338  THE  CHINESE  EMPIRE
turbed  state  of  the  country  from  1850  to  i860  weakened
the  authority  of  the  Government,  and  gave  the  officials  an
excuse  and  an  opportunity  for  their  laxity  which  they  did
not  need,  but  it  could  not  transfer  the  responsibility  from
the  Imperial  Government  to  the  shoulders  of  foreign  nations.
Opium  Trade  Legalised
The  treaties  made  in  1858  as  the  result  of  the  second  war
left  the  opium  question  still  unsettled.  The  treaty  of
Nanking  of  1842  was  silent  on  the  subject,  leaving  China  to
enact  and  enforce  her  own  sumptuary  and  prohibitive  laws,
and  to  adopt  her  own  preventive  measures.  The  same
silence  was  observed  in  the  four  treaties  of  Tientsin  of  1858»
in  the  British  and  French  treaties  imposed  on  China  as  the
result  of  the  war,  and  in  the  identical  and  simultaneous
American  and  Russian  treaties  which  must  be  considered
to  be  also  the  direct  result  of  that  war.  But  (to  quote  the
premier  treaty)  Article  XXVI.  of  the  British  treaty  provided ­
  for  the  appointment  of  a  commission  to  revise  the
Customs  tariff  ;  and  when,  in  November  1858,  the  commission ­
  agreed  on  the  tariff,  opium  was  quietly  inserted  in
it  at  a  duty  of  Tls.30  per  picul.  Opium  was  included  with
the  full  consent  of  the  Chinese  negotiators  ;  of  this  there  is
no  doubt,  for  we  have  the  testimony  of  Sir  Thomas  Wade
and  Mr.  Laurence  Oliphant,  who  were  the  representatives
of  the  British  Envoy  on  the  Commission.  That  so  burning
a  question  as  the  opium  trade  should  not  be  mentioned  #
those  unofficial  colloquies  which  accompany  all  negotiations
was  impossible  ;  and  that  the  wisdom  of  legalisation  cV0
regulation  was  fully  explained  to  the  Chinese  negotiators
as  a  measure  of  political  economy  is  made  known  to  us  by
Oliphant.  The  first  suggestion  that  the  matter  should  be
taken  into  consideration  was  made  by  the  American  Minister,
Mr.  William  B.  Reed,  who  came  out  to  China  with  a  strong
bias  against  the  opium  trade,  and  with  instructions  fro#
his  Government  conceived  in  the  same  spirit,  but  who  nevertheless ­
  became  an  advocate  of  the  legalisation  of  the  trade,