William Monk 18 - A Sunless Sea

tribute from some subject princeling.” He was so affronted he found it difficult to say the words. “As the most powerful nation on earth, we did not respond well to such insult. Tempers were controlled with difficulty.” He lowered his voice. “Or not at all.”
    Rathbone could imagine it, but he did not speak.
    “There were incidents of violence,” Gladstone continued, “some of them bestial beyond belief, and we are not free from blame. Although I cannot imagine that we descended to such things as I have heard tell.” He shook himself very slightly. “But that is not an excuse. We have dealt with savages before, and we should not assume that because a man can create exquisite beauty or invent such blessings for mankind aspaper and porcelain, even gunpowder with all its uses, that he is a civilized creature in his soul. And whatever he is, it does not excuse us from our own duty to God as Christian men.” His face was dark with anger and his body shook.
    Rathbone looked across at Monk and saw the pity in his face, and also a degree of confusion.
    Gladstone regained his self-control and went on with his lesson. “Incident after incident escalated until the Chinese confiscated thousands of pounds of opium, an act in which they were justified. Some deny this, but it is the truth. It was a contraband substance, smuggled into China by us. The Royal Navy attacked. The Chinese ships were small, and their weapons and armor medieval. Our broadsides sank them, drowned their sailors with barely any loss to us. We attacked the land fortifications at river mouths, bombarded city walls, and the women and children sheltering within them. Our ships—such as
Nemesis
, which was steel-hulled, and a paddle-wheeler, independent of wind and tide—were beyond their power to fight. Some of them had primitive firelock guns; others merely bows and arrows, God help them. Our victory was total.”
    The enormity of it slowly took shape in Rathbone’s mind.
    “Three hundred million people,” Gladstone went on quickly, as if in haste to get the entire tale out. “We made them ransom their own port of Canton for six million silver dollars. By 1842 we controlled Shanghai, and the whole mouth of the Yangtze River, and we forced on them one shameful treaty after another. We took from them the island of Hong Kong, and the ports of Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Shanghai, and Mingbo, and nine million dollars, which is nearly two million pounds in reparation for the contraband opium they had seized and destroyed.”
    He shook his head. “That was only part of it. There were other concessions as well. In 1844, France and the United States exacted the same concessions, but that does not excuse us. It was our war, our weapons and our greed that began it and forced it to a conclusion.”
    Finally he faced Rathbone and Monk. “The Second Opium War, a few years later, was no better. Again we grew rich on the ruin of another race. France, the United States, and this time Russia as well joined usin war and plunder. But we played the major part, and most certainly took the largest gain in treaties, and seizures of further ports along the coast. All the while we continued to sell opium to a wretched people, who were drowning in a sunless sea of addiction. It is an episode of appalling shame, and you will find many who would deny it.”
    Rathbone cleared his throat. “And the Pharmacy Act will regulate the sale and labeling of all medicines in Britain, and prevent them being sold by people who have no medical knowledge or skill?”
    “It will,” Gladstone agreed. He looked from one to the other of them. “Mr. Wilkie Collins, a writer of considerable skill and, more important, a great reputation, is a keen supporter of the bill, but it was Dr. Lambourn who was going to provide the professional evidence. His death was a great blow; his discredit an even greater one. But we will surmount it, I promise you. However, I would dearly like to know what it was that he discovered that would make anyone wish both to kill him and then to discredit him. Perhaps, gentlemen, we need to know.
    “Sinden Bawtry told me the report was too ill-conceived to be of use and that out of respect for Lambourn’s memory it was destroyed. I believed him at the time, but what you have said has caused me grave doubt. I have known Bawtry for some years, a man of skill, intellect, and great generosity to the country. Even so, he may have been deceived. There are ugly truths