A VINDICATION OF ENGLAND’S POLICY WITH REGARD TO THE OPIUM TRADE.

Again there has been a debate in Parliament on the opium traffic:[1] again has the same weary series of platitudes and misrepresentations been repeated, and no one has taken the trouble to defend the policy of England as it should and can be defended. But it is high time that the falsities and the fallacies of the statements of the Anti-opium Society should be exposed, and that everyone to the best of his ability should enlighten the people of England on a subject which so nearly concerns the honour of our country. Isolated voices have indeed been raised to protest against the views disseminated by the Society for the Abolition of the Opium Trade; but these efforts have been too few and far between to reach the mass of the nation. At present the agitators have it all their own way. The majority of people, having heard nothing but what the agitators have told them, denounce the iniquitous traffic with a fervour that varies proportionately with their ignorance. In contemplating the success of this misdirected enthusiasm we are irresistibly reminded of a very “judicious” remark of Hooker’s, who says: “Because such as openly reprove supposed disorders of State are taken for principal friends to the common benefit of all, and for men that carry singular freedom of mind; under this fair and plausible colour whatsoever they utter passeth for good and current.”

For more than forty years the opium trade between India and China has been a subject for keen discussion and hostile comment in England. Being as it was the immediate cause of our first war with China in 1840, the opium traffic could not fail, in Parliament and elsewhere, to be brought prominently before the notice of the people of England, and of course there were not wanting public men to denounce the policy pursued by this country towards China in that matter. This denunciation, at first of a vague and desultory character, took a definite shape in the memorial presented to Her Majesty’s Government in the Earl of Shaftesbury’s name, and backed by all his great personal authority. The specific charges contained in this document will be noticed hereafter, when we come to sketch the present position of the “Society.” Suffice it here to say that it teemed with misstatements and exaggerations of the grossest and most palpable kind, which, having been exposed and refuted again and again, need not detain us now. But so far were those random statements from furthering the cause which the memorialists had at heart, that they only served to steel the minds of unprejudiced people against further representations, however just, from the same quarter.

Since then, however, the agitation has taken a more organized form, and there is now a society for the suppression of the trade, numbering its hundreds of supporters, and linked with the names of such men as Lord Shaftesbury, Cardinal Manning, Sir J. W. Pease, and Sir Wilfrid Lawson. Nearly the whole of the clergy from the Archbishops downwards, and ministers of every denomination, have declared for the same side. Add to this that the Society has a large income, derived from voluntary subscriptions, which is assiduously employed in the dissemination of its peculiar doctrines. The country is flooded with tracts, pamphlets, reports of addresses, speeches, and petitions, all inculcating the same extreme opinions.

Under these conditions it is not surprising that the anti-opiumists have succeeded in enlisting popular sympathy to a certain extent on their side. But, with the single exception of missionaries, they have against them the vast majority of those who, from personal knowledge and experience, are competent to form an opinion on the subject. Sir Rutherford Alcock, for twenty years Her Majesty’s Minister in China, who has had opportunities for forming a correct judgment on the subject such as have fallen to the lot of few, and who can have no bias[2] or prejudice in the matter, has recently before the Society of Arts, in a paper of singular ability and fairness, vindicated the policy of the British Government. Mr. Brereton, for fifteen years resident in Hongkong, has challenged and, on the authority of his own experience, denied every assertion of the Anti-opiumists. As to the missionaries, from whom the majority of the arguments against the trade are drawn, no one doubts their good faith, and everyone gives them credit for the best of motives; but, for reasons to be afterwards given, their evidence is likely to be biassed, and in any case cannot be considered worthy to be set against that of all the other residents in China.

But what are the enormities of which England has been guilty? Here is the indictment, stated with all the energy of conviction: That England, and England only, is responsible for the introduction into China of a highly deleterious, if not wholly poisonous, drug, for which, till India took upon herself to supply it, there was in China no demand whatever; that she is responsible, further, for forcing this opium vi et armis upon the Chinese, contrary to all obligations of international morality, and in the face of the sincere and determined opposition of the Chinese people; that, in fine, Christian England, with a single eye to gain, is wilfully and deliberately compassing the ruin of heathen China. Such is the indictment brought against England by her own sons; and the tribunal which they would arraign her before is the public opinion of their own countrymen and of Europe.

The original habitat of the poppy plant, which is now extensively cultivated in Asia Minor, Persia, Egypt, India, China, and even in Africa, was probably Central Asia. It must have made its way very early into India, as it is mentioned in the Laws of Manu. But it was not till the tenth century that the Hindoos learnt from the Mohammedans the narcotic qualities of the plant.

In China there can be no doubt that opium has been known from the earliest[3] times; even if the poppy be not indigenous to that country, as we might be led to suppose from its mention in a Chinese[4] herbal compiled more than two centuries ago. In the General History of South Yünnan, published in 1736, opium is noted as a common product of Yung-chang-foo; and it is remarked by Mr. Hobson, Commissioner of Customs at Hankow,[5] that, “if 134 years ago so much opium was produced as to deserve notice in such a work, the production could have been no novelty to the Chinese population at the beginning of the present century, when we began to import it in small quantities.” Moreover, it is well known that the seeds of the poppy have been used from time immemorial in the preparation of cakes and confections. Two Court officials were even appointed specially to superintend the making of these for the Emperors’ use.[6] Dr. Edkins, in a recent pamphlet on the subject of opium-smoking in China, quotes an edict against the habit published as early as A.D. 1728, and consequently some forty years before the British took any part in the trade. Dr. Wells Williams is of opinion that opium may have been introduced into China from Assam, where it has been used time out of mind. However that may be, the Chinese may be credited with having improved upon their use of it by smoking instead of swallowing it; though this, too, is attributed to the Assamese by Don Sinibaldo de Mas, Spanish Consul in China.[7]

It may, then, be taken for granted that opium-smoking was known to the Chinese long before European nations took to importing opium into China. But at the same time no one will deny that the habit has become enormously more prevalent than it used to be.

The foreign trade in opium is of comparatively recent growth. The Portuguese were the first European nation to import it into China. For some years previous to 1767 they imported from Goa some 200 chests of Turkey opium to Macao. This they would scarcely have done had there been no demand for the drug. It was not till 1773 that the East India Company appeared upon the scene as exporters of opium in very small quantities. In that year the Company assumed the monopoly of the opium culture in India, and, according to the existing Mongol practice, farmed it out for an annual payment in advance. In 1781 a cargo of 1,600 chests was found unsaleable, and re-exported. By 1790, however, the importation into China amounted to 4,054 chests yearly, at which number it remained nearly stationary for thirty years. It was in 1793 first that the ships engaged in the traffic began to be molested, chiefly by pirates, but partly also through the hostility of the Chinese officials. One ship was then sent to Whampoa, an island twelve miles from Canton, where she lay for fifteen months entirely unmolested.

In 1796, however, the first year of Keaking’s reign, the importation of opium was prohibited by the Government at Pekin, under heavy penalties, for the alleged reason “that it wasted the time and property of the people of the Inner Land, leading them to exchange their silver and commodities for the vile dirt of the foreigner.”

Up to this time, though opium was being imported for the space of more than forty years, not a word had been said against it, and now, when exception was taken to it, it was on the ground of the worthless, not the poisonous, nature of the drug, for which so much sycee silver was bartered. This law, like sumptuary laws in general, proved wholly inoperative as far as the Chinese were concerned. The East India Company, however, did so far regard it as to forbid their own ships from engaging in the trade, and their mandate was obeyed. Nevertheless, the trade went on in private ships, and from Whampoa, the headquarters of the trade, the smuggling (if what went on under the very eyes of the custom-house officials can be called smuggling) continued uninterruptedly along the coast, being carried on openly and in the light of day. For though the Government might fulminate against it from Pekin, the officials on the spot, by their undisguised connivance,[8] caused the trade to be established on something like a regular footing. Under which conditions the trade continued for the next twenty years or so with little variation.

In 1816 the Bengal drug first began to suffer from competition with Malwa and Turkey opium, the latter brought from Madeira in American as well as British ships. In 1821 the exportation of Bengal opium had sunk to 2,320 chests, when the Chinese commenced vigorous proceedings against smugglers, and drove the contraband trade to Lintin, an island forty miles from Canton.[9] This seems to have given a fresh impetus to the trade, for the export rose at once to 6,428 chests, and by 1831 to more than 20,000: at which number it remained till Lin’s raid in 1839, when 20,291 chests were delivered up and destroyed in the Canton waters.

