On behalf of the Chartists large public meetings were organized in London and in all parts of England at which violent speeches were made. On the 1st of April, at a public meeting in Edinburgh to support the Ministry, the Chartists took possession of the platform, ejected the Lord Provost, and passed their own resolutions. On the same day at Devizes, in Wiltshire, Vincent entered the town at the head of about a thousand men, carrying sticks, and attempted to address them in the market-place. In May, the Chartist National Convention removed from London to Birmingham. There they were met by a mob of five thousand persons and conducted through the principal streets to the meeting-place. [Sidenote: Chinese oppose opium trade] [Sidenote: English opium destroyed] [Sidenote: British resentment] [Sidenote: Chinese orders defied] [Sidenote: Opening of hostilities] [Sidenote: Sea fight off Chuenpee] [Sidenote: British squadron sails for China] Meanwhile, Great Britain was embroiled in another Oriental war. The despatch of Admiral Maitland and Captain Elliot to China to deal with the difficulties growing out of the English opium trade there only served to make the situation more acute. In January, Emperor Taouk-Wang ordered Lin Tsiaseu, Viceroy of Houk Wang, to proceed to Canton to put a definite stop to the opium traffic. The peremptory instructions given to Commissioner Lin were "to cut off the fountain of evil, and if necessary to sink the British ships and to break their caldrons, since the hourly thought on the Emperor's part was to do away with opium forever." Within a week of Lin's arrival at Canton he issued an edict wherein he stigmatized the foreigners as a heartless people who thought only of trade and of making their way by stealth into the Flowery Land, whereas the laws of England, he asserted, prohibited the smoking of opium in their own country. A demand was made to surrender to him all stores of opium within three days. To enforce this demand, Chinese troops were concentrated around the European settlement. Eventually more than 20,000 chests of opium were seized and dumped into the sea. After this triumph, Lin wrote a letter to Queen Victoria calling upon her government to interdict the importation of opium. At the same time a memorial was sent to England by the British merchants of Canton begging the government to protect them against "a capricious and corrupt government" and demanding compensation for the opium confiscated by the Chinese. On the part of the British Government no answer was vouchsafed to the demands of the viceroy. In China, matters took their course. Captain Elliot at Canton, on May 22, issued a notice in which he protested against the action of the Chinese Government "as utterly unjust per se," and advised all British merchants to withdraw to Hong Kong. The merchants acted on the suggestion, and the English factory at Canton, which had existed for nearly 200 years, was abandoned.