that on delivery of three-fourths of the opium, trade should be re-opened; and, he added pompously, on delivery of the whole being completed, everything should return to the ordinary condition and a request should be laid before the Throne that encouragements and rewards might be conferred. But Lin further added, that, if there should be any erroneous delay for three days, the supply of fresh water should be cut off; if for three days more there should be like delay, the supplies of food should be cut off, and if such delay should continue still three days longer, the criminal laws should forthwith be maintained and enforced.
Mr. Johnston having left Canton, the imprisonment of the foreign community, numbering over two hundred persons, continued as rigorously as before, until April 17, 1839, when the servants were tardily allowed to return to the factories and food supplies were again obtainable. Meanwhile, however, the prisoners were still guarded day and night by Chinese soldiers, posted at their doors with drawn swords and instructed to cut down any one who should make an attempt to escape. Both the merchants and Captain Elliot were repeatedly worried by demands to sign a fresh bond handing over to capital punishment any of their countrymen who should hereafter deal in opium, and professing abject submission to China's claim of supremacy. No one signed the bond and the confinement continued.
The above detailed promises of Lin were by no means faithfully adhered to. The servants were not restored as soon as one-fourth of the opium was delivered; the boats were not permitted to run when one-half was delivered; and the promise that things should go on as usual on completion of the opium delivery was falsified by reducing the factories to a prison with one outlet, by the perpetual expulsion of sixteen merchants, some of whom had never dealt in opium at all (as some clerks and a lad were included), and by the introduction of novel and unbearable regulations. Not until May 4, 1839, did the imprisonment of the foreign community at Canton come to an end. On that day, trade was declared re-opened and two days