This violent action of Lin was the outcome of the ascendancy[10] of the Protective party in China; for there can be no doubt that even in Conservative China there was at this time a reform party, headed by the young and accomplished Empress, who advocated enlarged intercourse with foreign states, and, as a step towards this, a less protective policy in trade, including a legalization of the importation of opium. A memorial was even drawn up and presented to the Emperor by Heu Naetze, Vice-President of the Sacrificial Board, in 1829, advocating the legalization of opium. But even the influence of the Empress could not prevail against the prejudices of the Court, and the memorials of Choo Tsun[11] and Heu Kew, who, like Cleon of old, argued for the dignity of the Empire and the danger of instability in maintaining the laws, carried the day. It is not quite clear what grounds of objection to the traffic were held by the Chinese Government, but the moral ground, now made so much of, was certainly not one. Between 1836 and 1839 several Imperial edicts were published prohibiting the importation of opium, in which “there is little if any reference to the evils of opium, but very clear language as to the export of bullion.”[12] This drain of silver was no doubt the great reason for the Chinese hostility to the traffic. As late as 1829 the balance of trade had been in favour of China, and silver had accumulated; but this state of things had now been reversed, and the increased export of silver—for opium was a very expensive article and had to be paid for clandestinely in hard silver—had begun to cause a great depreciation of cash,[13] the only copper coin of the realm, and to occasion serious alarm at Pekin. Accordingly the Emperor, in pursuance of several memorials on the subject, forbad the export of sycee, at the same time that he took more energetic measures to put a stop to the traffic which was chiefly responsible for this loss of bullion. In 1836 opium ships were prohibited from entering the inner waters of Kunsing-moon, while all foreign ships were detained at Lintin; and the local revenue officers began to show more vigilance in putting down smuggling. In the following year an edict was published prohibiting the continuance of receiving ships in the outer waters, to which Captain Elliott, our Superintendent of Trade, paid little attention, seeing that the Chinese themselves openly disregarded it; and it is even stated that the trade was carried on by four boats under the Viceroy’s flag, which paid regular fees to the custom-house and military stations.[14]

In 1834 the East India Company’s monopoly of trade to China came to an end, and the trade was taken up by Her Majesty’s Government, who sent out a commission with Lord Napier at its head to apprise the Chinese Government of the change. It had been usual up to this period for all communications to be addressed to the Viceroy of Canton through the thirteen “Hong”[15] merchants, in the form of a humble petition. This Lord Napier naturally refused to do, and the Chinese Viceroy resented what he considered the insolent presumption of the “outside barbarians.” He declined to receive the Envoy, and ordered a blockade of all the factories. Lord Napier was forced to surrender at discretion, and was escorted back to Macao by an insulting guard of Chinese soldiers, where he died soon after. After this, though the trade was graciously allowed to proceed in its existing unsatisfactory condition, an open rupture between the two Governments was clearly only a question of time. It was evident that the claims of the Chinese to suzerainty over all outside barbarians could not fail to cause one of two things: either a total cessation of intercourse between them and other nations, or a war which should bring them to their senses. Peaceable means to conciliate the Chinese had been tried more than once and had failed. In 1796 Lord Macartney, and in 1816 Lord Amherst, had been sent on missions to effect a peaceable arrangement with regard to trade. Both attempts failed in their object, but served to show the overweening pretensions of the Chinese and their thorough contempt for foreigners.[16] “In both cases,” says Sir Rutherford Alcock, “the British mission was paraded before the Chinese population, en route from the coast, as tribute-bearers.” Lord Amherst was even subjected to personal indignity and insult for refusing to perform the kotow or prostration before the Emperor. Meanwhile, as the power of the Empress and the reform party declined, edicts against opium followed one another in quick succession, but were completely ineffectual in checking the corruption and connivance of the Canton officials, until Lin was appointed Viceroy of Canton, for the avowed purpose of coercing his countrymen and humiliating the foreigner. It was a congenial task, and accordingly we find that immediately upon his arrival in February 1839 he executed a native smuggler opposite the British factories as a menace to his own people and an insult to the barbarians. Early in the following March he issued an edict marked with the “vermilion pencil,” forbidding, in the most uncompromising terms, the long-established traffic. With this was coupled a demand for all the opium in the Canton waters. Captain Elliott, who had arrived from Macao in the midst of this crisis, at first refused compliance with this demand, but was starved out, and, like Lord Napier, compelled to surrender at discretion. Lin’s victory was complete, and on the whole he used it well. All the opium, to the amount of 20,290 chests was, in the sight of all, sunk in the muddy waters of the estuary. All foreigners were now graciously permitted to depart in peace. But it was evident that the matter could not rest here; for Elliott had guaranteed compensation from the State to those traders who had voluntarily surrendered their opium (which was otherwise quite beyond Lin’s reach) in order to release from durance vile the European residents whom Lin had unjustifiably seized. War was now inevitable; but its formal declaration was preceded by one or two collisions between the Chinese and foreign ships. One encounter in the Bay of Coalloon led to the total destruction of a fleet of Chinese junks by the English frigates Hyacinth and Volage. This was the first experience the Chinese had of our shot and shell, and it should have warned them of what they might have to expect. But it did not. Lin retaliated by a proclamation, addressed to the Queen of England, giving out that for the future “principals in the opium business would be decapitated and accessaries strangled.” War followed, and the Chinese were soon brought to their knees. The terms of peace signed at Nankin were the cession of Hongkong, the opening of the ports Canton, Amoy, Foochowfoo, Ningpo, Shanghae, to trade, with consular officers at each place, and an indemnity of six million dollars as the value of opium seized in 1839. The old exclusive trading with “Hong” merchants was abolished, and a fair and regular tariff of import and export customs and other dues was established at the open ports. In this tariff opium was not even mentioned.[17] The author of the Opium Question Solved says: “The negotiators dared not mention it; the Emperor would not legalize the hated source of all his humiliations.” So the same system of organized smuggling, only carried on now even more openly than before, went on. This smuggling of opium had been the immediate[18] cause of the late war; and it was evident that a cordial understanding between the two nations could not be established while this apple of discord remained in their midst. Yet the English Government was very reluctant even to seem to force opium upon the Chinese against their will. Lord Palmerston’s instructions to Admiral and Captain Elliott in 1841 on this matter are very precise. This despatch, indicating as it does our policy in this question both at that time and subsequently with unmistakable clearness, may excusably be quoted here.

“In bringing this matter of the trade,” he says, “before the Chinese plenipotentiaries, you will state that the admission of opium is not one of demands you have been instructed to make upon the Chinese Government, and you will not enter upon it in such a way as to lead the Chinese plenipotentiaries to think that it is the intention of Her Majesty’s Government to use any compulsion in regard to this matter. But you will point out that it is scarcely possible that a permanent good understanding can be maintained between the two Governments if the opium trade be allowed to remain upon its present footing. It is evident that no exertions of the Chinese authorities can put down the trade on the Chinese coast. It is equally clear that it is wholly out of the power of the British Government to prevent opium from being carried to China. It would seem, therefore, that much additional stability would be given to the friendly relations between the two countries if the Government of China would make up its mind to legalize the importation of opium upon payment of a duty sufficiently moderate to take away from the smuggler the temptation to introduce the commodity without payment of duty. By this means also it is evident that a considerable increase of revenue might be obtained by the Chinese Government, because the sums which are now paid as bribes to the Custom-house officers, would enter the public coffers in the shape of duty.”

In accordance with these instructions, Sir H. Pottinger used every argument to persuade the Chinese Commissioners to have the trade legalized. They, while admitting that the suppression of the trade depended upon the Government of China being able to stop the use of the drug, said that they could not yet approach the throne on the subject; but that the Custom-house officers “would not trouble to inquire whether our ships brought opium or not.” They even went so far as to say[19] that “on the subject of opium the British and Chinese Governments should adopt their own rules with reference to their own subjects.” Sir H. Pottinger intimated his readiness to prohibit our ships from carrying opium into the inner waters of the empire, but the Chinese, he added, must enforce the prohibition. But this was the difficulty; for what could be expected from our measures while the imperial servants winked at the breach of the imperial edicts. The Commissioner, Keying, then suggested that the Emperor might consent to the legalization of the traffic if a large revenue[20] were guaranteed to him. The answer of the British Commissioner was that the British Government did not wish to foster or encourage the trade, but to place it on a less objectionable footing; and, therefore, that Keying’s proposal could not be considered. In commenting on these negotiations, Sir H. Pottinger said that the principal public reason (bribery and corruption being the private ones) why the truth was disguised, or said to be disguised, from the Emperor, was the inability of the Chinese to prevent opium from entering the rivers and harbours of the empire, or from being consumed by their subjects. The Chinese Commissioner tried to throw the blame on the British Government, asserting that they should enforce the prohibition and prevent their subjects from engaging in the trade, a position tenable on no principle of international obligations.[21] The Chinese, then, were unable to stop the traffic and unwilling to legalize it. The mandarins were driven to all kinds of desperate shifts to cloak their imbecility; and Sir H. Pottinger, in one of his last despatches, says: “The mandarins openly give out that they dare not stop the traffic, else it would lead to the cultivation of the poppy in China to so great an extent as to cause a scarcity of food, if not a famine.” A truly surprising reason!

