Page 236 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

222.
1
with cargoes of opium felt the weight of the governor-general s

decrees. Authorities forbade first the "Robinson" and then

the "Emily" from returning to Canton and confiscated half of

24
the "Emily's" cargo. Following the banishment of these ships
(along with three English ships), the governor-general de­

clared that each Hong merchant would have to sign a bond in

which he claimed there was no opium aboard the foreign vessel

he secured. Implicit in such a directive was the necessity

for foreign merchants• willingness to guarantee the absence
of opium on their vessels to the Security Merchant. American

merchants consented to give the necessary guarantee to allow

the Hong merchants to sign the bond. But the Select Corrunittee

of the East India Company, which controlled all British trade,

refused to participate in this maneuver. The Corrunittee argued

that, since no Company ship was allowed to carry opium, to

give such a guarantee was unnecessary. In response, local
1
Mandarins agreed with the Corrunittee s assertion and, per­

suaded by bribes, disregarded the bonds. But the governor­
25
general demanded that the British accede to the regulations.

24 11
The "Emily, on which Francis Terranovia was a sea­
man, became involved in the dispute over opium almost simul­
taneously with the entanglement over Terranovia and the death
of the Chinese woman. Although Tyler Dennett in Americans in
Eastern Asia (New York, 1929), p. 121, tries to connect the
Terranovia affair with the opium problem, the evidence does not
seem to support such an analysis. The judicial dispute concern­
ing Terranovia had nothing to do with the new Chinese attack on
opium. The opium dispute concerned Puiqua, Security merchant
for the "Emily" (as well as the "Wabash") .

25
Morse, Chr�nicles of the East India Company, IV, 14-18.