Dismissing, then, this possibility as one perforce abandoned by the opponents of monopolies, no less than by the opponents of opium, the only other alternative left to us is the total abolition of the growth and manufacture of opium in India. But we are confronted with a difficulty to start with. Do the supporters of this theory mean that the cultivation of opium should be forbidden throughout all India? If so, how are we to deal with the native States which cultivate the poppy, and derive a considerable, in some cases a principal, part of their revenue from this source? A previous attempt to interfere with this cultivation occasioned serious disturbances, and almost a civil war. Are we ready to go to that length to enforce our advanced ideas of total abstinence on the independent States of Holkar and Scindia? If they do not mean this, how are we to prevent the cultivators in Malwa taking up the trade abandoned by us, and instead of 45,000 chests, sending 90,000 to China yearly? Again, if the poppy culture be strictly forbidden in all India, how are the legitimate wants of the Rajpoots and the Sikhs in the Punjaub, and the inhabitants of Orissa and Assam, to be supplied? Shall we go to China for our opium, thereby getting a more deleterious drug at higher prices, and inducing our subjects to substitute for the comparatively beneficial opium the maddening stimulus of bhang and the poisonous mixtures imported under the name of “French brandies,” but composed of such deleterious ingredients as potato spirit and fusel oil? It would, indeed, be a strange finale if the success of this agitation should cause China to export opium into India as she already does into Burmah.
Apart from these contingent possibilities the financial objections to this measure are overwhelming in the opinion of all who are or have been responsible for the financial administration of India. The immediate effect of the cessation of the culture of the poppy would be the disturbance of the cultivation of land amounting to 500,000 acres in British India alone, the readjustment of which would be a difficult and troublesome business. But, of course, the point to be chiefly considered is the immense loss of revenue that must unavoidably ensue. Some, no doubt, of this loss might be made good by the cultivation of other crops on the poppy lands, which comprise some of the best land in the presidency; but how much would thus be recouped is uncertain. In any case it would not amount to a tithe of the loss, and would, moreover, go mostly into the pockets of the zemindars, or middlemen. Again, the present staff employed in the manufacture would have to be pensioned, which would be another item of expense. Practically we may assume, then, that the Indian Exchequer would lose some six millions a year; and this loss would have to be met at once. The importance of this opium revenue to India can scarcely be over-estimated. It is, next to the land tax, the largest item in the revenue. It forms one-seventh of all the revenue of India. It is the most easily collected and the most productive tax ever known. It, and it only, by its marvellous increase, has enabled a series of Chancellors of the Indian Exchequer to tide over the difficulties occasioned by unexpected wars and disastrous famines. It has given the Indian Government the power to carry out innumerable sorely-needed reforms in the administration of justice, in the promotion of education, in the organization of the police and the post-office, in the reduction of the salt tax, and in the furtherance generally of public works; and this will seem no exaggeration when it is stated that in the last twenty years opium has poured into the Indian treasury the colossal revenue of £134,000,000 sterling.
Do away with this revenue and we sacrifice all chance of carrying out these reforms to a successful conclusion, and cripple our whole administration in India. But it behoves us to consider how the deficit could be met, if it became necessary. And we may here again remark that it is to the utmost degree unlikely that the British tax-payer will put his hand into his own pocket in order to help India out of her difficulties. Nor, if England did offer to meet the deficit, would that be a good precedent to establish. A gift of £20,000,000, which the anti-opiumists speak of, would not nearly cover India’s loss. It would cost three times that sum in ten years, i.e. if the present rate of revenue be maintained, as there is good reason to suppose that it will.[130] How, then, could the loss be made good?
The expenditure, civil and military, might be curtailed by doing away with the separate establishments of the Bombay and Madras Presidencies and centralizing the whole in Bengal. But this curtailment of the civil expenditure could not bring much relief, as it only amounts to £10,000,000 as it is. A reduction of the military establishments, besides being a danger in the face of Russia’s advance towards India, would necessitate a corresponding diminution of the independent native armies, a step which would be unpopular if demanded by our Government. However, this will be necessary if the opium revenue be cut off.
Among other possible expedients for increasing the revenue or lowering the expenditure are a cessation of ordinary, as distinguished from productive, public works, such as roads, railways; a reimposition of abandoned taxes like the customs duties, the salt tax (lately partially remitted), the tobacco tax, and the income tax—but there are grave objections to all these; or the land tax could be augmented, as the periods for new settlements came round, and these, perhaps, afford the best prospect of an increase of revenue.