However, the arguments of successive British Commissioners seem to have gradually had their effect, and there were not wanting signs that the Chinese authorities were coming round. They were beginning to see that the only way to arrest the hæmorrhage of silver, so alarming to them, which in fifty-four years had amounted to 12,000 tons, was to legalize the traffic in opium, so that the drug might be exchanged for other commodities, instead of, as now, being paid for clandestinely in sterling silver. As a proof that the Chinese were not now in earnest against the traffic, it may be mentioned that not a single proclamation was issued against it since the negotiations between Keying and the English Envoy began. Moreover, as Sir J. Davis wrote to the Earl of Aberdeen, the Chinese did not wish to abolish the traffic, as the impoverished state of the finances of the country did not admit of the servants of the Government being adequately paid in a legitimate manner. So recognized, indeed, had the traffic become, that legal duties even were often paid in opium.[22] But that the smuggling and piracy caused by opium being technically a contraband article were a “womb of evil,” was evident to the Chinese themselves, and also that they might any moment be made the excuse for a raid against the foreign community (and there was even a report that Seu, the Imperial Commissioner, was contemplating this), which could only result in a fresh war. So we find that, in spite of their protestations to the contrary, the Chinese Commissioners did refer the matter to the Emperor several times, and on one occasion a decree legalizing the importation was drawn up by his ministers for the Emperor’s approval. When, however, the imperial pleasure was finally taken, Taou Kwang forbad any further reference to the proposal, saying that he could not “change face.” So the matter rested for the present. But the advice pressed upon the Emperor that he should legalize the trade did not come from the British Envoys only; for in the Pekin Gazette for January 4th, 1853, there appeared a memorial from a Censor, Wootingpoo, who, while admitting that the complete abolition of opium, if that were only possible, would be far the best, points out in forcible terms that as a help to rendering the national advantages fairly and openly available for all, and to removing differences with the barbarians, no measure can compare with that of levying a duty on opium. Alluding to the mine of wealth which lies unworked by China in the opium trade, he defends the policy of making it contribute to pay the expenses of the State, on the principle that of two evils it is always well to choose the least; and he proceeds to enforce his views by showing the impossibility of preventing indulgence in such tastes, which no doubt, when excessive, is pernicious. His estimate of the consumption was £66,666 daily; and he suggested a duty of 11 per cent., which should bring in a revenue of seven million taels[23] a year, whereby the foundations of England’s greatness would be sapped. Further, he adds, the increase of native growth will eventually drive out the foreign drug. But this expression of native opinion was disregarded no less than the friendly counsels of our Envoys, and matters went on in the old underhand way till the outbreak of the second war.

On October 8th, 1856, the Chinese officials, in a war-boat, boarded the lorcha Arrow as it lay, flying the English flag, in the Canton river, for the alleged reason that it had on board a pirate who was “wanted” by the Chinese authorities. Of the merits of this question it will not be necessary to speak here. It is enough to say that, in all probability, the Chinese were strictly within their right; but, however that may be, it is quite clear that the dispute had nothing whatever to do with opium. Yeh, a man of similar character with Lin and Seu, was Viceroy of Canton, and he promised satisfaction, but withheld it. Admiral Seymour accordingly proceeded to enforce the British claims, and the second war broke out. Owing to the Indian Mutiny, vigorous proceedings against China were deferred till 1858; but when hostilities were resumed Canton was soon captured, and Yeh made prisoner and banished to India, where he shortly died.

But the trouble was not at an end yet; for as the English and French ambassadors,[24] with an escorting squadron, were on their way to Pekin to ratify the treaty which had been drawn up, they were attacked and repulsed before the Taku forts. This brought about a renewal of the war, and Pekin was taken October 1860, and the Treaty of Tientsin was ratified. Five new ports[25] were opened. A British ambassador was to be established at Pekin and a Chinese ambassador in London. Consuls were to be stationed at all the open ports. Not a word was mentioned about opium in the treaty itself, but, in pursuance of Article 26, an agreement was entered into five months later concerning the tariff regulations, wherein “the Chinese Government admitted opium as a legal article of import, not under constraint, but of their own free will deliberately.”[26] To a similar effect is the testimony of Mr. Oliphant, another secretary to the mission, whose evidence on this point will readily be considered conclusive. He affirms that he informed the Chinese Commissioner “that he had received instructions from Lord Elgin[27] not to insist on the insertion of the drug in the tariff, should the Chinese Government wish to omit it.” But the Commissioner declined to omit it. An increase of duty was then proposed, but this was objected to by the Chinese themselves as affording a temptation to smugglers.

It is clear, then, that no force came into play at all, except it were the force of circumstances, and opium—like all other articles except munitions of war and salt, which remained contraband—was admitted under a fixed tariff. This in the case of opium was fixed at thirty taels per picul (133⅓ lbs.), and it was further agreed that opium should only be sold at the port; that the likin or transit dues should be regulated as the Chinese Government thought fit. The terms of this tariff were to be revisable after the lapse of ten years.

Leaving for a moment the question of the foreign import as thus settled, let us turn to the Chinese policy towards their own native growth. The exact date of the introduction of the culture of the poppy into China is unknown; but there can be little doubt that the cultivation has existed for a considerable period. Edicts and proclamations against the cultivation, some of them published last century, are sufficient evidence of this. Mr. Watters, Consul at Ichang on the upper Yangtze, speaks of opium-smoking as having existed for centuries in Western China, where, as we know, Indian opium never finds its way. The policy of the Government with regard to this native growth has all along been of a piece with that pursued towards the foreign import. While prohibited by the Government it has been connived at and sanctioned by the local authorities. The reason of this conflict between the local and imperial authorities is clearly pointed out in the recent Parliamentary paper on opium, where a statement of the Consul at Chefoo is quoted to the effect that “the authorities at Pekin have always been hostile to the cultivation of native opium, on the ground of its interfering with the revenue derived from the import of the foreign drug. On the other hand, the local authorities steadily connive at the growth, both from indolence and from the fact that they find it very lucrative themselves, the growers being able and willing to pay largely for the privilege of evading the prohibitions.” Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the sanction of the local officials has in most cases prevailed over the prohibition of the Imperial Court; and it is certain that the cultivation had attained considerable proportions by the middle of the present century, for Wootingpoo, in the memorial quoted above, speaks of “gangs of smugglers of native opium, numbering hundreds and even thousands, entering walled cities in the west and setting the local governments at defiance.” He would have had the prohibition against the native growth withdrawn, as well as that against the foreign import. He answered the chief objection to the native culture, that it took the place of food crops, by pointing out that the poppy was grown in the winter months, and rice in the summer on the same ground. But his representations were of no effect, and the prohibition continued, and was even enforced by a fresh edict, at the instigation of Sheu-kueo-feû,[28] in 1865. How far this edict was effectual it is impossible to say; certain it is that it was flagrantly set at nought by the highest officials. Li Hung Chang, who has lately taken a high moral tone in his correspondence with the Anti-Opium League, actively busied himself in promoting the cultivation of the poppy in the provinces over which he was appointed, alleging, in a memorial to the throne, the importance of the native growth as a source of revenue and as a check on the importation of foreign opium.[29] A fresh edict prohibiting the cultivation was, however, published in the Pekin Gazette, January 29, 1869, in answer to a fresh memorial by the Censor Yu Po Chuan; and to this day this prohibition remains unrepealed but obsolete, like the law against infanticide. The poppy is now grown in every province of the Chinese Empire, but the cultivation is far more extensive in the western than the eastern provinces. The two provinces of Yünnan and Szechuen produce by far the largest portion of the drug. Two-thirds of the available land of those two provinces may be said to be under poppy cultivation. The amount of native opium thus produced may be taken to be at least four times as much as the whole amount imported, and the native growth is even encouraged by the duty levied upon it being 50 per cent. less than that levied upon the foreign drug. Such being the case, it is quite impossible to believe that the authorities were ever unanimous or really earnest in their wish to prohibit either the foreign import or the native growth. While the Emperor denounced the foreign traffic from Pekin, and sent Lin to make an example of offenders, the Governor of Canton dealt in opium, and the Emperor’s own son was an opium-smoker. Whilst edict followed edict forbidding the growth of the poppy, the Governor-General of a large province openly fostered the cultivation, and the poppy plant flaunted itself in red and white over the half of China. It is useless to assert, as is so often asserted, that the legalization of the foreign trade tied the hands of the Government with regard to the home production. The native growth was well established long before the legalization was effected, and the admission of Indian opium never affected the western provinces of the Empire. Had the Government been in earnest they could have suppressed the cultivation, just as the Taeping rebels did in 1860 in Yünnan.

But to return to the history of the foreign trade. As was mentioned above, the Chinese Commissioners of their own accord fixed the tariff duty upon opium at thirty taels. But, though bound, as they were by their own act, to admit opium at this rate, as soon as it passed into native hands they had power to tax it as they pleased, and they did not fail to profit by their power, though this likin tax varied considerably at the different ports[30] in accordance with the necessities of the provincial governments. It is difficult to estimate the revenue obtained by China from the foreign opium trade, but it is probably close upon two millions sterling. That the Chinese Government were not satisfied with this amount, compared with the profits gained by India, is quite clear; and we find accordingly that various efforts were made by them, subsequent to 1869, to have the tariff agreed upon in the Treaty of Tientsin revised. But it was not till 1876 that any definite agreement was come to between the two Governments. In September of that year Sir Thomas Wade, Secretary Li, and Prince Kung concluded a convention, by which China opened four new ports[31] and six places of call on the great river, while Sir Thomas Wade agreed to recommend to his own Government, and through it to all the Treaty Powers, the limitation of the area, within which imports should be exempt from likin, to the actual space occupied by the foreign settlements. As the treaty regulations then stood, imports, except opium, after paying their regular import duty, were not liable to likin or transit dues till they reached a certain barrier at some distance inland. Opium could be taxed as soon as it left the importer’s hands. But this right, which applied to opium only, had been used by the Chinese against all imports, a clear infraction of treaty which the German Consul, among others, had protested against. But as some doubt existed as to where the first inland barrier really stood, Sir Thomas Wade proposed to make the circuit of the foreign settlement the limit of exemption from duty. But foreseeing that, if the likin Collectorate were banished from the port-areas, opium would evade paying the likin tax, he proposed also to recommend that the likin, as well as the import duty, on opium should be collected by the foreign Inspectorate, and that for this purpose the opium should be bonded in a warehouse or receiving hulk till such time as the importer had paid the import due and the purchaser had paid the likin. He further proposed as a fair likin tax forty taels per picul (though certain that the Chinese did not get more than 30) on all Indian opium, that brought to Hongkong included. Thus the whole duty (import and likin) on opium would be seventy taels a picul, which would yield 6,117,930 taels, or a million more than under the old system. But the Chinese Commissioner, Prince Kung, objected to a uniform duty of forty taels, as too low, and suggested sixty taels a picul, or an adherence to the different rates prevailing in different ports. Sir Thomas Wade, though averse to the higher uniform rate, was willing to consider the other alternative, provided that he were informed of the exact position of the next inland Collectorate, and the amount of rates levied. Further, the Chinese Government must guarantee that no second Collectorate should be established between the port Collectorate and the first of the present inland Collectorates. It was agreed by the Chefoo Convention[32] that this collection of the dues on opium by the foreign customs under these conditions should be tried for five years at Shanghae.

