Right and Wrong in Politics [pp. 265-293]

RIGHT AND WRONG IN POLITICS.
the British authorities as to the identity of a Chinese vessel, the
Arrow, engaged in committing a breach of the Chinese revenue laws, to wage a fresh war with China, to carry into Chinese
homes and remote and ancient cities calamity, anarchy, and
moral chaos for the sake of exacting a fresh treaty, and thereby
forcing the opening of a few more ports to British trade and
securing a license to import opium into the country, in the face
of the persistent policy of the Chinese Government, and the
almost pathetic outcry of all the most provident and beneficent
Chinese individual statesmen; that from that time to this, this
iniquitous treaty of Tientsin has been jealously maintained, and
.an enormous trade in opium has been driven with China, the
net value of the imported opium having gradually attained the
amount of ~7,000ooo,ooo000 sterling, while the political difficulty of
retracing the steps taken is every year enhanced. The opium is
furnished from the profits of the monopoly which the British
Government has secured to itself of opium cultivation in British
India: and therefore the issue so fatal to China seems almost
inextricably bound up with the current financial system, not to
say the solvency, of the British-dominion in India.
It is impossible to recur ever so briefly to the several steps
in the story of British relations with China without denouncing
their flagrant defiance of even the least severe moral standard
with an energy which no misnamed patriotism or indulgence to
the sins of one's own race ought for a moment to weaken.
Unfortunately the crimes are not only past, but are continuing,
and indeed with every year are growing in atrocity. If the
reviving strength of the Chinese Empire, or a more pronounced
public opinion among the states of the world, can do anything
to abate the wrong, before the moral sense of England is entirely
ingulfed in it, and, by force even, can induce England at any
cost to retrace her steps, to enter on a fresh course of policy
directly opposed to the past, she will owe a debt of gratitude to
the world for which her services in the world-wide lesson she
has taught of constitutional government may be taken as a
set-off.
From the numerous examples which have been above
adduced of the application of a strictly moral standard to the
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