text:  We might have been permitted to quadruple our supply of opium to his subjects if we would have been content to be paid _not in bullion_ but by taking Chinese goods in exchange; in a word to change the basis of our dealings from _sale_ to _barter_; and all this from a totally groundless notion of the Emperor and his advisers that we were draining his kingdom of silver --in their own words "causing the Sycee silver to ooze out of the dominions of the Brother of the Sun and the Moon