Neither the Indian nor the English Government have raised any serious objection to this convention, and the only reason why it is not ratified yet is that the other Treaty Powers will not join in the Shanghae agreement, unless China consents to abolish likin on goods other than opium. Until these other Powers do give in their adhesion, our arrangements must necessarily be inoperative, as opium will be imported under the flag of Powers not parties to it. Pending the ratification of this convention, Sir Thomas Wade offered to give up the concessions granted by the Chinese, and have the ports recently opened closed again; but this the Chinese would not agree to. There now seems every reason to suppose that the difficulties with the other Powers will be got over, and the Chefoo Convention finally ratified.

Before closing this historical survey, we may record the words of the Chinese Commissioner in 1881 to Sir Thomas Wade, when the latter suggested a yearly diminution of the opium sale, that the Chinese would have the drug, and that any serious attempt to check the trade must originate with the people themselves. With this sentiment we shall all agree.

It will be necessary now briefly to describe the nature of opium, and its use among, and effect upon, different races.

As a powerful medicine, then, opium, or its principal ingredient morphia, has been known in all ages of the world to all civilized nations, and it may confidently be stated that in the whole range of the Pharmacopœia there is no remedy so unique in its effects, and so indispensable to the efficiency of the healing art as this “much abused drug.” As a febrifuge[33] it is invaluable; and, indeed, till the discovery of quinine, stood alone in that respect; while it is of incalculable service in relieving cholera and dysentery[34], and other diseases incidental to a hot climate. It has also a wonderful power of checking consumption, and mitigating its more distressing symptoms.[35] Its efficacy in this respect, though recently denied by Dr. Shearer, is surely beyond all reasonable doubt.

The three chief alkaloid constituents of opium are morphine, narcotine, thebaine, of which the first is the principle peculiar to the poppy, and gives it its stupefying power. The second, narcotine, which in spite of its name has nothing narcotic in it, is a febrifuge and stimulant like quinine; the third, thebaine, affects the nervous system, and is credited by the Chinese with having certain aphrodisiac qualities. Needless to say, however, it is not as a medicine that the opponents of opium find fault with its use, but as a luxury that ensnares the appetite, and enfeebles the mind and body of its hapless votaries. We shall have occasion to show that in the case of the Chinese at least there is an intimate relation between its use as a luxury and as a medicine.

There are three ways in which opium may be consumed: it may be eaten in the shape of pills, drunk as a solution, or smoked as a highly-concentrated extract. And it may here be remarked at once that opium smoked is a quite different thing from opium swallowed, so that arguments proving the pernicious effects of the latter will not of necessity apply to the former at all; while, on the other hand, arguments tending to show the harmlessness of opium eaten or drunk will a fortiori prove the innocuousness of opium smoked. The opponents of opium have disregarded this important distinction. Hence much of their evidence against opium-smoking is wholly irrelevant. Sir George Birdwood,[36] relying on the authority of Sir Robert Christison, and on the knowledge derived from personal experience, asserts that opium-smoking must be absolutely harmless, as the active principles contained in opium are not volatizable. Theoretically this may be sound enough, but its practical effect upon Asiatics at least can scarcely be reconciled with this supposition. However this may be, opium-smoking is probably not much worse than tobacco-smoking, and far less injurious than dram-drinking; while opium smoked, whatever be its effect upon the system, certainly has not one-tenth part the potency of opium swallowed. And it is obvious that this must be so, for, when swallowed, all the various constituents of opium are admitted into, and retained by, the stomach; whereas, when smoked, only the narcotizing agent, which is volatizable, finds its way into the system, and that merely momentarily. No doubt opium smoked produces its effect sooner than opium swallowed, for it is brought at once into contact with the blood in the lungs, and thus quickly permeates the whole system. The Chinese are generally credited with being the first people to smoke the drug, and the practice is almost confined to them now.

Before, however, speaking of the introduction and spread of the habit in China, we will briefly notice those countries where some form of opium-consumption is prevalent, and endeavour to point out the general effects observable therefrom. And we are in a position to form a correct judgment in this matter, for there is a considerable consumption of opium in British India, so to speak, under our own eyes. The districts in which this consumption is most prevalent are Rajpootana, parts of the Punjaub, Orissa, Assam, and Burmah. In Rajpootana, among the Sikhs, the drinking of “umal pawnee,” a solution of opium, is a common custom extending to women and even children as well as men. They take their glass of laudanum as we take our glass of wine. And though this habit is of long standing, and indulged in by at least 12 per cent. of the inhabitants of the country, no such wholesale ruin and demoralization has been caused as the declamations of the anti-opiumists would lead us to expect.[37] Indeed, the Sikhs are physically the finest race in India,[38] and show as yet no signs of degeneration. Dr. Moore, for some time Superintendent-General of Dispensaries in Rajpootana, assures us that he has known individuals who had consumed opium all their lives, and at forty, fifty, sixty, and even older, were as hale and hearty as any of their fellows. Opium, then, even when swallowed, cannot, as it appears, do the Rajpoots much harm. In some cases it is undoubtedly highly beneficial. “When taken,” says Dr. Moore,[39] “by the camel-feeders in the sandy deserts of Western Rajpootana, it is used to enable the men, far away from towns or even from desert villages, to subsist on scanty food, and to bear without injury the excessive cold of the desert winter night, and the scorching rays of the desert sun. When used by the impoverished ryot, it occupies the void resulting from insufficient food or from food deficient in nourishment; and it not only affords the ill-nourished cultivator, unable to procure or store liquor, a taste of that exhilaration of spirits which arises from good wine, but also enables him to undergo his daily fatigue with far less waste of tissue than would otherwise occur. To the ‘kossid,’ or runner,[40] obliged to travel a long distance, it is invaluable.” It may be added that opium smoking is almost entirely unknown in Rajpootana.

Passing on to the Punjaub, it appears from the recent report on the Excise in that province, that, though a large part of the rural population have a preference for opium above spirits, a preference derived from custom and religious prejudice; yet they are compelled to take to the latter, and the yet more deleterious “bhang,”[41] owing to a growing disinclination among the cultivators to cultivate opium under such strict Government supervision as is enforced, combined with a diminution in the amount imported. This state of things is deplored by the Excise officers, who recommend an increased importation to meet the demand which undoubtedly exists. In this province opium is smoked to a considerable extent under the name of kossúmba.

In Orissa the consumption of the drug is very general, and has much increased since the famine of 1866. According to Dr. Vincent Richards,[42] who instituted a statistical inquiry for the purpose of eliciting trustworthy information, from 8 to 10 per cent. of the adult population of Balasore take opium, those living in unhealthy localities being much more addicted to it than others. Moderation is the rule, but even excessive doses of the drug are taken without any very serious ill-effects, while its efficacy in cases of fever, elephantiasis, and rheumatism, is undoubted.

In Assam, as might be expected from the unhealthy and malarious character of its soil, opium is freely resorted to, and Assam has been singled out by Dr. Christlieb—one of the most strenuous, and we may add misinformed, supporters of the anti-opium league—as affording the most striking evidence of the disastrous use of opium in India. Among other things that pernicious drug is credited with producing barrenness; a result which, as Dr. Moore has conclusively shown, is due entirely to the unhealthy nature of the soil, and may even be counteracted by a moderate use of opium. Residence in low, swampy districts creates a natural craving for opium, as the statistics of our own islands will abundantly testify. Throughout the British islands, the only districts where the consumption of opium can be said to be at all common are in the fen country of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk.

