timber and iron, must do without our manufactures; and thus are willing nations prevented from helping one another. Whatever may be thought of the indulgence of opium in this country, no one objects to its being used by the Hindoo and the Chinese as a stimulus appropriate to the climate in which they dwell. If we had allowed things to take their natural course, Persian husbandmen would have tended their vast poppy-fields, season by season, guarding the delicate plant from the injuries of insects, and sheltering it from unfavourable winds, while the Chinese and the Hindoos would have been busy preparing commodities to exchange with the Persian, and all would have been made rich enough by their traffic to keep British merchant-ships continually going and coming to supply their wants. But our India Company has chosen to force and monopolize the culture of opium. It has beggared and enslaved many thousands of reluctant cultivators; narrowed the demand; lessened its own revenue, year by year, and just lived to see China freely supplied with Turkey opium by American traders. Thousands of our lowly brethren in Hindostan and Ceylon have dropped unnoticed out of life because they have not been permitted to touch the crisped salt beneath their feet, or to pluck the spices which perfume the air they breathe. Millions more have sunk at the approach of famine, because no labour of theirs was permitted to provide them with what might be exchanged for food from some neighbouring coast. It is difficult to say whether we have injured China or Great Britain the most by our extraordinary fancy of sending functionaries invested at once with political and commercial power into a country where commerce is held by far too degrading an employment to be associated with political functions. This blunder was made by our monopolists, who were, but lately, keeping up a splendid establishment of important personages, who were regarded by the Chinese as being just above the rank of vagabonds;—no more respectable, in their possession of incomes graduating from 4000_l._ to 18,000_l._ a-year, than the American free-traders who turn their backs on the Hong merchants, and go into the open market, offering their furs with one hand, and receiving teas and nankeens with the other, cleverly stealing the trade of the British meantime with both. What wealth and comfort untold might the two vast empires of Britain and China have poured into one another by this time, if their original jealousies had not been perpetuated by English mismanagement! The Dutch and the Americans have both smuggled large quantities of tea into England, while the twelve supercargoes at Canton have been talking politics or yawning within the walls of their Factory! Truly did the Celestial Emperor say to our representatives, “Your good fortune has been small! You arrived at the gates of the imperial house, and were unable to lift your eyes to the face of heaven.” The day of exclusion is, however, over. It