Page 235 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

221.

aboard met with difficulties from local Mandarins. One of the

vessels belonged to Benjamin c. Wilcocks, the recently appoin­

ted American consul at Canton. In 1817 the Co-Hong sent a
letter, through Consul Wilcocks, to the President of the United

States. The Hong merchants asked him to inform the merchants

of his honorable country "that Opium the dirt used in smoking

is an article the Celestial Empire prohibits by an order from

the Son of Heaven, and hereafter, most positively, they must

not buy it and bring it to Canton." Local authorities respon­

sible for the opium trade sought to stop foreign importation

of the drug by appealing to foreign authorities to exert

pressure on the merchants in the China trade. This letter,

although signed by members of the Co-Hong, actually emanated
23
from the governor-general.

Included in the letter was a statement of the conse­

quences to be suffered by a foreign vessel caught carrying

opium. Hong merchants would "not dare to be security for the

said ship" and would "assuredly report it fully tr) the Great

Officers of the Government." All trade of the vessel would

be totally prohibited. In 1821 two American vessels caught

23
The matter arose in 1817 when Consul Wilcocks com­
plained to the authorities of an attack by pirates on the Amer­
ican vessel "Wabash." Only in the process of capturing the
priates did the Chinese discover that a large part of the
"Wabash's" cargo was opium. For the letter and Wilcocks 1 report
on the matteru see U.S., Department of State, Consular Despatches:
Canton, B.C. Wilcocks, Sep. 22, 1817. The reaction of the author­
ities to the "Wabash" matter scared at least one house, and
probably the most important one, into hesitating before import­
ing any further opium into China. Letter, J. & T.H. Perkins
to Woodman & Offley, Feb. 11, 1818, T.H. Perkins Extracts.