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88 for several months before Lin's arrival, and the Authorities bestirred themselves to make a show of serious repressive measures. They now (January 10, 1839) issued a notification strictly prohibiting the conveyance of opium from Lintin to Whampoa, and further (January 16, 1839) called upon all foreign merchants to pledge their word that they would have nothing whatever to do with the smuggling of opium or with the exportation of silver. Again, acting upon advance orders sent on ahead by Commissioner Lin, the Viceroy now ordered the backdoors of the factories to be blocked up and set a watch in front. Having thus shut in the foreign community, the Viceroy and the Governor issued (January 30, 1839) a joint proclamation addressed directly, without the intervention of the Hong Merchants, to all foreign merchants. In this proclamation foreigners were told that the Imperial Commissioner Lin, sent from Peking to extirpate the whole opium traffic, was hourly expected to arrive in Canton. The Viceroy and Governor even added, in their zeal, what was entirely against Lin's plan, that the foreign merchants must at once send all the warehousing vessels, anchored in the outer seas, away. These orders were enhanced by the threat that, in case of disobedience, trade would be brought to an end for ever. The real sting of the proclamation was, however, when read in the light of the newly established blockade of the factories, in the words 'thus are the lives of all you foreigners in our grasp.'

This blockade of the factories and the imprisonment of the whole foreign community was, indeed, the indispensable preliminary to the execution of Lin's deeeply laid scheme. Having thus caught the whole of the foreign merchants in his net, Lin, to keep them busy, allowed the legitimate trade to continue unmolested for the present, and proceeded first of all to examine the high officials and the gentry of Canton as to the detailed history of the opium traffic, censuring some and cashiering others. But he at once ordered measures to be taken to intimidate the foreign merchants further by the strangling