Read Ebook: The Truth about Opium Being a Refutation of the Fallacies of the Anti-Opium Society and a Defence of the Indo-China Opium Trade by Brereton William H

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Pages 1-49

Hearsay testimony upon which charges of the Anti-Opium Society founded explained.--Chinese a polite people and treat Missionaries courteously, but despise Christianity, and will not tell Missionaries the truth about Opium.--Respectable Chinese would become an object of scorn and disgrace to their fellow-countrymen if they embraced Christianity.--Professing Chinese Christians in most cases impostors.--Heathen Chinese as a rule more trustworthy than so-called Christian converts.--Missionary clergymen in China have not the confidence of the Chinese people, and draw their information as to Opium smoking from polluted sources.--Difference between Missionary clergymen in China and the clergymen of all denominations in England as regards knowledge of the people they live amongst.--Missionaries in China wholly responsible for the imposture prevailing in England as to Opium smoking in China.--Although the Chinese are a spirit-drinking people, they never drink to excess.--Drunkenness unknown amongst Chinese.--Chinese-American treaty a sham as regards Opium.--Sir J. H. Pease, M.P., duped by the "bogus" clause as to Opium.--His speech on the Opium question in 1881.--Chinese smoke Opium wherever they go.--As much Opium imported into China now as before the sham treaty.--Opium a luxury which only the well-to-do can freely indulge in.--Explanation of the means by which unfounded statements respecting Opium are propagated.--Apologue by way of example.--Proof of the state of things explained by the apologue furnished by the Rev. Storrs Turner and Dr. Ayres.--First fallacy, that the poppy is not indigenous to China, but has been recently introduced there, presumably by British agency, and the second fallacy, that Opium smoking in China is now and always has been confined to a small per-centage of the population, but which, owing to the importation into the country of Indian Opium, is rapidly increasing, refuted and the truth fully stated.--Testimony of Mr. W. Donald Spence and Mr. E. Colborne Baber, and Sir Rutherford Alcock.

Pages 50-100

Third and fifth fallacies upon which the members of the Anti-Opium Society and its supporters are misled.--Opium eating and Opium smoking contrasted with spirit drinking.--Valuable curative properties of Opium.--Spirit drinking produces organic and incurable diseases, is a fruitful cause of insanity, and leads to ruin and destruction.--The like effects admittedly not due to Opium.--Opium eating and Opium smoking totally distinct.-- Whatever the effects of Opium eating, Opium smoking perfectly innocuous.-- Anti-Opium advocates cunningly try to mix the two together.--Disingenuous conduct in this respect of the Rev. Storrs Turner--Mr. Turner so great an enthusiast as not to be able to see the difference.--Testimony of Dr. Eatwell as to the use of Opium.--Difference between Opium eating and Opium smoking explained in the case of tobacco smoking.--Tobacco taken internally a deadly poison, harmless when smoked.--Medical testimony as to the poisonous quality of tobacco and its alkaloid, nicotine.--Opium a valuable medicine, without any known substitute.--Anti-Tobacco Smoking Society, once formed the same as the Anti-Opium Society, put down by the common sense of the community, the like fate awaits the Anti-Opium Society.--Testimony of Dr. Sir George Birdwood, Surgeon-General Moore, Sir Benjamin Brodie, Dr. Ayres, and W. Brend, M.R.C.S., as to Opium.--Small quantity of Indian Opium imported into China.--Enormous amount of spirits consumed in the United Kingdom.--Anti-Opium Society blind to the latter, energetic as to the former a purely sentimental grievance.--Fallacy of Anti-Opium Society that supply creates demand refuted and exposed.-- Remaining fallacies refuted.--Effects of suppression of Indo-China Opium trade.--Missionaries detested in China.--Indian Opium welcomed.--Saying of Prince Kung.--Treaty of Tientsin explained and defended.--Erroneous notions of the Protestant Missionaries as to that treaty.--Abused by Missionaries, yet the treaty the Missionaries only charter.--Testimony of H. N. Lay and Lawrence Olyphant.--Spurious copy of De Quincey's "Confessions of an Opium Eater," published by Anti-Opium people.-- Testimony of Don Sinibaldo de Mas, formerly Spanish Minister in China, a powerful defence of the Indo-China Opium trade.--Policy of the Indian Government as regards Opium wisest and best.--Alleged proposal of Lord Lawrence to alter that policy.--Fallacy involved in such proposal exposed.--Abrogation of Indo-Opium trade injurious if not destructive to the spread of the Gospel in China.--False charge of smuggling by British merchants in China exposed and refuted.--Un-English policy of the Anti-Opium Society exposed.--Recapitulation.--Benevolence of the British public.--Necessity for seeing that it is not diverted into worthless channels.--Anti-Opium Society, mischievous, presenting a melancholy record of energies wasted, talents misapplied, wealth uselessly squandered, charity perverted, and philanthropy run mad.--Society should be dissolved and its funds transferred to Missionaries.--Missionaries should not mix up Christianity and Opium.--Missionaries defended and encouraged.

