Page 263 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

249.

viction. Consequently, Russell & Co. warned that "speculators

in Opium of any kind will run an imminent hazard of very serious

losses, even if the sale should not be strictly stopped." In
a letter to John Murray Forbes, who still owned a share in

Russell & Co., the house asked him to "advise all shippers to

this quarter who consign to us, that they would do well not to
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send any Opium let the cost be what it may. 1 1

By the time trade resumed in January 1839, Russell &

Co. was terminating its opium business. Not only had the

opium trade virtually stopped in the Pearl Riverv but the trade

along the coast had also diminished. Customers willing to risk

buying the drug were increasingly difficult to find. Russell

& Co., fearing that "there is no chance of revival, 1 1 informed

their Parsee correspondents in India during January that the

house could no longer make advances on opium. The partners

prepared to get out of the opium trade before they faced a

situation of no demand with a stockpiled supply. Writing to

John Forbes in the United States at the end of the month, the

house stated that they felt the government would "throw such

embarrassments in the way of the foreign houses who deal in

it or have ships at Lintin that these houses will be compelled

to give it up to agents outside & withdraw entirely from all

connection with the drug." Every American house had a greater

financial stake in tea and silk than in opium. In losing its
opium trade, Russell & Co. was forfeiting a lucrative source

64
Letter, Russell & Co. to J.M. Forbes, Dec. 22,
1837, Forbes MSS.