Page 332 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

318.

III

In the early months of 1839 the arrival of Commissioner

Lin Tse-hsu at Canton and his confrontation with the English

concerning the opium trade suspended all missionary activities.

Retreating to Macao, the Americans viewed the crisis at Canton

favorably as ending the vile drug trade. S. Wells Williams, in
a letter to the American Board in May 1839, characterized the

general feeling of American missionaries: 11 But while partial

distress must ensue upon the cessation of a trade worth six­

teen millions of dollars annually, we cannot but rejoice at

the check this traffic has received. 11 After reciting all the

evils in Chinese society for which the drug was responsible,

Williams stated the real cause of missionary opposition to the

opium trade. "It was opposing a barrier to all our efforts

to do them good, that no human science, skill, or zeal could

overcome; for it rendered the people heedless of all instruc­

tion, steeped them in the odor of the grave, and soon intro­

duced them to its precincts. We were implicated, as foreigners,

in the misdeeds of other foreigners and thus disabled from

exerting that influence for good that precedes the reception
51
of instruction.11

51
Lctter, S. W. Will_i::,ms to Americc1n Board of Cornmissioners,
May 17, 1839, in Mi:c;sionary Hc�ro.ld., XX'XV, 12 (December H339), 464.
In the mission's semi-annual letter, the Americans stated: 110f
all with whom we converse, those who are the least susceptible
Letter, China Mission to
to serious impression are opium-smokers. 11
American Board of Commissioners, Jan. 1, 1840, in Missionary
Herald, XXXVI, 8 (August 1840), 320.