EXTRATERRITORIALITY  179
and  in  1839,  when  in  the  course  of  a  disturbance  with  English
and  American  sailors  at  Canton  a  Chinese  was  killed,  the
authorities  demanded  that,  if  the  guilty  person  could  not
be  detected  and  executed,  the  whole  party  should  be  handed
over  for  execution  :  this  is  the  law.  Intention  is  never
taken  into  account.  A  dollar  for  a  dollar,  an  eye  for  an
eye,  a  life  for  a  life,  and  all  for  the  Emperor  and  his  representatives ­
  :  this  is  the  law  of  China.  The  feeling  against
continued  submission  to  this  law  and  to  its  arbitrary  and
inequitable  application  had  been  growing,  and  when  the
Chinese  authorities  committed  an  overt  act  of  aggression
in  seizing  and  destroying  the  property  of  the  English  and
American  merchants  at  Canton,  burning  their  “  Factory,”
in  which  alone,  as  in  a  Ghetto,  they  were  permitted  to
reside,  and  forcibly  expelling  them  from  Chinese  soil,  the
British  took  up  the  cudgels  and  the  war  of  1842  followed.
The  movable  property  destroyed  consisted  mainly  of  opium,
and  consequently  the  war  is  in  common  parlance  called
the  “  Opium  War  ”  ;  this  is  an  ill-chosen  designation  for
the  Americans  as  for  the  English,  since,  as  the  direct  result
of  the  war,  the  American  Government  secured  a  treaty  containing ­
  even  more  favorable  terms  than  the  British  treaty.
In  fact,  the  direct  cause  of  the  war  was  the  growing  sense  of
the  need  for  better  protection  to  life  and  property,  though
behind  this  was  the  ground  cause  of  the  need  for  better
relations  generally.  In  the  words  of  Dr.  Hawks  Pott’s
“  Sketch  of  Chinese  History”—“  The  first  war  with  China  was
but  the  beginning  of  a  struggle  between  the  extreme  East
and  the  West,  the  East  refusing  to  treat  on  terms  of  equality,
diplomatically  or  commercially,  with  Western  nations,  and
the  West  insisting  on  its  right  to  be  so  treated,”  As  has
been  the  rule  from  the  outset,  England  bore  the  brunt  of  the
battle  in  securing  the  rights  of  the  West,  and  the  privileges
secured  to  her  as  the  result  of  the  war,  became  the  heritage
of  all  the  Western  powers  coming  later  into  the  field.
Equality  of  treatment  was  conceded  in  1842  on  paper,  but
the  execution  of  the  concession  in  practice  left  much  to  be
desired,  and  friction  continued.  There  were,  of  course,