From this date (1834), any British subject was free to engage in the trade, and the Home Government sent out Lord Napier to act as Chief Superintendent, and to enter into regular diplomatic relations with the Chinese authorities.  Lord Napier, however, even though backed by a couple of frigates, was unable to gain admission to the city of Canton, and after a demonstration, the only result of which was to bring all business to a standstill, he was finally obliged in the general interest to retire.  He went to Macao, a small peninsula to the extreme south-west of the Kuangtung province, famous as the residence of the poet Camoens, and there he died a month later.  Macao was first occupied by the Portuguese trading with China in 1557; though there is a story that in 1517 certain Portuguese landed there under pretence of drying some tribute presents to the Emperor, which had been damaged in a storm, and proceeded to fortify their encampment, whereupon the local officials built a wall across the peninsula, shutting off further access to the mainland.  It also appears that, in 1566, Macao was actually ceded to the Portuguese on condition of payment of an annual sum to China, which payment ceased after trouble between the two countries in 1849.

The next few years were employed by the successors of Lord Napier in endeavours, often wrongly directed, to establish working, if not harmonious, relations with the Chinese authorities; but no satisfactory point was reached, for the simple reason that recent events had completely confirmed the officials and the people in their old views as to the relative status of the barbarians and themselves.

It is worth noticing here that Russia, with her conterminous and ever-advancing frontier, has always been regarded somewhat differently from the oversea barbarian.  She has continually during the past three centuries been the dreaded foreign bogy of the Manchus; and a few years back, when Manchus and Chinese alike fancied that their country was going to be “chopped up like a melon” and divided among western nations, a warning geographical cartoon was widely circulated in China, showing Russia in the shape of a huge bear stretching down from the north and clawing the vast areas of Mongolia and Manchuria to herself.

Now, to aggravate the already difficult situation, the opium question came suddenly to the front in an acute form.  For a long time the import of opium had been strictly forbidden by the Government, and for an equally long time smuggling the drug in increasing quantities had been carried on in a most determined manner until, finally, swift vessels with armed crews, sailing under foreign flags, succeeded in terrorizing the native revenue cruisers, and so delivering their cargoes as they pleased.  It appears that the Emperor Tao Kuang, who had sounded the various high authorities on the subject, was genuinely desirous of putting an end to the import of opium, and so checking