Financial Reparation Quotes
3rd Viscount Palmerston. This historical quotations illustrates the worst of the British Empire. British merchants were making large profits shipping opium to China and selling it there. Drug addiction became a major problem and some local Chinese Authorities passed laws banning the importing and selling of opium. However, the English merchant ship captains paid no attention to these laws claiming their rights as Englishmen to free trade. The Chinese finally seized a number of shipments of opium and burned them. The British then appointed Captain Elliot to lead a squadron of ships to China, arrange for payment in compensation for the value of the seized opium and to open up the opium trade, by force if necessary. The Chinese position was not unreasonable and Captain Elliot was not able to secure the concessions the English government wanted without starting a small war with the loss of many lives. Temple, who was the Foreign Minister at this time, fired Elliot and replaced him with someone who was less concerned about problems of drug addiction and the Chinese. Thus began the First Opium War. Note that the then British view of equity was that if they had to send an expedition of ships and soldiers to force the Chinese to allow the English to sell opium, then part of the terms must be that the Chinese pay the costs for the British ships and soldiers who invaded their country and forced them to keep poisoning their own people. See {621319} for Captain Elliot’s view.
The rationale for paying these Indians was given in the beginning of the treaty. See {612283}. In addition the treaty provided for the Federal government to build a flour mill and a saw mill and provide technical staff to operate and maintain them. In an interesting gesture the Federal government rebuilt a church that had been the house of worship for some Oneida Presbyterians. The English and the other Iroquois had burned the church to the ground. See {621968}. This is one of the few times in history, and certainly the first time, that the Federal government constructed a church for a particular sect. The other tribes of the Iroquois nation had allied themselves with the English. See {583726}. Only the Oneida joined the colonist cause. At the end of the war, the other Iroquois tribes were run out of the country and they escaped to Canada. The Oneida, in contrast, were rewarded by the Federal government and integrated into New York State society.
This is the most formalized and sophisticated compendium of laws of the so-called “barbaric peoples” of Europe. The compilation was in many ways a documentation of the traditional laws of the Visigoths that had evolved over hundreds of years.
