Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/272

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272
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

of a smuggler. The situation was not to be borne by any self-respecting nation, and she determined to amend it. The seizure, by Chinese officials, of the "Arrow," an opium schooner owned and manned by natives, but illegally flying the British flag, afforded the desired pretext, and in 1857 Great Britain again declared war. She was joined by the Trench, and at the end of the campaign, in 1860, China was forced to legalize the opium trade and pay an indemnity of $11,000,000.

In all the annals of the crimes of nations there is no parallel with this one. In the seventy years since the British East India Company made its first venture with a ship load of the drug, the use of it has spread with appalling rapidity, and its victims are numbered by millions. It has made its deadly inroad upon every social class, bearing destruction of mind and body. China has protested, pled and fought in vain. As a last resort the Emperor wrote a personal letter to Queen Victoria, begging her benevolent aid in suppressing a trade so disastrous to his people, and offering any concession in return. The letter was unanswered, the appeal ignored.

So, we are known to the heathen yellow man as "foreign devils," and the examination halls at Peking have been transformed into a military school!