Lastly, we come to British Burmah; and here undoubtedly the case against opium seems, at first sight, overwhelming. But those who have only read what the anti-opiumists have said about it, will have formed a very one-sided notion of the facts of the case. Till 1870 a comparatively small quantity of opium was imported into that country, but in the succeeding decade the amount rose from 15,000 to 46,000 sears.[43] This was apparently owing to the direct encouragement of the Government. The habit of eating[44] or smoking opium (for—and this is an important point—both are practised) spread with fearful rapidity even among the population of the villages, especially among the rising generation. The physical and mental deterioration in those who contracted the evil habit, and the consequent increase of misery and crime brought about a strong expression of native feeling against the practice. “To put away the accursed thing entirely was the only advice that appeared to the native elders of any value at all.”[45] The Government, as a recent writer in the Times[46] says, promptly took advantage of this feeling to close forty out of the sixty-eight opium shops, and raise the price of opium 30 per cent., at a loss to the provincial revenues of from. £50,000 to £70,000. No one will question the wisdom of these measures; but there can be little doubt that on the one hand the demoralization caused by the spread of the vice was exaggerated,[47] while on the other the guilt of the Government is not so flagrantly evident, for there never were more than sixty-eight shops in 87,000 square miles of country. No one could lawfully possess more than one ounce of opium outside a licensed shop, and the law, if broken, was promptly vindicated. “The Government sales, when highest, were only enough to satisfy 3 per cent. of the adult male population.”[48]

We are tempted to ask what was the cause of this sudden increase in the consumption of opium. Increased facilities for its purchase was undoubtedly one cause, but Sir Charles Aitchison supplies us with another important one. “The people,”[49] he says, “are becoming emancipated from many restrictions of their old creed. The inevitable tendency of the education we give, and of the new sense of personal liberty which our Government creates among an Oriental people, is to weaken the sanctions of religious belief, and break down the restraints of social customs.”[50] So far, and this is all that a perusal of anti-opium publications will tell us, the contention that opium is wholly pernicious seems fully borne out. But, as before pointed out, a proof of the injuriousness of opium-eating is no proof that opium-smoking is injurious; and the zealous denouncers of the drug have omitted to mention all in the Report which tells strongly against their own case. At the very beginning of the memorandum the Commissioner says: “The Chinese population in British Burmah, and to some extent also the immigrants from India, especially Chittagonians and Bengalese, habitually consume opium without any apparent ill-effects; those of them who have acquired the habit do not regularly indulge to excess. With the Burmese and other indigenous races the case is different. The Burmese seem quite incapable of using the drug in moderation.”[51] So that if there were no other difference between the Chinese and Burmans in their appetite for opium, there would be this, that the one habitually smokes in moderation, the other habitually indulges to excess. Further, one of the arguments brought forward by the Commissioner against the total closing of all shops, a step clamoured for by the anti-opiumists, not to mention the obvious difficulty of preventing smuggling, is that “the legitimate requirements of the 200,000 Chinese and natives of Bengal, resident in British Burmah, must be considered and provided for. These, to whom the drug is a necessary of life, constitute perhaps the most thriving and industrious section of the population.”[52] It will be seen, then, that we cannot argue from the effect of opium on the Burmese to its effect upon the Chinese.

The greater part of the opium consumed in India is supplied from the Government stores under the name of “abkari,” or excise opium.[53] Four thousand chests are issued yearly for this purpose from the reserve stock of Bengal opium; but this year it has been decided to allow Malwa opium, for which the market is at present very slack, to supply this. Besides this excise opium, which is never sold at a rate low enough to encourage export, some little opium is imported from the Hill states, and a small quantity is grown in Rajpootana, the Punjaub, and the Central Provinces, under strict Government supervision and for local consumption only.

Besides in India opium is eaten in Turkey, where its virtues are so much appreciated that the legend stamped on the opium lozenges is “Mash-Allah,” the “Gift of God”; and the habit is prevalent in Persia also. Among the Malays and Siamese, and in Java and Sumatra and the neighbouring islands, it is mostly smoked; and, of course, the Chinese carry the habit with them wherever they go. Even America has caught the infection, and the rapid progress of the habit, especially among the lower orders, called forth vigorous coercive measures. It may be that these will have the desired effect; but that will only be because the Americans have no natural craving for the drug, and prefer their national taste for gin and whiskey and rum. Some of the more violent opio-phobists, pointing to the spread of this “horrid and infectious vice” among the Americans, hint in almost triumphant tones that the secret use of opium in England is already considerable, and still increasing, as though it were a Nemesis, too long delayed, for her crimes.[54] If we may believe De Quincey,[55] opium-eating was by no means an uncommon thing among the upper classes, even in his day; and Dickens, in his description of an opium-den in Edwin Drood, draws no doubt upon his stores of personal knowledge acquired in his youthful rambles among the streets of London. However, we cannot think there is any real danger of the English people deliberately taking to opium. Tobacco answers every purpose. But it is an undoubted fact that the mortality among children in large towns like Bradford and Manchester is due, in a great measure, to their being unwittingly dosed with opium, which enters largely into the composition of soothing syrups, cordials, and elixirs of all kinds.[56] It has been estimated that 300,000 lbs. of opium are imported annually into the United Kingdom, only a part of which can be used medicinally.[57]

Before speaking more particularly of the political agitation against our policy with regard to opium, it will be necessary to state shortly what that policy has been in the case of India. The opium from which India derives her revenue is of two kinds, called respectively Bengal and Malwa opium. The former is that grown by the Government agencies at Patna and Benares; the latter, that grown by the native states of Scindia and Holkar, which has to pay a heavy duty in passing through our territory. With regard to the Government monopoly of Bengal opium, our policy has been very vacillating in past time; and mainly to this cause may be ascribed the fluctuations in the revenue derived from this source. The opium revenue amounted in 1838 to £1,586,445 net, which by 1857 had risen to £5,918,375. In 1871 the large total of £7,657,213 was reached, and this has been still further increased in the last decade to eight and a half millions. The constancy of increase noticeable in the revenue for the last few years has been due in great measure to the adoption of a plan proposed by Sir Cecil Beadon in 1867 that a reserve stock of opium should be formed from the abundance of fruitful years to supply the deficiencies of lean ones; so that a certain fixed amount of the drug might be brought into the market every year. This reserve stock, which amounted in 1878 to 48,500 chests, by constant demands upon it has diminished to 12,000 chests. The amount sold yearly has, in consequence, been lowered from 56,400 to 53,700 chests, and a further reduction to 50,000 chests is contemplated.[58] The revenue, therefore, is not likely to be in excess of the amount received 1881-2, which was eight and a half millions (net), of which three and a half millions are due to the export duty on Malwa, the other five millions to the direct profit on the Bengal drug.

The amount of land at present under opium cultivation in British India is about 500,000 acres,[59] and this amount does not admit of any considerable extension.

It was in 1826 first that the East India Company made an agreement with Holkar and other native chiefs that the former should have the exclusive right to purchase all opium grown in the table-land of Malwa.[60] But, in spite of this agreement, opium grown in these estates found its way to the Portuguese ports of Damaum and Diu on the Persian Gulf, for export to China. Consequently, after an unsuccessful attempt to limit the production in the native states, which almost occasioned a civil war, the existing system was abandoned, and a tax upon opium exported through Bombay substituted.

The number of chests annually exported out of India is about 45,000, which gives the Indian Government a revenue of £3,150,000; whereas a similar amount of Bengal would bring in five and a half millions sterling. It is difficult to estimate the exact revenue that accrues to the native princes from the culture of the poppy, but in any case it must form a main portion of their whole income, amounting in some cases to as much as half, in spite of the enormous duty we can lay upon its export. The cultivation is very popular in the native states, and the people, we may be sure, have no scruple in supplying China or any other nation that will buy their produce. “No rajah,” says Dr. Christlieb, “under a purely native system, would administer the opium revenue as we do; the Brahmins would soon starve him out.” What this remark precisely means, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to discover; but the general meaning desired to be conveyed, no doubt, is that a native ruler would not be allowed to engage in so iniquitous a traffic by the superior sense of justice and morality inherent in his Brahmin councillors. Credat Judæus! Whether it would be possible[61] or in accordance with justice, or consistent with the policy hitherto pursued towards the native states, to prevent opium from being grown by the native princes (if so be that the doctrines of the anti-opium league find favour in the sight of Englishmen), is a question which will be more fully dealt with when we come to discuss the remedial measures proposed by the denouncers of our opium policy. We only know that our last attempt at interference in this matter well-nigh caused a civil war.

Allowing, then, for all deductions on the score of “abkari” opium, and for a certain amount which the French colony of Chandernagore have a right to purchase at existing rates, we may say that about 95,000 chests of provision opium are exported from India every year: 45,000 chests of Malwa from Bombay, and 50,000 of Bengal opium from Calcutta. But it is a mistake to suppose that all this goes directly to China proper. About 1,000 chests a month, or more than one-fifth part of the whole annual amount sold at Calcutta, goes to supply the needs of the Chinese in the Straits Settlements and thereabouts, in Cochin China and Cambogia, and of the Siamese and Malays. Moreover, a considerable quantity is deflected at Hongkong for the use of the Chinese in California[62] and in the Philippine, Fiji, and other islands. The exact amount so deflected it is impossible to estimate;[63] but we may feel pretty sure that not much more than 80,000 chests of Indian opium are sold in China itself. The Bengal opium finds a better sale than the Malwa, partly from its inherent superiority and partly from the Government guarantee being affixed. Its price is very high, being 460 taels per picul or chest,[64] while native opium is only 350 taels, including transit dues.

The use of Indian opium is consequently restricted to the richer classes, and the poorer classes have to put up with the native drug. At present there is little fear that the native drug will drive out Indian opium, as there seems to be some peculiarity of soil or preparation which makes Bengal opium superior to all other kinds.