Such are the principal heads under which an increase of revenue might on an emergency be secured. But the increase would not in any case be large; and it must not be forgotten that Sir Evelyn Baring, in his Budget statement for 1882, has given it as his opinion (and who is more able to give an opinion on the subject?) that an aggregate increase of taxation is not possible, even reduction in some branches absolutely necessary; while any essential decrease of expenditure is quite out of the question. So far from the expenditure showing a tendency to decrease, or even to remain stationary, it has increased last year by a million and a half, this year[131] by three millions and more—under a Liberal Government.
Apart from these direct means for making good the loss of the opium revenue, there is the prospective one of a general increase from reproductive public works, and from a prosperous condition of the country; but it must be borne in mind that this would be greatly lessened and impeded by any increase of taxation.
“It cannot be too clearly understood,” says Sir Evelyn Baring (sect. 59), “that neither by any measure tending to develop the resources of the country, nor by any increase of taxation which is practically within the range of possibility, nor by any reduction of expenditure, could the Government of India in any adequate way at present hope to recoup the loss which would accrue from the suppression of the poppy cultivation in India.”
On the whole, then, we may conclude with Sir Evelyn Baring that without the revenue which she derives from opium India would be insolvent; that is, her expenditure would be permanently in excess of her income. India is by no means a rich country except in the language of poetry, and her inhabitants are perhaps the poorest in the world, the average income of the ryot being twenty-seven rupees a year! On the other hand, the financial prospects of India are not at present so gloomy as Mr. Fawcett and others would have us believe, but under a succession of able financiers, like Sir John Strachey and Sir Evelyn Baring, a wonderful improvement has been effected; but their efforts would have been crippled and their far-sighted policy paralyzed, if it had not been for the magnificent revenue derived from the sale of opium, which has indeed proved, as it has been called, “the sheet anchor” of Indian finance. And if this revenue be badly acquired, there is no question but that it has been splendidly applied; and if the Chinese will have opium, as there is no doubt they will, the superfluity of their wealth cannot be better spent than in the amelioration of the lot of the Indian ryot. This is the very class which would suffer most severely from any increase of taxation, and, as Sir Evelyn Baring says, “to tax India in order to provide a cure—which would almost certainly be ineffectual—for the vices of the Chinese would be wholly unjustifiable.” In doing a little right to China, let us beware lest we do a great wrong to India.
As to the effects upon Indian commerce of a large diminution of the opium trade, India would lose her present large profits on a product of which she owns a natural monopoly. She would also be obliged to increase her exports largely, the value of which would consequently be depreciated; except that the Indian tea-trade would be benefited by a disturbance of the China trade. Further, India would be forced to reduce her imports, however necessary these may be. Lastly, there is a prospect of a fall in the rate of exchange, and a further depreciation of silver, which would increase her liabilities and imperil her financial position.
Such, then, are the difficulties which are inseparably connected with any sudden cessation of the opium trade; but it remains for us still to notice one proposal emanating from the supporters of the anti-opium policy, which is remarkable for its naïveté. It recommends that England should demand from China other privileges as an equivalent for the renunciation of a formal right, and as an indemnification of a great loss sustained. This equivalent would no doubt take the shape of commercial concessions, such as the opening up of the interior of China to foreign intercourse, the working of the mines in China, which are numerous and valuable, and the construction and working of railways by English engineers. There is no doubt that China offers a large and virgin field to the commercial activity of England, and the result that followed the opening of ports after our two wars with China are sufficiently remarkable. By the first treaty we gained a trade of £2,000,000; by the second of £3,500,000 annually. In our commercial dealings with the Chinese we have to deal not only with “the obstructive policy of the mandarins, but also the passive and unconscious resistance of a people of stagnant ideas, of very limited enterprise, and possessing only primitive means of inter-communication.”[132] For a further development of our commercial intercourse, Medhurst goes on to say, two things are wanting:—1st, access to new markets by having new ports opened and by procuring a right to navigate inland waters, and to improve the means of communication; 2nd, a full and frank acknowledgment by the Chinese at all the ports of the right of foreign goods to be covered and protected from inland dues by transit passes. Some such concessions the anti-opiumists would have us demand; but these benevolent protestors against forcing the Chinese forget that concessions of this kind, wrung from an unwilling people, would be far more galling than any importation of opium, which it is quite clear, even to them, that they need not buy if they do not wish it. Moreover, the important point seems to have been overlooked, that India would lose her revenue, while the gain from increased intercourse would be wholly on the side of England. As it is, the native community in India can hardly believe that there is not a selfish motive at the bottom of this agitation in England, and, should this last proposal be carried out, we could hardly blame them if they pointed to this as a proof that their suspicions were well founded.
