not only permitted but encouraged us to trade with them; and we are not bound, as it seems to us, by any law either of God or man, when an individual or a nation has opened a

shop, and we, among others, have entered that shop, to submit to be, not civilly informed that the shopkeeper does not wish for our custom, but driven out with kicks and hootings, for no other pretence than that a relation of ours, over whose actions we have no complete control, though whatever control we might have has been exercised to prevent the act in question, has done some act which has displeased the shopkeeper. So far from submitting tamely to such treatment from the shopkeeper, we should most unquestionably turn upon him and give him a drubbing that he should remember to the last day of his natural life, and that should be to all such as he a lesson of good government and good manners to all time. Let us suppose that we send out a squadron, —that we take the most efficient plan to make known to the Celestial Court itself that we deem ourselves insulted, and mean to have reparation for the insult, that we sail up the Yellow Sea to the point nearest to Pekin; that we "single out the vital part of our adversary, and the point of "it which is most exposed; that in that vulnerable heart we plant our dagger, so that the remotest limb shall quiver "with the shock." Supposing all this, it behoves us also to consider what will be the consequences when the vibrations of that shock have passed away. We might, to be sure, perhaps without very great difficulty, effect a revolution in China. The Chinese are by no means reconciled to the Tartar yoke. We might pull down the Tartar and set a Chinaman in his place, but then, how long would the Chinaman remain? When you once begin to pull down an elderly edifice, there is no saying where you are to stop. And so we arrive at the point in the circle where we were some pages back,—viz. that we should incur a terrible responsibility by disturbing the governing forces that at present act upon the Chinese people.

Nevertheless we are inclined to think that the latter course would be, upon the whole, the best; and the course which a ruler or minister at once bold and able, resolute and wary, would adopt. We should send out a fleet and army (a draft of troops from India would probably be sufficient), land as near to Pekin as possible; distribute manifestoes everywhere as we advanced, that we do not mean to plunder the property

of the Chinese, or to interfere in the least with the Chinese laws and institutions; that our sole quarrel is with the Tartar invaders; and our object to place a Chinese on the throne instead of a Tartar; and to restore to China whatever of her institutions or customs, abolished by the Tartars, she wished to have restored. We should march to Pekin, pluck the Tartar from his throne, place a Chinaman in his seat, and make the sole condition of giving him his empire that he would sanction free trade with all the world. We think that all this might be done at less expense than a paltry peddling indecisive measure would cost, especially if we take into account the consequences of these inefficient measures, which, like everything at first cheap and bad, are always the most expensive in the end. It seems probable, from the following account of certain secret political associations in China that the work of overturning the Tartar government would not be a difficult one. In fact the fear of something of this kind is said to be at the bottom of the extraordinary jealousy of foreign intercourse entertained by the Tartar government of China.

"The fraternities which are most dreaded by the Government of China are those secret associations, under various mysterious names, which combine for purposes either religious or political, or perhaps both together. Of the first description, the sect of the Water-lily' (a sacred plant), and that of the Incense-burners,' are both denounced in the 7th section of the Shing-yu; and with them is confounded the Roman Catholic worship, under the same prohibition. The present weak state of the government renders it particularly jealous of all secret societies whatever, as well as cruel and unrelenting in punishing their leaders. But the chief object of its dread and persecution is the San-ho-hoey, or Triad Society, of which some description was given in 1823 by Dr. Milne. The name seems to imply that when Heaven, Earth, and Man combine to favour them, they shall succeed in subverting the present Tartar dynasty, and that, in the meanwhile, every exertion is to be used to mature that event.

"In October, 1828, a paper, of which the following is an exact translation, was found in the Protestant burial-ground at Macao, by a gentleman of the Company's Service, who, understanding the meaning of it, sent the production immediately to the mandarin of the district, with whom he happened to be acquainted, and who entreated that the matter might not be made public, as he should be severely punished for the mere discovery of such a seditious paper within his district :

"Vast was the central nation-flourishing the heavenly dynasty,

A thousand regions sent tribute-ten thousand nations did homage;

But the Tartars obtained it by fraud-and this grudge can never be assuaged.

Enlist soldiers, procure horses-display aloft the flowery standard, Raise troops, and seize weapons-let us exterminate the Manchow race.'"

"Dr. Milne's account of the Triad Society, whose nature and objects he took some pains to investigate, is so curious as to deserve particular notice. "The name of this association means, the society of the three united,' that is, of Heaven, Earth, and Man, which, according to the imperfect notions and expressions of Chinese philosophy, imply the three departments of Nature. There is a well-known Chinese cyclopædia, arranged under these three heads. In the reign of Kea-king, about the commencement of the present century, the Triad Society, under another name, spread itself rapidly through the provinces, and had nearly succeeded in overturning the government. In 1803 its machinations were frustrated, and the principal leaders seized and put to death, the official reports stating to the Emperor that not a single member of that rebellious fraternity was left alive.' But the fact was otherwise, for they still existed, and, with a view to secrecy, adopted the name which they at present bear."-Davis's Chinese, vol. ii. page 15.

Whatever the British Government mean to do, we conceive it to be sound advice to them to "do it quickly." On the point of reducing the Chinese to an acquiescence in those rules by which civilized nations conduct their intercourse, all parties are agreed. This has appeared even from the terms of Sir J. Graham's late factious and most unwarrantable attack upon the Ministry. And as this has become the unavoidable duty of any minister, Whig or Tory, we have only to express our hope that it may be executed in the most effective and rapid manner. For the sake of humanity, the contest, if contest there is to be, must be as short as the employment of vast resources can make it. We have less to revenge ourselves for the past, than to secure our position for the future. Nothing can do this so well as the display of our power to punish, and then, but not till then, our readiness to pardon.