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Rh went on shore one evening (July 7, 1839) at Tsimshatsui, and got into a drunken fray with the Chinese, in the course of which a Chinaman, named Lin Wai-hi, was killed. Elliot at once hastened to Hong-kong and held a strict inquiry, terminating in the criminal trial of some lascars by a British jury. But there was no evidence whatever bringing home the charge of manslaughter to any one. The Chinese Government had been invited by Elliot to send some officers to witness the trial, but Liu claimed the jurisdiction for himself, sent no officer to watch the case and made a great clamour demanding of Elliot, again and again, that he should surrender the murderer or some British subject in his place. Lin, moreover, now demanded, in the most peremptory terms, that Elliot and all British merchants should at once sign a bond declaring that hereafter British subjects charged with any crime should at once be handed over to the Chinese Government to be tried according to Chinese forms of proceeding (involving examination by torture both of the accused and his witnesses) and to be executed according to the methods in vogue in China.

Poor Lin, he could not understand that the day for making such demands had entirely gone by, and that, by insisting upon them, he effectually defeated his own scheme of bringing British trade back to Canton. But he blindly rushed on in his mad career. He now ordered the Chinese sub-Prefect of Macao to withdraw all Chinese servants from British residents at Macao (July 21, 1839). Later on, he formally interdicted (August 15, 1839) the supply of provisions of any kind to British persons or ships. When British residents at Macao supplied the places of their Chinese servants with Portuguese, Lin forthwith requested Governor Pinto to prohibit Portuguese subjects either serving the British as domestic servants or supplying them with food or drink, and issued edict after edict, ordering the departure of British subjects on pain of severe punishment, and declaring them all to be responsible with their lives for the surrender of the murderer of Lin Wai-hi. A provisional Committee of a British Chamber of Commerce had been formed at Macao