Page 336 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

322.

policy, & acconunodate herself. .The time has come when

CHINA MUST BEND OR BREAK." A month later the Repository

ironically posed the war in the same terms used by the Chinese.

To the editors the hostilities became a battle between

the civilized and the uncivilized, with the West or English

representing civilization. "The struggle now begun will not
and ought not end, until the civilities, the rights, and the

inununities, usually yielded to and claimed by civilized nations
57
are secured."

Missionaries who earlier had consistently denounced

the evils of opium and the trade in it suddenly visualized

the opium trade as a means to the accomplishment of good.

David Abeel, who arrived back in China during the opium crisis,

reflected in his letters and journal the change of opinion that

occurred among the Americans. On one hand, he still "considered

the opium trade as fraught with ruinous consequences to the

bodies and souls of the inhabitants of China." But the larger

issue of forcing the Chinese to treat the West as an equal

demanded his support, even if he had to submerge his criticism

of the opium trade. Abeel "deemed the war necessary to over­

come the prejudices, and destroy the exclusive policy of these

self-styled subjects of the 'Son of Heaven. 111 He rationalized

the fact that the English had initiated the crisis in their

refusal to end the opium trade by pointing out that the crisis

was "the providence of God working great results for good out

57 ' .
.
C hinese Repository, I X , 1 (May 1840), 1-2; IX, 2
(June 1840�06.