[rsynnott]

I mean, even if he did actually believe this (which, realistically, he almost certainly did not; at this point China would have had reasonable intelligence about the west, and would know that most Europeans and indeed most British people at that time did not drink tea daily), the context is that Britain refused to stop its merchants from dealing class-A drugs in China (really it tacitly encouraged it), so it wouldn't be _that_ out-there a threat?