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 easily be resolved by the means that Lin employed. Though opium was the immediate cause of the ensuing war there were other, perhaps more fundamental, causes. On July 7 a Chinese named Lin Wei-hsi 林維喜 was injured in a brawl of British and American sailors on the Kowloon side of the Hong Kong anchorage. The injured man died on the following day and to smooth over the incident Elliot made a partial settlement with the villagers and with the family of the victim. But Lin demanded of Elliot that the murderer be found and turned over to the Chinese authorities. Elliot offered rewards for the apprehension of the culprit, but unable to single him out, he held on August 12 on an English ship a formal trial of those accused, and fined and sentenced the most likely culprits to imprisonment in England. In deference to a long-standing practice he persistently declined to turn them over to a Chinese tribunal. Not satisfied with the trial, Lin ordered the expulsion of all British residents from Macao—their removal to Hong Kong being effected on August 26 with much hardship to those concerned. When on September 4 the British sent to Kowloon for food, they were denied the right to purchase it. Angered at the refusal, a British captain opened fire on some junks and thus the first shot of the Anglo-Chinese War was fired. After a few other skirmishes Lin ordered, on November 26, that no British ships should be allowed to proceed to Canton after December 6. This order was supplemented by an imperial edict of December 13 ordering stoppage of all trade with England. The Chinese began to look after their defenses and before many months British men-of-war assembled on the South China coast. Early in 1840 Lin was made governor-general of Kwangtung and Kwangsi. The British, in the meantime, had instructions to carry the war to northern waters. They occupied Ting-hai, Chekiang, on July 5, and then continued northward. This new threat stirred the entire nation—and Lin's policy in regard to opium was seized upon by many influential Chinese as the cause of the war. When the British ships reached Tientsin negotiations were conducted in a concilatory manner by who later became Commissioner at Canton.

On September 28, 1840 Lin Tsê-hsü was dismissed from office and was ordered to go to Peking to await punishment. He served for a time in Chekiang in military headquarters, and then was sentenced to exile in Ili. In the autumn of 1841, however, owing to flood conditions on the Yellow River, he was ordered to Kaifeng to assist in conservancy work under Wang Ting 王鼎. When the river work was concluded early in the following year (1842), Lin was ordered, despite Wang's favorable report, to proceed to Chinese Turkestan. Before long Wang Ting died in Peking. According to some sources he really committed suicide in order to indicate his disapproval of the government's foreign policy in regard to England and his opposition to the banishment of Lin Tsê-hsü. It is reported that there was found on his person a last memorial to the throne (known as shih-chien 尸諫 or 'corpse admonition') but that owing to the powerful opposition party led by Wang's son did not dare to present the document. On August 11, two days after the British occupation of Nanking, Lin Tsê-hsü set out from Sian, Shensi, for Ili accompanied by two of his sons. The diary which he kept of this journey, beginning on August 11, 1842 and continuing to December 11, the day after his arrival at Ili, is entitled 荷戈紀程 Ho-ko chi-ch'êng. He remained in Ili for three years. In 1844 at the recommendation of Pu-yen-t'ai (see under ), military governor of Ili (1840–45), he was charged with colonization affairs in Sinkiang. He made personal inspections in various regions and opened up some 37,000 ch'ing 頃 (more than 500,000 acres) of land to cultivation.

As a reward for his merit in this work he was ordered back to Peking in the autumn of 1845 to await another appointment. Late in the same year he was made acting governor-general of Shensi and Kansu. In the following year (1846) he became governor of Shensi, and in 1847 was appointed governor-general of Yunnan and Kweichow. In Yunnan there had for some time been trouble between the Muslims and the Chinese inhabitants, but after two years of Lin's administration conditions so greatly improved that in 1848 he was rewarded with the title of Grand Guardian of the Heir Apparent. In the summer of the following year he retired from office on grounds of illness and set out for his native place in Fukien. However, shortly after the death of Emperor Hsüan-tsung early in 1850 he was strongly recommended for active service. The Taiping rebels were beginning to be active in Kwangsi, and Lin was once more appointed Imperial Commissioner—this time to take charge of the suppression of the rebels and also to be acting governor of Kwangsi 513