The Last War of the Romantics: De Quincey, Macaulay, the First Chinese Opium War

At that meeting a crucial decision was taken to dispatch a naval and military expedition from British Bengal to Qing China to obtain redress by force for a perceived series of insults to the national honour by imperial commissioner Lin Zexu at Canton (Guangzhou). [...]the very first war between China and any western power in world history began; though the Daoguang Emperor seems to have had absolutely no idea that his Empire was at war with the British until their naval forces appeared off the South China coast in June, 1840. Macaulay vehemently denied this calumny claiming that "all the opium that I have swallowed in a life of fifty-three years does not amount to ten grains," adding he never "took a drop of laudanum, except in obedience to medical authority" admitting only to having taken some in the year 1849 during the cholera epidemic (Macaulay, Journals, 99). [...]De Quincey already identified the successful young Whig rising star as an object of serious envy before his writing on the Opium War of 1840. According to the law of nations, the Emperor has [A] perfect right to keep out opium and to keep silver in, if he could do so by means consistent with morality and public law [. . ..] [...]government intends to go to war to make the Chinese pay for the confiscated opium: "'What do you want?' they say at the Treasury,-'Is it money?