The present import tariff paid by Indian opium varies at the different ports, but is about thirty taels in most; and this brings in to the Chinese Government (including likin or transit dues),[65] about £2,000,000 a year. This they seek to increase by being allowed to levy a higher duty on the imported article than they themselves suggested after the Treaty of Tientsin. The negotiations on this subject have been already described, so we need not dwell upon them here. The English Government are naturally unwilling to agree to any large increase of duty, such as would afford a temptation to smugglers and restore the former unsatisfactory condition of things, while in all probability just as much Indian opium would find its way into China, the duty being at the same time evaded. But it is a mistake to say that the Chinese are powerless to tax opium, for they can place any transit duty they please upon it as soon as it has left the importer’s hands, and they have not failed to avail themselves of this privilege, thereby causing in their own borders much successful smuggling. If the Chinese were allowed to double the import duty on Indian opium as they proposed to Sir Thomas Wade, and if they were able, as they formerly were distinctly unable, to prevent smuggling, our profits on the drug would no doubt be diminished in proportion to the increase of duty, and this rivalry would presumably lead to a compromise. But apart from this contingency there are two ways in which the opium revenue might be lost to India. On the one hand, by natural competition with other kinds of opium the Indian drug might be driven from the field. This, for many reasons, is unlikely. On the other hand, the political agitation against the trade, if successful, would have the effect of putting a sudden and complete stop to the traffic; and it behoves us to consider, in a calm and dispassionate manner, how far such a consummation is desirable, and, if desirable, how far it is practicable.

First, how far is it desirable? And here let us premise, with Major (now Sir Evelyn) Baring,[66] “that facts cannot be altered or their significance attenuated by any enunciation of abstract principles.” Violent denunciations from platform and pulpit, combined with a persistent ignoring of the exigencies of the case, as though they were irrelevant matters, are not likely to commend themselves to those responsible ministers, either in England or India, who have to face the financial and political problems connected inseparably with any attempt to abolish the opium trade. It is really no answer to the financial difficulty to say, as the Lord Mayor[67] said at a meeting held at the Mansion House, “that the financial difficulty would be got over if the Government would only deal with the question and do what is right.” Nor is it easy to believe that the English taxpayers will come forward with five millions a year as compensation to India. Those who seem to advocate this step do not fail to remind us of the £20,000,000 spent for the emancipation of slaves as a “glorious precedent.” But the difference between the two cases need not be pointed out: they must be obvious to all. What the exact remedies proposed by the opponents of the traffic are, it is difficult to define; for, united as is their condemnation of the present policy with regard to the trade, they are by no means as unanimous in suggesting a policy of their own.

The various objections to the trade were first formulated in Lord Shaftesbury’s memorial to Lord Clarendon in 1855. The challenge thus thrown down was at once taken up by Sir John Bowring, our Superintendent of Trade in China, who, as might be expected, knew somewhat more about the matter than the enthusiastic memorialists at home. He may be taken to have disproved all the most important allegations contained in that document, namely, that the trade was exclusively British; that the annual death-rate from opium rose to the “appalling” figure of more than a million; that the Chinese were really in earnest about prohibiting the traffic. Some of these points have been abandoned; others are considered irrelevant to the question really at issue, which is held to be whether any interference with the fiscal policy of a foreign state be in itself justifiable—whether, that is, we are warranted in keeping China to her treaty-obligations to admit opium at a certain rate. It is quite natural that they should wish to confine the discussion to this their strongest point, but we are not disposed to allow that this is the real or only point at issue; and we will therefore take the main charges levelled against the opium trade separately, and endeavour to do them full justice.

These are: 1st. Opium is a poison, and therefore opium-smoking as practised by the Chinese is poisoning the people. 2nd. We are responsible for the introduction of this habit into China. “We have held the poisoned chalice,” an eloquent Bishop has said, “to the lips of the Chinese and forced them to drink it.” 3rd. We have even forced it upon them, and are still forcing it. 4th. We hold a monopoly in the manufacture of opium, but a monopoly is always economically wrong, and the monopoly of a poison is morally indefensible. 5. This traffic is an insurmountable barrier to the labours of our missionaries. Let us take them in this order.

1. It is stated that opium in any form is a poison pure and simple, and has been declared to be so by Act of Parliament: that, moreover, its pleasures are so seductive that the habit of taking it, once established, can never be forgone, so that the moderate smoker glides almost imperceptibly, but no less certainly, into the excessive smoker: that this immoderate indulgence impoverishes the fortunes, mars the morality, and ruins the health of the victim himself, and plants the seeds of disease and vice in his children. This count in the indictment will not be quite complete unless we add, on the authority of the missionaries, that opium-smoking is all but universal, and the annual mortality due to it one million at least. As to the latter estimate, we may say with the late Dr. Medhurst, himself a zealous and enlightened medical missionary, that it “has not even the semblance of truth, but is an outrageous exaggeration.” What the exact number of deaths from this cause may be is by no means so easy to discover;[68] for, apart from the fact that there is no register of deaths to appeal to, it would be impossible to decide how many even of the deaths caused by opium could be attributed to the habit of smoking opium as a luxury, for many of them, as has been pointed out, might be due to suicide,[69] for self-destruction by opium[70] seems as common a practice with the Chinese as suicide by drowning is with us. But there is another and more fertile element of error; for many, and probably the vast majority of cases so pathetically described by missionaries, of victims[71] to the vice in hospitals and dying by the roadside, are cases of men afflicted with some painful or incurable disorder who have taken to opium-smoking, as De Quincey did to opium-eating, as a relief and a solace. To such, indeed, it is a priceless boon, and it may well be doubted whether it is not oftener the means of prolonging life than of shortening it.[72] Much has been made of the evidence of T. T. Cooper before the Parliamentary Commission in 1871, where he says that he frequently saw men dying by the roadside, simply from want of opium. Yet it is difficult to see how he ascertained the cause of death in each case. He seems rather to have jumped at a conclusion, as he certainly did in another part of his evidence, where he gravely affirms that, in his opinion, were the opium supply to be suddenly cut off, one-third of the adult population of China would die! Why, to begin with, one-third of the adult population do not even now, after the lapse of ten years, in which the spread of the habit has been unchecked, smoke opium; no, nor any number approaching it. Secondly, it has been proved in the case of prisoners, whose supply of opium is always stopped when they enter the jail,[73] that a sudden deprivation of the drug does not cause death. Again, opium is held accountable for pauperism, dishonesty, crime, and depravity of all sorts. That indulgence of any kind is a sign of moral weakness, and likely further to deprave the moral nature, is undeniable, but (and here we have Dr. Myers with us) “though excessive opium may hasten the effects of a general moral depravity, we are inclined to think that it is much more often rather a sequence than a cause.” “In China,” says Mr. Lay, “the spendthrift, the man of lewd habits, the drunkard, and a large assortment of bad characters slide into the opium-smoker: hence the drug seems chargeable with all the vices of the country.” There will be no need to point out that opium is not the cause of all the pauperism and vice that exists among the Chinese people; for a vast amount of pauperism is common to all Eastern races, and dishonesty, untruthfulness, cruelty, and vice of the most revolting kind, were characteristic of the Chinese long before opium was so common as it now is.

What, then, are the effects of opium-smoking on the Chinese individually and as a nation? Had they been anything like what the anti-opiumists assert they must be, surely the effect would be visible after all these years in an increased death-rate or a decreased birth-rate. Needless to say, no such aggregate result is observable. Where opium is most smoked, there the population is most thriving and industrious,[74] and increases the fastest. “No China resident,” says Dr. Ayres, colonial surgeon at Hongkong, “believes in the terrible frequency of the dull, sodden-witted, debilitated opium-smoker, met with in print.” Mr. Gregory, H.M.’s Consul at Swatow, says: “I have never seen a single case of opium intoxication, although living with and travelling for months and hundreds of miles with opium-smokers.”[75] Dr. Myers, after ten years’ medical practice in different parts of China, confesses that his “preconceived prejudices with reference to the universally baneful effects of the drug had been severely shaken.” Again, it was estimated by the colonial surgeon at Hongkong, in 1855, that there were more deaths from drunkenness in Hongkong among the 600 Europeans than from opium among the 60,000 Chinamen. Similar testimony is borne by a recent medical report of the Straits Settlements,[76] wherein, under the head “poisons,” it appears that there were from alcoholic poisoning thirty-nine deaths, of which twenty-six were Europeans, three Chinese, one Malay, nine Indians; while from opium only five in all—a result all the more significant as there are at least 300,000 Chinese in the Straits Settlements,[77] and only about 4,000 Europeans, including the military. Dr. Hobson, another medical missionary, and as such entirely averse to the trade, says: “Opium-smoking is not nearly so fatal to life as spirit-drinking is with us; its use is even compatible with longevity.” It is very common to hear Chinese acknowledge that they have smoked opium for ten, twenty, or thirty years. Dr. Hobson mentions one case in which the smoker began at nineteen, and smoked for fifty-one years.[78] Further evidence is surely unnecessary to prove that opium-smoking is not necessarily, nor even commonly, destructive of life. Even opium-eating, a far worse vice, for it “sets up an incessant and cumulative craving, so that a rapid increase of dose is necessary”—not even opium-eating is inevitably fatal, as the case of the Rajpoots proves. De Quincey, as is well known, took 8,000 drops of laudanum a day for some time, which is equivalent to thirty-two grains, and two grains of opium swallowed are equal in effects to fifty-eight grains (one mace) smoked, three mace being a smoker’s usual allowance.[79]