We may here briefly notice[133] Li Hung Chang’s latest proposal, that he should farm or purchase the monopoly of all the Indian opium; with the intention, he would no doubt himself say, of getting the control of the trade into his own hands, and limiting the import, just as on a previous occasion, in a communication to the Anglo-Opium Society, he asserted that the only object of the Chinese authorities in taxing opium was in the past, as it would be in the future, the desire to repress the traffic.
Considering, then, the sudden abolition of the opium traffic as practically out of the question, and leaving out of sight the undoubtedly possible, though not likely, gradual cessation of the trade between India and China owing to the competition of the native drug, it only remains for us to propose some practical solution of the difficulty, some less heroic method of removing this rock of offence that has so divided the current of English feeling. If we reject the total suppression theory, there are, as it seems, two alternatives, and two only, left to us. We may on the one hand follow the sensible and statesman-like recommendation of Sir Rutherford Alcock in 1869. With a view to test the sincerity of the Chinese Government, and their power to prohibit the growth of the poppy in their own dominions, that experienced Minister proposed, in a Convention which the Chinese seem disposed to ratify, that they should receive an increased duty on opium imported, “and moreover be allowed to test their power and will to limit or diminish the hitherto unchecked production of opium in their own provinces by an understanding with the Indian Government during a certain period not to extend the production in India; and if the Chinese Government kept faith and showed the power greatly to diminish, and more or less rapidly stop, the culture of the poppy altogether, the Indian Government would then, pari passu, consider how far they could further co-operate by diminishing their own area of culture, having time to substitute other crops and industries to take its place.”
The effects of this arrangement, if carried out, would be clearly the same as those arising from a gradual cessation of the trade through competition with native opium. The cultivation in India would have time to change without serious injury to the growers of the poppy, and trade would by degrees adapt itself to the altered conditions; but the same results would follow, as in the other case, though not to anything like the same extent. The loss of revenue would still be great, but the general growth of other branches of income would be more likely, if any sudden displacement of industry or capital were avoided. But we can hardly escape the conviction that the Chinese would show themselves as unable or as unwilling to stop the cultivation in China, no less than the import from India, as they have ever been. In fact, the lofty utterance of Taou Kwang notwithstanding, the Chinese authorities are very glad to draw a revenue even from the vices of their people, and they would be very reluctant, not to say quite averse, to sacrifice a revenue now amounting to more than two millions. What they do want is to obtain a larger share in the profits arising from the sale of the Indian drug. Let those who believe in the “child-like simplicity”[134] of the Chinese pin their faith to such assertions as that of Li Hung Chang quoted above, that the only aim of the Chinese Government in taxing opium is to limit the import, and that their only object in allowing and even encouraging the native growth is to drive out the foreign drug, and, when they have in this way obtained the command of the market, to suppress the cultivation altogether. This air of injured innocence is remarkably effective with some people; but the exquisite plausibility and adroitness of these and other similar pleas must not blind us to their inherent falsity. Li Hung Chang can no more prevent the Chinese from consuming opium than we can prevent our countrymen from drinking wine and spirits and smoking tobacco by mere legislative enactments, and it would be considered a remarkable method for attaining this desirable end if the distillation of spirits were made as free and unrestrained as the brewing of beer.
Lastly—and this would have the advantage of satisfying the only just plea urged by the “Society,”—we might proclaim to China in unmistakeable terms that she was free to carry out her own fiscal policy as suited her best, with regard to opium as well as all other imports. Not that we are disposed to allow that this is an international duty, unless it be an international duty also to free China from all the conditions we have forced upon her: unless we are ready, for example, to cede Hongkong, to let the Chinese close their ports if they feel inclined, to give up our missionaries to the tender mercies of Chinese fanaticism, or forbid them to set foot within the Celestial Empire.
