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Your Royal Highness Queen Victoria,
I hope this letter finds you well. The reason why I am contacting Your Royal Highness is to beg for a merciful act.
Opium is devastating China. The drug is draining our economy, and our people are becoming more and more addict by the day.
I know that if we work together, we can stop the merchants that are helping the Chinese smugglers to sell this illegal and dangerous drug.
China and Great Britain have a great and prosperous relation, and in its name, I, again, beg for your help to stop the criminals that are destroying China and do not have Britain's best interest in their hearts.
Please, Your Royal Highness Queen Victoria, I beg you, help us!
Sincerely yours,
Lin Zexu, Viceroy of Huguang
The man holding the open letter in his hand laughed and, sneering, said, "I thought the Chinese were clever. Now, they just revealed that their population is in no condition of fighting. Let's keep feeding them opium, and when they decide to do something about it, we use our military to enforce our will."
"But, sir, how will we justify our acts? We can't just say that we want our silver and gold back."
"We are British. We don't need to justify anything we do. However we can," the man stopped to reflect.
He knew it needed to be a good enough excuse. The man knew the explanation would become history.
After a few moments, he smiled—a completely confident smile.
"If someone asks, we'll say that we're protecting the free trade."
The men raised their glasses and, in unison, said, "to the free trade!"
They drunk until sunrise.
THE END
*****
The First Opium War (Chinese: 第一次鴉片戰爭; pinyin: Dìyīcì Yāpiàn Zhànzhēng), also known as the Opium War or the Anglo-Chinese War, was a series of military engagements fought between Britain and the Qing dynasty of China. The immediate issue was China's official seizure of opium stocks at Canton to stop the banned opium trade and threatening the death penalty for future offenders. The British government insisted on the principles of free trade, equal diplomatic recognition among nations and backed the merchants' demands. The British navy defeated the Chinese using technologically superior ships and weapons, and the British then imposed a treaty that granted the territory to Britain and opened trade with China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War
