320 LAISSEZ FAIRE 
£3, and of the central Chinese Government, had harmonised in 
"regard to the smuggling of opium. The East India Company 
were anxious to maintain their monopoly in the growth? of 
[ndian opium, while the Chinese desired to, limit and control 
the consumption of the drug. Opium had been regularly 
imported under a duty till 1796, when the importation was 
prohibited; and systematic smuggling was subsequently 
Jeveloped on a large scale 
in fanaur Dire confusion in regard to this and all other branches 
sempe- of commerce followed from the sudden suppression of the 
tie mad exclusive powers of the Company. The attempt to estab- 
esults.  ligh political, as distinguished from commercial relations, 
was a failure, for when Lord Napier arrived in Canton, in 
1834, as the direct representative of the British Crown, 
the Chinese Government treated him with contempt. The 
new commercial methods did not commend themselves to 
the Chinese; the Hongists were dissatisfied with the 
change, and demanded that the English should elect a com- 
mercial chief to control their shipping? The English 
merchants too, as isolated individuals, had greater difficulties 
about recovering debts than in former days. All regu- 
lation was at an end; the illicit trade in opium, against 
which the Chinese had protested, was now carried on with- 
out disguise at Canton; and the enforced surrender by 
British merchants of a large quantity of the drug led to the 
necessity of armed intervention. The so-called Opium War 
! The East India Company had endeavoured to put down the growth of the 
poppy in Rajputana; though the treaties by which the suppression of the culti- 
vation was secured could not be strictly enforced, they did succeed in greatly 
limiting the trade. Mill, op. cit. 1x. 174. 
2 The opium which was thus smuggled was mostly grown in Mahoor and other 
Rajputana States, whence it was conveyed to Karachi to be shipped. Much of 
his contraband business was chiefly carried on by the Portuguese at Macao, and 
by other traders, most if not all of them British, at Lintin, a small island at the 
mouth of the Canton river. Davis, op. cit. p. 49. 
8 This was much needed, as some of the British traders were mere buccaneers, 
who were prepared to indemnify themselves by acts of reprisal on their own 
account (Davis, 57). The Chinese were quite incapable of controlling their own 
subjects. About 1810 the seas were completely infested by a body of pirates, 
mown as Ladrones, who were latterly commanded by a woman (Ib. 34). We can 
perhaps find a parallel in Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. with 
the Rovers of the Sea (Vol. 1. p. 366). or Victual Brothers. 
\ Davis. on. cit. 59.