The ratification of the Chefoo Convention would be a step in this direction, and may well be tried as a temporary measure, though it is manifestly unfair to say that we are guilty of any breach of faith in regard to this convention.[135]
We have now to consider what would be the result of such a policy to India. China would no doubt take advantage of her freedom, and tax Indian opium as heavily as it would bear, and in this way transfer to herself some of the profits which now go to India; but, on the other hand, she would be unwilling to place a prohibitive tariff upon it, knowing, as she well does, that none the less would it enter China by being smuggled in, and the revenue which should go into the imperial coffers would be paid, as before, to the officials in the shape of bribes. India would certainly not lose all its revenue; for a considerable part, one-seventh at least, goes to the Straits Settlements and the neighbouring islands, to the Netherlands of India, to Hongkong for export to the islands of the Pacific, and to California. Moreover, Indian opium has a monopoly value, and is, besides, superior in flavour to all other opium—holds, in fact, that place among the various kinds of the drug which champagne holds among wines. So that, on the whole, this policy, which would strike at the very root of the anti-opium agitation, would not, as it seems, have any very alarming effects upon India.
And now we have done. We have tried to point out the fallacy of the principal arguments urged by the Anti-Opium Society against the traffic, and the injustice and dangers involved in the remedies which they propose. But we have not hesitated to acknowlege it when their objections seemed well-founded. Their opinions, it need not be said, have undergone considerable modification since the days of Earl Shaftesbury’s memorial; and it is by no means clear yet what the actual policy advocated by a majority of their supporters is. “Some shout one thing and some another, and the greater part know not wherefore they have been called together.” And though we have condemned their measures, we must not be thought to be condemning the men. They, we freely admit, are actuated by the highest and noblest motives of benevolence and philanthropy; but in their sensibility to the sufferings of others, they are apt to disregard the justice due to their own countrymen. If one half of the allegations of the missionaries and their supporters could be accepted as true, and brought home to the intelligence of the nation, there would not be a voice raised for the traffic. The cry would not indeed be “Perish India,” but “Perish the opium revenue,” at whatever cost to England. The very rejection of these extreme opinions by a large majority of those who, from their position and experience, are best qualified to form a judgment on the question, is in itself a strong argument against their truth; and if not true, how pernicious must be the effect of their dissemination! Here is what an Englishman of ability and experience, for many years resident in Hongkong, says: “I say that the missionaries and the Anti-Opium Society, in the course of their agitation for the abolition of the Indo-Chinese opium trade, are vilifying their countrymen and blackening their country in the eyes of the whole world, so that the foreigner can convict us out of our own mouths, and gibe at us for hypocrisy and turpitude, which we are wholly innocent of, and for crimes we have never committed.”
But making every allowance for the loftiness of their motives and the sincerity of their opinions, we must take grievous exception to some of their methods of propagandism. Among the numerous pamphlets and tracts published by the society is one called Poppies: a Talk with Boys and Girls, of which the reviewer in the Friend of China[136] says himself: “To acknowledge our sins and the sins of our fathers to ourselves, and in the face of the world, is painful and humiliating enough; but to tell our children that England is not the brave, generous, Christian country, foremost of the nations in the cause of liberty and religion all the world over, which we should like them to think her, but, on the contrary, capable of the meanness, hypocrisy, greed, and cruelty of our treatment of China, is a bitter task.” Bitter, indeed! and what if it be wholly unjustifiable? There is no high-minded Englishman but will utterly resent and protest against this poisoning of the minds of our children with delusive and exaggerated statements, and thus prejudicing them on a subject which they are not yet of an age to form a fair judgment about.
As to the meanness, hypocrisy, and the rest, we need not say more than we have already said, but may notice in passing that unlimited abuse of England’s foreign policy seems, curiously enough, to be a guarantee with some people of the speaker or writer’s having the real interests of England at heart; and a man needs only to stigmatize the national policy with the added acrimony of alliteration as “cruel, cowardly, and criminal,”[137] for him to pass for the purest of patriots.
And now, in conclusion, we are content to leave the issue of this controversy to the judgment of our countrymen, feeling sure that, if justice and right are on the side of the agitators, they will succeed; if not, that the agitation will inevitably die a natural death: ever withal remembering the maxim—
Magna est veritas et prevalebit.
INDEX.
Alcock, Sir Rutherford, 4, 15, 129.
Anti-Opium Society, 5, 62, 136, 137.
