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10 the foreign merchants. The East India Company's chiefs seemed to have lost somehow their former control over the foreign community, and the latter would not submit now, as formerly, to all the caprices of the Chinese Authorities; they were talking now of international and reciprocal responsibilities, and murmured seditiously against trade monopolies as commercial iniquities.

Moreover the restrictions placed on the opium ships, from which the Provincial Authorities were reaping their richest harvests, were persistently evaded by the ships anchoring at the island of Lintin or in the Kapsingmoon channel, outside the Bogue, where, with the connivance of the Authorities, the foreign merchants had established stationary receiving ships, serving the purpose of floating warehouses for all sorts of goods. This measure encouraged a great deal of smuggling on the part of Chinese private traders, and the consequent infringement of the official trade monopoly curtailed the share which the Provincial Authorities had in the whole trade.

The Chinese officials now saw clearly that a different spirit had crept in among the foreigners at Canton, that even the servile attitude of the former East India Company's officers was rapidly giving way to claims of national self-respect, a most preposterous thing, as it appeared to the Chinese, on the part of outer barbarians, and finally that the most intelligent private merchants freely expressed their conviction that, owing to the approaching dissolution of the East India Company's Chinese monopoly, the whole foreign trade with China would have to be placed on a distinctly international basis by the year 1834. The Viceroy now perceived and reported to Peking that a serious crisis was approaching. Accordingly an Imperial Edict was issued (September 19, 1832) ordering all the maritime provinces to put their forts and ships of war in repair 'in order to scour the seas and drive off any European vessels (of war) that might make their appearance on the coast.' Thus prepared, the Chinese calmly awaited the year 1834,