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Rh later fifty foreign merchants, known to have had no direct dealings in opium, were allowed to depart for Whampoa en route for Macao. Elliot, however, and the other merchants were still detained in custody as hostages until the delivery of the opium was completed (May 21, 1839). Then Elliot was graciously allowed to leave, but the permission was coupled with the demand now made that sixteen of the principal British merchants should remain in custody as a punishment for dealing in opium. Elliot refused to leave without them, and, after protracted negotiations, he at last (May 27, 1839) obtained their discharge on their signing a bond, guaranteeing that they would never return to China. By the end of May the exodus of British merchants and British shipping from Canton waters was complete. American merchants remained and became a favoured class.

Lin had gained a victory. He had succeeded in stopping for a time the trade in opium. But his seeming success had been gained only by driving British trade away from Canton in a manner eventually resulting in the establishment of a British Colony at Hongkong, which in turn deprived Canton of all its former commercial importance. He had also succeeded in obtaining forcible possession of over twenty-four million dollars worth of British-owned opium which it took him wrecks (until June 1, 1839) to destroy with quick-lime in pits dug on the sea shore at Chinkau, near the Bogue, and the full value of which China had to repay a few years later.

'This affair has been well managed,' wrote the Emperor to Lin, but the verdict of the vermilion pencil is not always the verdict of history, and six months later Queen Victoria stated, in her Speech from the Throne (January, 1840), that 'events had happened in China which deeply affected the interests of her subjects and the dignity of her crown.'