Page 337 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

323.

of seeming evil, and causing the wrath of man to praise Him. 11 58

Peter Parker reiterated the same attitude as expressed by Abeel

in a letter published in the Missionary Herald. ''I am constrained

to look back upon the present state of 'things'. .as a design

of Providence to make the wickedness of man subserve his

purpose of mercy towards China, in breaking through her wall

of exclusion, and bringing the empire into more immediate

contact with western and christian nations .11 59

Throughout the thirty months of the Opium War American

missionaries never wavered in their support of the English.

During 1840, when the English fleet arrived in Chinese waters,
the foreign community at Canton assumed that only a skirmish

would be necessary to force the Chinese to relent. After a

few months and several engagements, the foreigners realized

that hostilities had evolved into a protracted war. American

merchants, who had reaped tremendous profits during the months

of English absence from Canton, hastily retreated downriver to

Macao in the spring of 1840,to join the American missionaries

who had left Canton earlier. As the American merchants anx­

iously awaited the outcome of the battles on the Pearl River,

the American missionaries busied themselves in the Portugese

58
williamson, Memoir of Abeel, p. 180.
59
Letter, P. Parker to American Board of Cornmis�c;ioners,
Jun. 24, 1840, in Missionary Herald, XXXVII, 1 (January 1841),
43. Bridgman addressed a letter to the Board in which he sup­
ported Parker's views concerning the necessity and benefit of
opening China, although he did not agree with Parker's desire
for military destruction of China. Letter, E.C. Bridgman to
American Board of Commissioners, Jun. 24, 1840, in Missionary
Herald, XXXVII, 1 (January 1840), 43.