There is something deeply pathetic in the gradual realization by that "Son of Heaven" that the sons of earth from over the sea were really more powerful than himself, and that he was the one to be defeated in any real conflict with them. How touching, for instance, was the edict issued in 1800, the first year of the century, so fatal to China as a nation, prohibiting the importation of opium, an edict utterly powerless to check the evil, which was spreading like a fatal blight throughout the length and breadth of the doomed land. The traffic went on unchecked, and between 1821 and 1831 the amount landed at the various ports increased from 4628 chests to 23,670. In 1832 the monopoly of the Company came to an end, and the heads of the factories were succeeded by a representative of the Sovereign of Great Britain, whom the Chinese authorities hoped to coerce more easily than they could the many-headed hydra the Company had seemed to be. "On the one side," says Professor Legge, "was a resistless force determined to prosecute its enterprise for the enlargement of its trade, and the conduct of it as with an equal nation; on the other side, was the old Empire seeming to be unconscious of its weakness, determined not to acknowledge the claim of equality, and confident of its power to suppress the import of opium." For a brief space it seemed as if the latter would gain the day, for England made the fatal mistake of associating with her first representative, Lord Napier, two men who had been in the hated East India Company. The policy pursued was weak and vacillating; Lord Napier was disowned by his Government, and after suffering much indignity at the hands of the Chinese, died at Macao of a broken heart. He was succeeded by Sir J. F. Davis, during whose term of office the relations between the two countries became more and more strained, until in 1839 the Chinese Government made its last final effort to oust out alike the foreigners and the abuses they had introduced, which were to it as an ever-present canker eating into the life of the nation. The able politician, Lin-Tseh-Hsu, was appointed Governor-General of the Kwang provinces with orders to bring the foreign devils to reason.