The Queen's marriage to Prince Albert was celebrated on February 10, 1840. During the summer of that year the Queen was fired at by a lunatic potboy as she drove up Constitution Hill with the Prince, but happily escaped all injury. One sometimes hears doubts expressed about the necessity for the elaborate precautions taken for the safety of Royal personages, who, it is supposed by some people, might safely trust themselves more freely to the goodwill of their subjects. But there is nothing more certain than this--that, however popular or deserving a monarch may be, there are always crazed or desperate individuals with schemes of insult or violence, waiting an opportunity to carry them out. [Sidenote: War declared with China.] The relations of Great Britain and the East India Company with China had for some years been drifting into very unfriendly conditions, arising out of the opium trade. The Chinese Government had strictly prohibited the importation of opium--a measure commanding the sincere sympathy of those in this country who condemned all use of opium as an unmitigated physical and moral evil. But India derived enormous profits from the opium trade, and her traders used every device to evade the restrictions. It was suspected, and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, endorsed the suspicion, that the policy of the Chinese Government had nothing to do with the morality of the trade, but was concerned only to protect the native opium industry. The wheels of diplomacy ran heavily between the "Heavenly Dynasty" and the British Foreign Office for many years, till at last they were brought to a stand by the sudden outbreak of war. Lord Palmerston had appointed three superintendents to look after the interests of British traders in Chinese ports, and invested them with a semi-diplomatic character. Thus it came to pass that when, after months of procrastination, Her Majesty's Government at last announced that "they could not interfere for the purpose of enabling British subjects to violate the laws of the country with which they traded," thus practically forbidding the opium trade, Captain Elliott, the chief superintendent, read between the lines of the despatch, and, on the Chinese authorities seizing a large quantity of opium in British vessels, requested the Governor of India to send warships for the protection of Englishmen trading in China. The request was promptly complied with by the despatch of two frigates, the _Volage_ and the _Hyacinth_, which attacked a Chinese fleet of twenty-nine junks below Hong Kong, blew up one of them, sunk three, and knocked the rest about in fine style. [Illustration: _W. H. Overend._} {_From Contemporary Sketches._ THE "VOLAGE" AND "HYACINTH" ENGAGING TWENTY-NINE CHINESE JUNKS.] [Sidenote: Capture of Chusan.] [Sidenote: Bombardment of the Bogue Forts.]