October 16th.—­Yes, the report of the conclusion of a Treaty which was conveyed so rapidly overland to St. Petersburg was true, and yet I am not on my way home!...  Do not think that I am indifferent to this delay.  It is however, for the moment, inevitable.  Everything would have been lost if I had left China.  The violence and ill-will which exist in Hong-Kong are something ludicrous....  As it is, matters are going on very fairly with the Imperial Commissioners, and I expect an official visit from them this day at noon.  The English mail arrived yesterday....  The visit of the Commissioners went off very well.  I think that they have accepted the situation, and intend to make the best of it.

October 19th.—­Yesterday I returned the visit of the Commissioners, going in state, with a guard, &c., into the city.  We had a Chinese repast—­birds’-nest soup, sharks’ fins, &c.  I tried to put them at their ease, after our disagreeable encounters at Tientsin.  They seemed disposed to be conversable and friendly.  The Governor-General of this province, who is one of them, is considered a very clever man, and he appears to have rather a notion of taking a go-ahead policy with foreigners.

[Sidenote:  The tariff.]

The chief matter that remained to be arranged was the settlement of certain trade-regulations, supplemental to the Treaty, involving a complete revision of the tariff.

[Sidenote:  The opium trade.]

A tariff is not usually a matter of general interest; but this tariff is of more than mere commercial importance, as having for the first time regulated, and therefore legalised, the trade in opium.[1] Hitherto this article had been mentioned in no treaty, but had been left to the operation of the Chinese municipal law, which prohibited it altogether.  But the Chinese would have it; there was no lack of foreign traders, chiefly British and American, ready to run the risk of smuggling it for the sake of the large profits to be made upon it; and the custom-house officials, both natives and foreign inspectors, hardly even kept up the farce of pretending to ignore the fact.  At one port, indeed, the authorities exacted from the opium traders a sort of hush-money, equivalent to a tax about 6 per cent. ad valorem.  It might well be said that ’the evils of this illegal, connived at, and corrupting traffic could hardly be overstated; that it was degrading alike to the producer, the importer, the official, whether foreign or Chinese, and the purchaser.’