Baring, Sir Evelyn, 60, 123 ff.
Brereton, Truth about Opium, 5, 57, 58, 68, 89, 136.
Canton, Governor of, 32.
Chefoo Convention, 34 ff.
Coalloon, action in Bay of, 17.
De Quincey, 70, 86.
Drain of Silver from China, 13, 23.
Lawson, Sir Wilfrid, 4, 137.
Li Hung Chang, 31, 128, 131.
Lin, 11, 16.
Memorials about Opium to Pekin Government—
Heu Naetze, 12.
Wootingpoo, 24, 30.
Yupochuan, 31.
Missionaries, 5, 97 ff.
Moore, Dr., 42, 43.
Narcotics, 76.
Opium—
Abkari, 52, 56.
Consumption of, in Armenia, 51.
Burmah, 46 ff.
Consumption of, in England, 51, 52.
India, 41 ff.
Turkey, 51.
Duties paid on, 23.
East India Company’s trade in, 9.
Edicts against, 9, 12, 13, 15, 21.
Financial aspect of trade, 115 ff.
Forced on China, 91 ff.
Foreign trade, 8 ff.
How consumed, 39.
Imported into China, 27, 28, 57, 84.
Innocuousness of, 39.
Medicinal, 37, 38.
Missionaries versus, 82.
Monopoly of, 96, 115 ff.
Mortality from, 64, 70.
Number of Smokers of, 70 ff.
Reasons for Chinese partiality for, 78, 79.
Revenue from, to India, 33.
" " to China, 33.
Tariff on, 33, 38.
Poppy Plant—
Extent of cultivation in China, 31.
" " in India, 54.
Known early in China, 6, 29.
Original habitat of, 6.
Ports opened, 17, 34.
Protective party in China, 11.
Wars—
1840, 2, 17.
1856, 25.
1860, 27.
Shaftesbury, Earl of, 31, 61.
Yeh, 76.
London: Printed by W. H. Allen & Co., 13, Waterloo Place, Pall Mall. S.W.
Footnotes:
[1] April 2, 1883.
[2] The insinuations of Mr. Lock in the Contemporary are simply beneath contempt.
[3] Soo Sung, a poet of the eleventh century, says the poppy was grown everywhere.
[4] Com. East Indian Finance 1870, Qu. 5865.
[5] Ibid., Qu. 5855.
[6] A.D. 25-220.
[7] In a work on China published 1857.
[8] A fee of one dollar was regularly left by the smugglers with the commander of the vessel, to be called for by the preventive officer.
[9] Don Sinibaldo, however, attributes this removal to the exactions of the Portuguese douanier. See p. 6 of his pamphlet on opium.
[10] Capt. Hall’s Nemesis, p. 113.
[11] Nemesis, p. 115.
[12] See Opium, a paper by F. C. Danvers, 1881.
[13] One tael silver was nominally equivalent to 1,000 cash; the silver had now risen to be worth 16,000 cash.
[14] Tang, the Governor of Canton, himself dealt largely in opium. See Nemesis, pp. 84, 113.
[15] A guild of Chinese traders at Canton.
[16] Lord Macartney placidly allowed his interpreter to style him “this red-bristled barbarian tribute-bearer.”
[17] Don Sinibaldo says (p. 8) that opium not being expressly mentioned, “fait partie des articles non spécifiés, qui sont tenus de payer un droit d’entrée de cinq pour cent”; but surely this is a mistake.
[18] We can well believe with Capt. Hall that “whatever part the question arising out of the opium trade may have afterwards borne in the complication of difficulties, there is little doubt that the first germ of them all was developed at the moment when the general trade with China became free.”—Nemesis, p. 79.
[19] Sir J. Davis, Dec. 21, 1855.
[20] £650,000.
[21] Mr. Lay, in a memorandum dated April 1844, gave it as his opinion that the difficulty of admitting opium rested only in the thought that it would be a violation of decorum for His Imperial Majesty to legalize a thing once so strongly condemned. He therefore advocated a change of name.
[22] Sir G. Bonham, April 10, 1851.
[23] Tael = 6s. 8d.
[24] The French took part in the expedition in order to obtain satisfaction for the murder of a missionary in 1856, so that in their case it was strictly a missionary war.
[25] New Kwang, Tangchow, Taiwan (Formosa), Swatow, and Kungchow (Hainan).
