Page:Chinese account of the Opium war (IA chineseaccountof00parkrich).pdf/55

 tronomers' labours, so we might have got a few Americans, Dutchmen, and Portuguese to instruct skilled Chinese artificers at Canton in the art of shipbuilding, and have offered to purchase foreign ships, guns, rockets, and powder from any persons wishing to sell. Not only could we have obtained these articles in exchange for our produce, but we might have accepted them in payment of duties. In this way we might have been content to extract a few millions only from the co-hong merchants, and in a short time we should have been able to confront foreign skill with Chinese skill. We could have leisurely strengthened the walls of outer Canton and the forts upon the river; got our armies properly together, and trained them up to naval tactics, gradually extending the same reforms to Amoy, Ningpo, and Shanghai; after which a grand review of all the fleets might have been held at Tientsin, and such a spectacle of naval greatness witnessed as China had never seen before. What enemy would then have dared to attack us? How could opium then have ventured into China? What slanderers would have then dared to open their mouths? This would have been what may be called "setting your own house in order first." Why, then, the hurry to make a show on the high seas and abroad? Some say that if the efforts of Commissioner, who preserved the proud integrity of Canton without charging for a single extra soldier,