Meantime the British government had succeeded the company in the rule of India and the control of the far Eastern trade. As this trade was from two thirds to four-fifths opium, a prohibited article, and as the whole question of trade was complicated by the fact that China was ignorant of the greatness and power of the Western nations and did not care to treat or deal with them in any event, a government trade agent had been sent out to Canton to look after British interests and in general to fill the position of a combined consul and unaccredited minister. In the late 1830's this agent, Captain Charles Elliot (successor to Lord Napier, the first agent), found himself in the delicate position of protecting English smugglers, who were steadily drawing their country towards war because the Chinese government was making strong efforts to drive them out of business. From what Captain Elliot has left on record it is plain that he was having a bad time of it. In 1837, he wrote to Lord Palmerston of "the wide-spreading public mischief" arising from "the steady continuance of a vast, prohibited traffic in an article of vicious luxury," and suggested that "a gradual check to our own growth and imports would be salutary." Two years later he wrote that "the Chinese government have a just ground for harsh measures towards the lawful trade, upon the plea that there is no distinction between the right and the wrong." He even said: "No man entertains a deeper detestation of the disgrace and sin of this forced traffic;" and, "I see little to choose between it and piracy." But when the war cloud broke, and responsibility for the welfare of Britain's subjects and trade interests in China devolved upon him, he compromised. "It does not consort with my station," he wrote, "to sanction measures of general and undistinguishing violence against His Majesty's officers and subjects." It will be interesting before we consider the opium war and its immense significance in history, to glance over the attitude of the company and later of its successor, the government, towards the whole miserable business. The company's board of directors, in 1817, had sent this dispatch from Calcutta in answer to a question, "Were it possible to prevent the using of the drug altogether, except strictly for the purpose of medicine, we would gladly do it in compassion to mankind."