Though we cannot state for certain the number of deaths from opium, we can form a rough estimate of the number of smokers supplied by the Indian drug; and this has been done by Mr. Hart, Inspector-General of Chinese Customs. But his figures need some modification, inasmuch as he puts the number of chests imported at 100,000, whereas the number, for reasons given above, certainly does not exceed 85,000 all told. Moreover, he reckons the population of China at 300,000,000—surely a low estimate. We may safely assume it to be 350,000,000. Again, in his estimate of the native drug he errs on the other side, for the amount of the native drug produced is probably much more than 100,000 chests, and may be even four times as much.[80] Mr. Hart’s figures, then, thus amended, give the following results:—Indian opium imported to China amounts to 85,000[81] chests at most = 8,500,000 catties (1⅓ lb.). Provision opium, when boiled down and converted into prepared opium, loses at least 30 per cent. of its weight; consequently 8,500,000 catties of provision opium are equivalent to 5,950,000 catties of prepared drug, which = 952,000,000 mace (58 grains). This is sold at 800 taels per 100 catties, so that the whole quantity imported costs 47,600,000 taels, or £14,280,000, the price per mace being a little more than 3½d. English. Average smokers take three mace of prepared opium a day, and spend 11d. Dividing the number of mace smoked by the days in the year, we get 2,608,219 mace as the amount smoked daily, at the cost of £39,123. As the average smoker takes three mace a day, there must be 869,406 smokers of the Indian drug, i.e. one person in every 400, or ¼ per cent. The smokers of the native drug may be taken—a large estimate—to be four times as numerous. Still the two together will only form 1¼ per cent. of the population. The native drug costs only half as much as the Indian, so that the whole native crop, being four times as much, will only cost twice as much, or £28,560,000. The whole amount, then, spent by China on native and Indian opium will be £42,840,000 a year, and the number of smokers 4,347,000, of whom India is responsible for 870,000.[82] Not that we are to suppose these 4⅓ millions of smokers to be all indulgers to excess. That is no more the case than that all who drink wine and spirits in this country are habitual drunkards. There is, indeed, in the case of each individual a well-defined limit, of which he knows that so far he can go with safety, and no further. This curious fact we owe to Dr. Myers,[83] who also gives it as his experience that opium-smokers may be divided into two classes:[84] “1st. The minority, who, from being rich, can afford to gratify their tastes. Of these the official class are less prone to excess than those well-to-do persons who suffer from idleness and ennui. 2nd. The majority, consisting of persons who have to work hard for their livings, among whom moderation is the rule.” For, that opium does not destroy a capacity for hard physical[85] and intellectual[86] work, nay, even enhances it, has been abundantly proved, and that not only when taken on emergencies, but also when habitually indulged in.

In a recent letter to the Times[87] from a correspondent at the Straits Settlements, some interesting facts are recorded with regard to the use of opium there. The Chinese population of the Straits Settlements and the neighbourhood cannot be much more than one million souls. About 12,000 chests of Bengal opium are imported yearly, being more than one-seventh of the total amount of Indian opium exported. It appears, then, that the Chinese of the Straits Settlements, who are the finest specimens[88] of their race in existence, consume one-seventh part of the opium consumed by 175,000,000 Chinese, the other 175,000,000 being held to consume the native drug. Or, if the Straits scale of consumption prevails in China, then the quantity of opium imported is only enough to reach one-fiftieth part of the Chinese population, leaving the remaining forty-nine fiftieths to consume the home-grown article. The correspondent goes on to say: “According to the descriptions circulated by the Anti-Opium Society of decimation, emaciation, &c., the Straits Chinamen ought to be all dead men. But they live to disprove the anti-opium theory. Nay more, they are robust, energetic, and hearty beyond all other Eastern races.”

It has, we think, been sufficiently proved that, though opium is strictly a poison, and if you take too much of it you must probably, as De Quincey says, “do what is particularly disagreeable to any man of regular habits, viz. die,” yet taken in moderation it is, for the most part, harmless, if not beneficial.

We will now advert to the second charge, and endeavour to point out that we are not responsible for the introduction of opium into China, either as having first brought it to the notice of the Chinese, or as having planted in them a craving for it, which is really due partly to climatic causes, partly to constitutional characteristics.

From the history of the traffic given above, it will abundantly appear that the poppy was known and cultivated in China—to what extent it is impossible to define, but certainly to some extent—long before any foreign opium found its way into the empire. But even if this were not so, the English would not be responsible for the first importation of foreign opium, since the Portuguese preceded them by some years. Not that the Portuguese or any other nation can be said to have created a craving for the drug among the Chinese by the mere fact of supplying it, as Mr. Storrs Turner insists, for such a view of the conditions of supply and demand is, we take it, untenable. We may be sure that in those early days, before the haughty Celestial had felt the power of the outside barbarians, whom he thoroughly despised and consistently ill-treated, he would have laughed to scorn the idea that a few foreign traders could force upon him anything he was determined not to have. But the truth is that the Chinese people, literati, gentry and all, did ardently covet this foreign drug; and there are surely weighty reasons—if we will only condescend to investigate them—to justify their preference.

Every nation, as has been repeatedly pointed out,[89] whether civilized or barbarous, in all ages of the world, has been addicted to the use of some stimulant or narcotic.[90] Of these there are more than fifty kinds in use in different regions of the globe, ranging from alcohol in Europe, to “pombe,” a fermentation from millet, in Africa, and from bhang or hemp in India to coca and tobacco in America. Samshoo, a fiery distillation from rice, is the intoxicant of Japan, and was that of China before opium took its place.[91] The West Indians extract a strong spirit-rum from sugar-cane. Even the Kamschatkans draw an intoxicating liquor from mushrooms; even the Siberians express the juice of the crab-apple for the same purpose.[92] What but the natural craving of mankind for some intoxicant or narcotic “to make glad the heart of man” can have brought about the independent discovery and use of so many stimulants? For what purpose but to satisfy such a craving can Nature have scattered in such profusion the materials for its gratification? It has been said, and all known facts bear out the assertion, that “the craving for such indulgence, and the habit of gratifying it, are little less universal than the desire for, and the practice of, consuming the necessary materials of our common food.” Not but that there are gradations in the wholesomeness of these several stimulants. Perhaps the most purely beneficial is coca, which has, in some unexplained way, the power of retarding waste of tissue, and at the same time increasing nerve-power. Next to it in value undoubtedly comes opium, both because it also, to a great extent, has this effect upon the tissues and on the nervous system, and also owing to its curative and sanative powers. Of the three principles of which it consists—morphine, narcotine, thebaine—the first supplies the intoxicating and nerve-affecting element; while the second base, the narcotine, is the tonic and febrifuge which makes the drug so valuable in the treatment of bowel complaints, and as a safeguard against ague and malaria. This naturally brings us to the reasons which have made opium-smoking so prevalent in China. These are, as before stated, partly climatic, partly constitutional. Taking the former first, we may note that China over one-third of its surface is a vast ill-drained marsh, and covered to a large extent with rice-fields, the cultivation of which is productive of much unhealthiness.[93] To counteract this unhealthiness, nothing is so efficacious or so handy as opium; for, though quinine is even more useful as a febrifuge, opium has the additional advantage, peculiar to itself, of checking blood-spitting and consumption, a disease fatally prevalent in these unwholesome localities. As a general rule, the unhealthier the locality is, the more opium is consumed there, not in China only, but in India (e.g. in Orissa and Assam), and in our own fen districts. But besides being a safeguard against malaria and its attendant ailments, opium is also a valuable agent in counteracting the effect of the putrid and unwholesome food which, by its piquancy, pleases the Celestial palate. But over and above these special reasons, there are general causes which predispose the Chinese to some lazy habit. Their home life is not one which affords them many attractions. They have no books, except the everlasting Confucius, and no periodical literature to engage their thoughts. The domestic life of the Chinese has none of the charms implied by our word “home”; and it is this blankness, this want of home attractions, which no doubt causes much of the drunkenness of the poorer classes here in England. The gin-shop is the poor man’s club. Lastly, opium is specially suited to the lethargic Turanian nature,[94] for while by the delightful dreamy sensations which it produces it supplies the place of an imagination which the Chinaman lacks, it does not rob him of that dignified repose, that impassive acquiescence, which is so marked a characteristic of the Oriental mind.[95]

And here it will not be amiss to institute a short comparison between the use of opium by the Chinese and the use of ardent spirits by ourselves. Those who agitate for a suppression of the opium trade demur to any such comparison being made; and naturally, for it tells entirely against them.

Dr. Hobson,[96] a member of the London Missionary Society, and for many years medical officer at Canton, says: “I place alcohol (the bane of Great Britain) and opium (the bane of China) in the same category, and on the same level, as to the general injurious influence upon society: what may be said against the latter may be said with equal truth against the former.... Opium is probably more seductive and tenacious than alcohol; and I should certainly affirm that it was not so frequently fatal to life, nor so fruitful of disease and crime, as is the case with intoxicating drinks in Great Britain.”

Dr. Eatwell says: “Proofs are still wanting to show that the moderate use of opium produces more pernicious effects than the moderate use of spirituous liquors; while it is certain that the consequences of the abuse of the former are less appalling in their effects upon the victims, and less disastrous to society, than the consequences of the abuse of the latter.”

Sir Henry Pottinger says:[97] “I believe that not one-hundredth part of the evils spring from it that arise in England from the use of spirituous liquors.”