[26] Mr. Lay, secretary to Lord Elgin’s mission.
[27] Lord Elgin had been instructed by Lord Clarendon to ascertain whether the Chinese Government would revoke its prohibitions on opium. “Whether,” says Lord Clarendon, “the legalization would tend to augment the trade may be doubtful, as it seems now to be carried to the full extent of the demand in China with the sanction and connivance of the local authorities.”
[28] It was currently reported in North China that this officer received 2,000 taels from English merchants for memorializing the Emperor. The edict did benefit the foreign trade at first.
[29] Sir Rutherford Alcock, Nineteenth Century, Dec. 1881, p. 861.
[30] From sixteen taels at Chinkiang to eighty-four taels at Foochow and Amoy.
[31] Ichang, Wenchow, Wuhu, and Pakhoi.
[32] Sept. 13, 1876.
[33] Dr. Moore, The Other Side of the Opium Question, p. 85.
[34] Sir Rutherford Alcock, Journal of Society of Arts, p. 220, b.
[35] Dr. Moore (p. 84) quotes Mr. Gardner’s opinion to this effect.
[36] Times, Jan. 26, 1881. To the same effect is the evidence of Don Sinibaldo, who says (p. 3), “On prétend que l’opium produit chez lui une délicieuse ivresse, un doux sommeil, une vive surexcitation qui deviennent nécessaires á l’existence, et qu’on ne peut obtenir qu’en augmentant progressivement la dose journalière. Pour moi, j’ai souvent fumé de l’opium, et je n’ai éprouvé rien de semblable; un grand nombre d’Européens qui avaient fait la même épreuve m’ont assuré qu’elle avait eu pour eux les mêmes résultats que pour moi.” Perhaps a remark of Dr. Moore (p. 34) may explain these statements. He says, “If the opium-pipe is smoked as the tobacco-pipe is smoked, the effects are very inconsiderable as compared with the results when the novice has attained to perfection in his practice”—i.e. can pass the smoke through his lungs.
[37] Colonel Tod, in his book on the Rajpoots, draws a strong picture of the evil effects of opium consumption among them. Of this Sir Henry Lawrence, in a letter to Sir John Kaye, 1854, says, “There is little, if any, truth in it.”
[38] Comm. on E. I. Finance, 1871, evidence of Sir Cecil Beadon. Dr. Birdwood, in a letter to the Times, Jan. 20, 1882, says: “The Rajpoots, though they are all from youth upward literally saturated with opium, are one of the finest, most truthful, and bravest people in the world. The same may be said of the Sikhs.”
[39] The Other Side of the Opium Question, pp. 13, 42.
[40] Similarly the Hurkarah, who carries letters and runs messages in India, provided with a small piece of opium, a bag of rice and a lump of bread, will perform incredible journeys.—Sir Rutherford Alcock, Paper before Society of Arts, p. 223.
[41] The extract of hemp drunk as a decoction or swallowed as a drug. See Report on Excise in the Punjaub, 1880-1881, sect. 24.
[42] Moore, p. 90.
[43] A sear = 2 lbs.
[44] See Memorandum by Sir Charles Aitchison, passim, especially App. to Report, p. 13.
[45] Report by Mr. Weidemann, deputy-commissioner in Henzada, in Parliamentary paper relating to opium in British Burmah, sect. 11.
[46] “British Burmah,” an article in the Times for Aug. 20, 1882.
[47] See a note appended to Sir Charles Aitchison’s Report by Mr. C. Bernard, officiating Chief Commissioner in British Burmah.
[48] Times, Aug. 20, 1882.
[49] Memorandum, sect. 9.
[50] Cf. the havoc wrought by the “blue flame,” introduced by Europeans, among the Red Indians of America.
[51] Memorandum, sect. 4.
[52] Memorandum, sect. 13.
[53] Bringing in a revenue of £175,000.
[54] Dr. Christlieb.
[55] Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, p. 5.
[56] Dr. Moore, p. 11, 48, 55.
[57] Ibid., p. 56.
[58] July 12, 1883. This has now been further reduced.
[59] Dr. Christlieb says 1,033,000 acres—an obvious exaggeration.
[60] The districts of Indore, Bhopal, &c.
[61] Mr. Storrs Turner himself, the secretary of the Society, allows that this is a difficult part of the question. See his article in the Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1882.