Pages 101-174

Official Letter of Francis Bulkeley Johnson, Esq., of the firm of Jardine, Matheson & Co., of Hong Kong and China, Chairman of the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce, to Charles Magniac, Esq., M.P., the President of the London Chamber of Commerce, respecting the charge of smuggling against the British merchants in China, and giving particulars of the Indo-China Opium trade.

Pages 177-183

THE TRUTH ABOUT OPIUM.

I may now at the outset assure you that I do not give expression to my views in the interests of the merchants of China, whether native or foreign, or on behalf of any party whatsoever; nor do I come before you with any personal object, because neither directly nor indirectly have I any pecuniary or personal concern in the opium question, nor, indeed, in any commercial matter in Hong Kong or China. I simply find that unfounded delusions have taken possession of the public mind upon the subject, which have had most mischievous consequences, and are still working much evil. These I wish to dispel, if I can. Furthermore, I have delivered and published these lectures at my own cost, unaided by any other person, so, I think, under these circumstances, that I have some right to be regarded as an impartial witness.

I am aware of no subject, involving only simple matters of fact, and outside the region of party politics, upon which so much discussion has been expended, and about which such widely different opinions are prevalent, as this opium question. On the one side, it is said that, for selfish purposes, we have forced and are still forcing opium upon the people of China; that the Indian Government, with the acquiescence and support of the Imperial Government, cultivates the drug for the purpose of adding seven or eight millions sterling to its revenue, and, with full knowledge of its alleged baneful consequences to the natives of China, exports it to that country. A further charge, moreover, is brought against the British merchants, that they participate in this trade for gain, or, as it is put by the Rev. Mr. Storrs Turner, formerly a missionary clergyman at Hong Kong, but now and for many years the active and energetic Secretary of the Anti-Opium Society, to enable them to make "princely fortunes." That is the favourite expression of Mr. Turner, who finds, no doubt, that it takes with certain small sections of the public, readier to believe evil of their own countrymen than of the people of other countries, under the belief, perhaps, that in doing so they best display the purity and disinterestedness of their conduct.

The Anti-Opium Society and its supporters assert as an incontestable fact that opium smoking is fatal, not only to the body but to the soul; meaning, I suppose, that the custom is destructive to the physical, and demoralising to the moral nature of its votaries, and that the opium traffic is regarded by the people of China with such horror that it prevents the natives from receiving the Gospel from those who help to supply them with this drug, viz., the British people. It is alleged that the use of opium demoralises the Chinese, that it ruins and saps the manhood of the whole nation, with a host of concomitant evils, to which I shall by and by refer more particularly, the whole involving the utmost turpitude, the greatest guilt and the worst depravity on the part of England and the English Government, and still more especially on that of the Indian Government and the British merchants in China. Here I may observe, in passing, that if the objection to opium on the part of the Chinese is so strong, it is rather remarkable that they should not only greedily purchase all the Indian opium we can send them, but cultivate the drug to an enormous extent in their own country. The Anti-Opium Society and its supporters further say that opium culture and opium smoking are of comparatively recent origin in China; and although they do not directly allege that we have introduced those practices, there is throughout all their writings and speeches "a fond desire, a pleasing hope" that the readers or hearers of their books and speeches will form that opinion for themselves. I should tell you that those who hold directly contrary views consist of all the British residents in China, with the exception of some of the Protestant missionaries , comprising the British merchants, their numerous assistants , professional men, traders of all classes, and also all the other foreign merchants and residents in the country--German, American, and others, for there are many nationalities to be met with in China, who with the British form one harmonious community.

Take all these men, differing in nationality and religious persuasions as they do, and I venture to say that you will not find one per cent. of them who will not tell you that the views put forward by these missionaries and the Anti-Opium Society are utterly preposterous, false, and unreal--who will not declare that opium smoking in China is a harmless if not an absolutely beneficial practice; that it produces no decadence in mind or body, and that the allegations as to its demoralising effects are simply untrue. Those who have taken a special interest in the subject know that the poppy is indigenous to China, as it is to the rest of Asia, that opium smoking is and has been a universal custom throughout China, probably for more than a thousand years; that this custom is not confined to a few, but is general amongst the adult male population; limited only, in fact, by the means of procuring the drug. That is my experience also; it is corroborated by others, and therefore I may assert it as a fact. I have used the adjective "Protestant" because, although there are a great number of Roman Catholic and some Greek missionaries in China, no complaint against the opium trade has ever to my knowledge been made by one of these missionaries.

