Other acts of atrocity and bad faith had also been committed by the Chinese authorities; but it is remarkable that Captain Elliot, whose personal courage and natural ability have never been questioned, seems to have entered no public protest, nor addressed any strong remonstrance to the commissioner, either upon this subject, or upon that of his own imprisonment, or rather confinement, at Canton. The probability is, that he thought it useless to do so, unless he were prepared to back his remonstrance by a demonstration of force. Nevertheless, after the foreigners were released, he issued a notice that all trade on the part of his countrymen with the Chinese should be stopped. And this notice was repeated in still stronger terms after the departure of the Larne; for he declared that "he saw no prospect of such an arrangement of existing difficulties as to admit of British ships proceeding within the Bocca Tigris, under the sanction of his authority, until the opinion of her Majesty's government could be made known to him." And at a later period, he thought it necessary to warn all the merchants, (dated the 29th of July,) "that he had moved her Majesty's and the Indian governments to forbid the admission of tea and other produce from China into Great Britain and India, during the existence of the preceding prohibition in Canton, unless their manifests were signed in his presence." The stoppage of the trade by Captain Elliot irritated Lin excessively. It was turning the tables against himself, defeating him with his own weapons; it savoured of presumption in his sight; and, moreover, it materially diminished his revenue. It proved that, however bombastic and ridiculous their professions of _indifference_ to the trade of foreigners might be, they really stood very much in need of it themselves, and, in fact, they felt the stoppage of it on our part quite as much as we ever did on theirs. It made Lin actually spiteful; he tried every art to induce the English to act _contrary_ to Elliot's orders; and, subsequently, when he went down to Macao to see with his own eyes what the Portuguese were about, he went so far as to make it a matter of accusation against Elliot, that "he had _prevented_ the merchant ships of his country from entering the port of Canton."