As soon as it was discovered that the Council entertained a design of opening a trade on those principles, it immediately engaged the attention of such as had an interest in speculations of freight.

A memorial seems to have been drawn early, as it is dated on the 29th of March, though it was not the first publicly presented to the board.  This memorial was presented on the 17th of September, 1781, by Mr. Wheler, conformably (as he says) to the desire of the Governor-General; and it contained a long and elaborate dissertation on the trade to China, tending to prove the advantage of extending the sale of English manufactures and other goods to the North of that country, beyond the usual emporium of European nations.  This ample and not ill-reasoned theoretical performance (though not altogether new either in speculation or attempt) ended by a practical proposition, very short, indeed, of the ideas opened in the preliminary discourse, but better adapted to the immediate effect.  It was, that the Company should undertake the sale of its own opium in China, and commit the management of the business to the memorialist, who offered to furnish them with a strong armed ship for that purpose.  The offer was accepted, and the agreement made with him for the transport of two thousand chests.

A proposal by another person was made the July following the date of this project:  it appears to have been early in the formal delivery at the board:  this was for the export of one thousand four hundred and eighty chests.  This, too, was accepted, but with new conditions and restrictions:  for in so vast and so new an undertaking great difficulties occurred.  In the first place, all importation of that commodity is rigorously forbidden by the laws of China.  The impropriety of a political trader, who is lord over a great empire, being concerned in a contraband trade upon his own account, did not seem in the least to affect them; but they were struck with the obvious danger of subjecting their goods to seizure by the vastness of the prohibited import.  To secure the larger adventure, they require of the China factory that Colonel Watson’s ship should enter the port of Canton as an armed ship, (they would not say a ship of war, though that must be meant,) that her cargo should not be reported; they also ordered that other measures should be adopted to secure this prohibited article from seizure.  If the cargo should get in safe, another danger was in view,—­the overloading the Chinese market by a supply beyond the demand; for it is obvious that contraband trade must exist by small quantities of goods poured in by intervals, and not by great importations at one time.  To guard against this inconvenience, they divide their second, though the smaller adventure, into two parts; one of which was to go to the markets of the barbarous natives which inhabit the coast of Malacca, where the chances of its being disposed of by robbery or sale were at least equal.  If the opium should be disposed of there, the produce was to be invested in merchandise salable in China, or in dollars, if to be had.  The other part (about one half) was to go in kind directly to the port of Canton.