[62] Mr. Brereton (p. 74) estimates the amount consumed in California alone to be worth £100,000.
[63] Mr. Acheson, in a memorandum to the Custom inspectorate from Canton, says it amounts to 5,000 piculs.
[64] This, however, does not fairly represent the difference, as Indian opium yields twenty per cent. more extract.
[65] Brereton, p. 139.
[66] Financial Statement, 1882, sect. 172.
[67] The Right Hon. J. Whittaker Ellis.
[68] Dr. Christlieb, a German professor, says 400,000; but Dr. Medhurst, a medical man resident for years in China, with all his life-long experience and knowledge would not even hazard a conjecture as to the annual death-rate. Dr. Lockhart says, “It is impossible to say what is the number of such victims either among the higher or lower classes.” Ait Varius, negat Scaurus. Utri creditis, Quirites?
[69] Don Sinibaldo (p. 11). To prohibit opium, he says, because some people kill themselves with it, is as bad as if we prohibited razors because some people cut their throats with them. He also says that he considers the number of deaths by opium in China to be less in proportion than the number of deaths self-inflicted by firearms in France—i.e. that they do not number 3,500 in all.
[70] Swinhoe’s Campaign of 1860, p. 248.
[71] Dr. Ayres, Friend of China, 1878, p. 217.
[72] Comm. on E. I. Finance, Q. 5980. Mr. Winchester says: “I should say the balance was in favour of the relief given by the stimulant over the actual misery created by its abuse.” Also Dr. Moore, p. 86.
[73] Dr. Ayres, Friend of China, 1878, p. 217.
[74] Dr. Myers, Health of Takow, p. 8. A recent article in the Times, from a Singapore correspondent, fully bears this out. He says that all allow the Chinese of the Straits Settlements to be the finest specimens of their race, and yet these very Chinese, a million in number, smoke 12,000 chests of opium a year; and the deaths from opium registered in the annual medical report were last year five.
[75] Mr. Brereton (p. 8) says: “I have known numbers, certainly not less than 500 in all, who have smoked opium from their earliest days, young men, middle-aged, and men of advanced years, some of them probably excessive smokers; but I have never observed any symptoms of decay in one of them.” Again: “I have tried to find the victims of the dreadful drug, but have never succeeded.”
[76] From a letter to the London and China Telegraph, June 19, 1882.
[77] The estimate of one million given in a preceding note includes the Chinese population of the neighbouring islands and of Cochin China.
[78] Dr. Myers: “It is surprising how few among the hard-working class indulge to excess; and case after case will be met with, even in the lowest ranks of life, of men who have smoked regularly from ten to twenty or thirty years, and show little or no signs of mental or physical deterioration.”
[79] Dr. Myers, Health of Takow, p. 10.
[80] Correspondent to North China Herald. See Brereton, p. 135.
[81] Of this the Indian Government is only responsible for 40,000 chests. The rest is Malwa opium.
[82] It may be said that those who smoke Indian opium are the richer classes, and therefore more prone to excess; but, on the other hand, the native drug is more deleterious.
[83] Health of Takow, p. 6.
[84] Ibid., p. 5.
[85] Mr. Cooper’s coolies carried him twenty miles a day for months.
[86] Coleridge.
[87] Aug. 19, 1882.
[88] “Most remarkable for industry and usefulness.”—Sir F. Halliday.
[89] See Johnston’s Chemistry of Common Life.
[90] “Stimulants are weak narcotics: narcotics are strong stimulants.”—Modern Thought, Aug. 1882.
[91] Sir George Birdwood calls this the greatest temperance triumph of any age or nation.
[92] It has only recently been discovered that the aborigines of Australia also have a narcotic of their own, which has qualities akin to opium and tobacco.
[93] Capt. Hall’s Nemesis.
[94] Opium Question Solved, p. 15. Cf. Sir Charles Trevelyan, Comm. on E. I. Finance, Qu. 1532-40.
[95] And in this connection it might occur to us that if, in the wake of our civilization, instead of the “blue ruin” which we gave him, we had brought to the Red Indian the marvellous gift of opium, “that noble race and brave” would not have “passed away,” but be still surviving to smoke the calumet of peace with the divine opium in the bowl.
[96] Parliamentary Papers 1842-56, No. 26.
[97] Letter to Sir W. Parker, 1843. He adds that “personally he had not been able to discover a single instance of its decidedly bad effects.”