These witnesses, and they might be indefinitely multiplied, will be enough to show that there is no intrinsic difference between opium and alcohol such as to justify exceptional legislation in the case of the one which is not afforded to the other. What difference there is is wholly to the advantage of opium. We may go further than Dr. Eatwell, and say that there is ample evidence to prove that the moderate use of opium—and nine-tenths of those who smoke it use it in moderation—is not more injurious than the common use of wine and beer with us. Taken to excess, its effects, even if the worst accounts of its opponents be literally accepted, are no whit worse than, if they can be as bad as, the delirium tremens of the confirmed drunkard. “Physically,” says Sirr,[98] “the effect of opium on the enslaved victim is almost beyond the power of language to pourtray.” “It is impossible,” writes another author, speaking of drink, “to exaggerate—impossible even truthfully to paint—the effects of this evil, either on those who are addicted to it, or on those who suffer from it.” It would be easy, were it necessary, to quote descriptions of the visible physical effects of opium and alcohol upon their victims—so much alike that they could with very little verbal and no essential alteration be applied to either indifferently. It will be enough to point out where opium has the decided advantage over alcohol. One point in which this advantage is manifest will be obvious to all, and indeed is conceded by the bitterest opponents of the drug. Alcohol makes men noisy and quarrelsome, and maddens them till they are ready to commit any crime and perpetrate any outrage; opium lulls its votary into a dreamy rest quite incompatible with any violent or passionate action. Our gaols are filled with prisoners who, under the influence of drink, have committed horrible crimes.[99] Indeed, nine-tenths of all our prisoners owe their incarceration to their fatal propensity for drink. Everyone is familiar with the terrible accounts of wives beaten and kicked to death by husbands infuriated with drink. By far the largest proportion of murders of any kind are due to the same cause. Convictions for drunkenness and disorderly conduct number 170,000 every year. Our lunatic asylums owe at least thirty per cent.[100] of their patients to the “stuff that steals away men’s brains.” Nothing so bad as this has been, or can be, said of opium. But opium has another incalculable advantage over alcohol, for the disorders which it occasions are functional only, whereas alcohol causes organic disease—a most important difference surely; for once get the opium-smoker or eater to forgo his luxury, though the wrench may be severe at first, he will shortly be restored to complete health. This, we need not say, is not the case with the confirmed drunkard. He may, indeed, give up his fatal indulgence; but he has planted the seeds of disease in his body, and no art can eradicate them. His very blood has assimilated the “flowing poison,” and the heart is no longer the centre of life, but of death. The dipsomaniac, even if he escape the horrors of a death by delirium tremens, falls a victim to paralysis or heart disease. Happy indeed would it be if our drunkards could be converted into opium-smokers, and the desirability of effecting this has even been pointed out by medical men.[101]

But there is one point in which alcohol is considered very generally to have the distinct advantage over opium. The opponents of the latter say that it is much more seductive in its temptation than alcohol, as well as more tenacious in its grip; in fact, they roundly assert that while the use of alcohol can be forgone, even by a confirmed dipsomaniac, opium grows more and more necessary the longer it is indulged in, and can only be resigned with life itself. Facts seem to have no force with these champions of a theory, or we might remind them that the Emperor Taou Kwang was himself a slave to the habit, but emancipated himself, as many others have done, among them our own De Quincey, for whom the task was so much the harder inasmuch as he drank the poison to the extent, for some time, of 8,000 drops of laudanum a day.[102] A Chinaman, writing to the Times in 1875, says: “I have not yet seen or heard of a case where a confirmed opium-smoker could not reform himself if he had been compelled to leave off his vicious habit by necessity or from determined resolution.” So much for the tenacity of the habit; but we are not disposed to admit even that it is more seductive than alcohol, for have we not Dr. Myers’ opinion that “his experience both in Formosa and in other parts of China would go to support the statement that the use of opium through the medium of the pipe does not, at least up to a certain point, irresistibly and inherently tend to provoke excess, as is very often the case with the stimulants indulged in by foreigners.”

Sufficient evidence has been produced to show that alcohol is productive of far more evil than opium, inasmuch as the former, though beneficial to most people when taken in moderation, yet with others acts as a virulent poison, even in the smallest quantities; while taken in excess its immediate effect is to make the drunkard like a “beast with lower pleasures,” to bring out, in fact, the lower side of our nature, and to incite to deeds of violence and crime; and its certain subsequent result is disease, madness, and death. Opium, however, like alcohol, when taken in moderation is a comfort and a solace to thousands, and, while soothing and relieving the body, acts[103] in such a way on the brain as to quicken the intellectual faculties, and not in the manner of alcohol to deaden them. The opposite effects of opium and alcohol, the one in quickening,[104] the other in deadening the faculties, may be gathered from the fact that the Chinese indulge in the pipe before entering upon business matters, while we reserve our wine till the matter in hand has been fully discussed. At the same time it may be admitted that excessive indulgence in opium impairs the fortune and health, and, like every other self-indulgence, weakens the moral nature of the victims to its “bewitching influence.” This being so, the unprejudiced observer will ask with wonder why those who are so indignant about the opium traffic, do not turn their attention with the same zeal to the suppression of the traffic in spirits at home. The Chinese Emperor was reported to have said, and the sentiment has been extolled to the skies by the anti-opiumists: “I will not consent to derive a revenue from the misery and vice of my people.” The English people, however, are not so fastidious, and our annual revenue from the duty on spirituous liquors is £27,000,000, and on tobacco £8,500,000, while our partiality to alcohol costs us £145,000,000. The Chinese, with a population ten times as great, only spend £42,000,000 on their luxury, opium, and derive a revenue therefrom, in spite of the Emperor’s disclaimer, of more than three millions sterling. India exports to China about 5,300 tons of crude opium, which together with four times the amount of native-grown drug gives 2½ oz. (avoird.) to each individual. We in England, with a population of thirty-three millions, consume 200,000 tons of alcohol, not to mention more than a billion gallons of wine and beer.[105] And the annual mortality resulting from this terrible indulgence in spirituous liquors is 128,000, while the number of habitual drunkards is 600,000;[106] that is, one in every 260 persons dies from over-indulgence in alcohol! What an appaling fact! we might say, echoing Lord Shaftesbury’s words. Terrible as it is, it has been accepted by our countrymen as a deplorable necessity which cannot be altered by any legislative enactments against the importation of alcoholic drinks from abroad. All, or all except a few visionary enthusiasts, have come to see that the only way to check this widespread vice is by bringing the opinion of the people to bear upon it, to drive it out from among the lower classes as it has been driven out from the upper by the force of public example and public opinion. It is obvious that the same reasoning will apply to China[107], and accordingly we find that the drinking of samshoo, a deletrious extract from rice, was common among the people, and all prohibitions were powerless to prevent it till the religious influence of Buddhism was brought to bear upon it and had great success in diminishing the vice; so that samshoo-drinking is now comparatively rare in a great part of China, its place being taken by opium, which is allowed by Buddhist and Mohammedan laws.

But, say the anti-opiumists, if we have not introduced opium into China, we have certainly forced it upon the Chinese when they showed a sincere desire to have none of it; first by a system of armed smuggling; secondly, by open armed intervention in the wars of 1840 and 1857; and thirdly, by the imperious logic of Lord Elgin and others. Now, as to the armed smugglers, the answer is easy. They were armed to resist pirates, who swarm in the bays and creeks so abundant in the Chinese coast-line of 3,500 miles; and by no means, as implied, to fall foul of the Custom House officials. These were always amenable enough, and a recognized bribe paid in due time freed all opium vessels from farther molestation in that quarter. The second assumption, that the wars were opium wars, false as it is in reality when thus stated, is a most plausible one; for opium was certainly the immediate cause of the first war. But it was not the real cause. European ideas of the equality of nations could not be reconciled with the insolent pretensions of the Chinese with regard to all foreigners. This, and much more to the same effect, has already been dwelt upon in the historical survey, and so need not detain us any longer now. We may, however, add that no mention whatever of opium was made in the Nankin Treaty, so that the edicts against the drug remained in force, though they were no more regarded now than before the war. And this was certainly not because the Chinese were exhausted by the war and afraid of a fresh conflict with the English. It is doubtful whether the authorities at Pekin really considered themselves beaten at all, and the reason why their edicts were disregarded was not that defeat had weakened the hands of the executive, but, as before, simply the corruption of the officials, and the imperious desire of the people for the drug. With regard to the second war, it is absurd to call that an opium war. Opium had nothing to do with its commencement, renewal, or end; nor was it even alluded to in the Treaty of Tientsin. It was only some months after the ratification of that treaty that in arranging the tariff of imports the Chinese Commissioner himself suggested that opium should pay a fixed tariff and be admitted as a legal import. No doubt Lord Elgin, and here he was seconded by the American Minister, as Sir Henry Pottinger and Sir J. Davis before the war, pointed out to the Chinese how eminently desirable it was that this “stone of offence” should be removed, but in reality it was the persuasive logic of facts which induced the Chinese to propose the legalization of the import. This second war, like the former one, was undertaken by the English[108] to exact compensation for injury to British subjects, and to make the Chinese understand that foreign nations were entitled to, and would exact fair and respectful usage. The French waged war to avenge the murder of a missionary, M. Chapdelaine, in 1856, so that we may in strict justice call this a missionary war; and certainly that part of the Treaty of Tientsin which may be said to have been wrung from the Chinese most against their wills is that which gives missionaries—Protestant as well as Roman Catholic—an entrance into any part of China, and extends to them while there, and to their converts, the protection of their respective Governments.[109]