And this was a trade proscribed under extreme penalties by imperial edict! It is needless to trace the network of elusion in which the administrative ingenuity of Chinese officialdom was exercised, and the specimen given above may be taken as typical of the system. "Nevertheless, during the year 1838 very serious and determined measures began to be adopted by the Chinese authorities, directed generally against the trade in opium; and imperial edicts threatened death as the punishment for both the dealers in and smokers of the drug." It is hardly possible outside of China to realise the systematic make-believe under which public affairs are carried on. Life and business in Canton, says Mr Hunter,[4] was a conundrum as insoluble as the Sphinx; everything worked smoothly by acting in direct opposition to what we were told to do. Certainly we were told to "listen and obey," to "tremble and not by obstinacy and irregularity to court the wrath of the imperial will"! We were reminded from time to time that we were "sojourning in the land on sufferance." We were threatened and re-threatened with the "direst penalties if we sold _foreign mud_ to the people; truly forbearance could no longer be exercised." Yet we continued to sell the drug as usual. Our receiving ships at Lintin must no longer loiter at that anchorage, but "forthwith either come into port or return to their respective countries." The heart of the ruler of all within the _Four Seas_ was indeed full of compassion and had been indulgent to the barbarians. But now no more delay could be granted, "cruisers would be sent to open their irresistible broadsides" upon the foreign ships. Yet in spite of these terrors the ships never budged. We were "forbidden to wander about except three times a-month, and that not without a linguist," but we walked whenever we pleased, and the linguist is the last person we ever saw. And so on through a long catalogue of prohibitions to the disregard of which the officials themselves were always parties. We get an exact description also of the mode in which the opium trade was carried on from the pen of Mr Hunter, himself an actor as well as an eyewitness. It furnishes a perfect illustration of the reign of sham which prevails generally in China:--