Note 180 — XV. (continued 2)

It is a coincidence worthy of notice, that simultaneously with the rise of the opium trade with China, the importation of slaves into America began to increase, and that European commerce in these two infamous traffics seemed to be ever increasing and gaining ground in Eastern Asia and in America! At the end of last century the number of slaves in the Southern States of the Union was little greater than that of opium-smokers in China: at present the number of the former is about 4,000,000, and the latter may be put at about the same figure; the latter, slaves of their own intemperate passions,—the former, of the covetousness and cold calculating selfishness of their masters. The opium question and the slave question—these two seem destined to be solved simultaneously!