[98] China and the Chinese.
[99] “No one,” says Mr. Gardner, “is maddened by smoking opium to crimes of violence, nor does the habit of smoking increase the criminal returns or swell the number of prison inmates.”
[100] Dr. Pereira, Materia Medica. Dr. Andrew Clarke estimated on one occasion that seven-tenths of the patients in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital owed their ill-health to alcohol.
[101] Dr. Tanner’s Practice of Medicine. Dr. Moore. For an interesting comparison between opium and alcohol, we may refer our readers to De Quincey’s Confessions of an Opium Eater.
[102] Twenty-five drops of laudanum = 1 grain of opium ∴ 8,000 drops = 320 grains; but Dr. Myers tells us that 2 grains of opium swallowed = 1 mace (58 grains) smoked, so that De Quincey took what was equivalent to 160 mace smoked.
[103] Theodore Gautier maintains that “the love of the ideal is so innate in man that he attempts, as far as he can, to relax the ties which bind body to soul; and as the means of being in an ecstatic state are not in the power of all, one drinks for gaiety, another smokes for forgetfulness, a third devours momentary madness.”
[104] It is indeed said of Ennius that he sought inspiration in the flowing bowl; that he never
“Nisi potus ad arma
Exsiluit dicenda.”—Hor.
But then, as Praed says, “poets tell confounded lies,” and this may be one of them. Coleridge, in later times, is said to have sought the same inspiration from opium; and poems like “Kubla Khan” testify that he found it.
[105] Enough, as Mr. Brereton says, to form a devil’s punchbowl huge enough for all the population of the British Isles to swim in at the same time.
[106] Dr. Norman Kerr in a paper read at the Social Science Congress.
[107] “Any serious attempt to check the evil must originate with the people themselves,” said the Chinese Commissioners to Sir Thomas Wade.
[108] To chastise the insolent barbarian, as Lord Palmerston put it to his electors at Tiverton.
[109] A similar proposal to establish a Russian protectorate over the members of the Greek Church in Turkey is thus spoken of by Lord Clarendon: “No sovereign, having a due regard for his own dignity and independence, could admit proposals which conferred upon a foreign and more powerful sovereign a right of protection over his own subjects.”
[110] pp. 35-37.
[111] From the latest Parliamentary Paper, containing the correspondence between the Indian and English Governments on the subject of the negotiations with China, it appears (sects. 43-50) that neither the British nor Indian Government has any objection to the ratification of the Chefoo Convention. The difficulty is to get the other Powers to agree.
[112] Sir Evelyn Baring. Financial Statement on India for 1882.
[113] A late medical missionary.
[114] Brereton, p. 50. It appears, however, that there are 6,000 Christians already in Japan, the result of fourteen years’ preaching.
[115] Intense dislike to foreigners and foreign intercourse was an ever-present reason for condemning a drug which, more than anything else, kept the gates of the empire ajar to the “foreign devils.”—Opium Question Solved.
[116] Comm. on E. I. Finance 1871, Q. 5831.
[117] The same who has lately been in correspondence with the leaders of the Anti-Opium League.
[118] Comm. on E. I. Finance, Q. 5834.
[119] Ibid., Q. 5817.
[120] Story of the Fuh-kien Mission, p. 188.
[121] Capt. Hall, Nemesis, p. 375.
[122] Story of the Fuh-kien Mission, p. 252.
[123] Times, Aug. 22, 1882.
[124] Times, Aug. 22, 1882.
[125] Times, Aug. 22, 1882.
[126] Brereton, p. 68.
[127] See minute by Sir William Muir, Feb. 1868.
[128] Speech at Newcastle, 1880.
[129] Malwa bears a duty of 650, but the consistence of Malwa chest is 90-95, of Bengal 70-75.
[130] Owing to bad crops the revenue from opium has considerably diminished in the last two years, but the present (1884) crop promises exceedingly well.
[131] 1882.
[132] Consul Medhurst, 1872.
[133] Sir Rutherford Alcock’s paper before the Society of Arts, p. 225.
[134] Justin McCarthy, History of Our Own Times, vol. i., p. 181.
[135] Parliamentary Paper, 1882.
[136] The organ of the Society.
[137] Sir Wilfrid Lawson on the Egyptian War.
Transcriber’s Note: Punctuation has been corrected without note.