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Within a week of Lin's arrival at Canton he issued an edict wherein he stigmatized the foreigners as a heartless people who thought only of trade and of making their way by stealth into the Flowery Land, whereas the laws of England, he asserted, prohibited the smoking of opium in their own country. A demand was made to surrender to him all stores of opium within three days. To enforce this demand, Chinese troops were concentrated around the European settlement. Eventually more than 20,000 chests of opium were seized and dumped into the sea. After this triumph, Lin wrote a letter to Queen Victoria calling upon her government to interdict the importation of opium. At the same time a memorial was sent to England by the British merchants of Canton begging the government to protect them against
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and demanding compensation for the opium confiscated by the Chinese. On the part of the British Government no answer was vouchsafed to the demands of the viceroy. In China, matters took their course. Captain Elliot at Canton, on May 22, issued a notice in which he protested against the action of the Chinese Government
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and advised all British merchants to withdraw to Hong Kong. The merchants acted on the suggestion, and the English factory at Canton, which had existed for nearly 200 years, was abandoned. The British sailors in Chinese waters threw off all restraint. Frequent collisions occurred between them and the natives. In one of them a Chinaman was killed. The Chinese viceroy denounced this act as
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and demanded the surrender of the British sailor who perpetrated the murder. This demand was flatly refused. The Chinese thereupon refused to furnish further supplies to the ships and prohibited all British sailors from coming ashore on Chinese soil. The official notice said:
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If any of the foreigners be found coming on shore to cause trouble, all and every one of the people are permitted to withstand and drive them back, or to make prisoners of them. The English naval officers retaliated by sending out their men to seize by force whatever they needed. A boat's crew of the British ship
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Black Jack was massacred. Thus hostilities began. Two British men-of-war exchanged shots with the forts in the Bogue. On November 3, the two frigates
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Volage and
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Hyacinth