Now, why is this belief so prevalent? Because those foreign residents daily mix with the Chinese, know their habits and customs, hear them talk, sell to them, and buy from them, and being aware, as they all are, of the controversy going on here about opium, and the strenuous efforts that are being made in this country to prevent the Indian Government from allowing opium to be imported into China, they take a greater interest in the subject, and examine the question more carefully than they otherwise might. They, I say, being on the ground and knowing the very people who smoke opium and who have smoked it for years, without injury or decay to their bodily or mental health, have irresistibly come to the same conclusion as I have. For myself, I may say that I have taken a very great interest in the subject, particularly during the past five or six years. I have tried in vain to find out those pitiable victims of opium smoking who have been so much spoken of in books, in newspapers, and on public platforms. Day after day I have gone through the most populous parts of Hong Kong, which is a large city, having about one hundred and fifty thousand Chinese inhabitants--in both the wealthiest and poorest quarters. I have daily had in my office Chinese of all classes, seeing them, speaking to them, interrogating them upon different subjects, and I have never found amongst them any of these miserable victims to opium smoking. On the contrary, more acute, knowing, and intelligent people than these very opium smokers I have rarely met with.

Now, Hong Kong may be said to be, and is, in fact, the headquarters in China of the opium trade. It is there that all the opium coming from India and Persia is first brought. It is, in fact, the entrep?t or dep?t from which all other parts of China are supplied with the drug. Furthermore, it is the port whence "prepared opium," the condition in which the drug is smoked, is mostly manufactured and exported to the Chinese in all other parts of the world, for wherever he goes, the Chinaman, if he can afford it, must have his opium-pipe. Moreover, the Chinese of Hong Kong get much better wages and make larger profits in their trades and businesses than they could obtain in their own country; and can, therefore, better afford to enjoy the luxury of the pipe than their own countrymen in China. So that if opium smoking produced the evil consequences alleged, Hong Kong is unquestionably the place where those consequences would be found in their fullest force. They are not to be found there in the slightest degree. One fact is worth a thousand theories, and this I give you as one which I challenge Mr. Storrs Turner or any other advocate of the Anti-Opium Society to disprove. I will now show you how I am corroborated. I have a witness on the subject whose testimony is simply irrefragable. Dr. Philip B. C. Ayres, the learned and efficient Colonial Surgeon, and Inspector of Hospitals of Hong Kong, confirms my statement in the strongest possible manner. That gentleman has held the important office I have mentioned for about ten years. Previous to taking up his appointment at Hong Kong he had been on the Medical Staff of India, where he had made opium and opium eating--for the drug is not smoked in India--a special study. In Hong Kong he has had abundant opportunities of studying the effects of opium smoking and making himself thoroughly acquainted with the wonderful drug, such opportunities, indeed, as few other medical men have ever had. It is part of his daily duties to inspect the Civil Hospital of Hong Kong,--a splendid institution open to all nationalities, and conducted by able medical men,--the Gaol, the Chinese Hospital, called the Tung Wah, which is under exclusive Chinese management, and all other medical institutions in the Colony. Thus a wide field of observation is presented to him. I may add here that Dr. Ayres is the only European physician who has succeeded in removing the prejudice among the better class of the Chinese against European doctors and in obtaining a large native practice. This fact speaks volumes as to his general abilities as well as to his professional attainments and his means of acquainting himself with the social life of the Chinese. In his annual Report presented to the Government of Hong Kong for the year 1881, a copy of which, I believe, is now, or ought to be, in the pigeon-holes of the Colonial Office in Downing Street, there is the following passage:--

Let Mr. Storrs Turner refute this, if he can. If he cannot, what becomes of his book published in 1876, which may be called the gospel of the Anti-Opium Society, with which I shall make you better acquainted by and by. And what should become of the Anti-Opium Society itself, which has wasted on its chimerical projects hundreds of thousands of pounds--the contributions of the benevolent British public, which might have been spent in alleviating the misery and distress in this vast metropolis, or been otherwise usefully applied.

The Government of Hong Kong, for the purposes of revenue, has farmed out the privilege or monopoly of preparing this opium and selling it within the colony, and I dare say you will be surprised to hear that the amount paid by the present opium monopolist for the privilege amounts to about forty thousand pounds sterling a year. To elucidate this, I should tell you, that opium as imported from India, Persia, and other places is in a crude or unprepared state. In this condition it is made up in hard round balls, each about the size of a Dutch cheese, but darker in colour. To render it fit for smoking it has to be stripped of its outer covering, shredded, and boiled with water until it becomes a semi-fluid glutinous substance resembling treacle in colour and consistence. In this state it is known as "prepared opium." As such it is put up into small tins or canisters, hermetically sealed, so that it can be exported to any part of the world. Now, I have been the professional adviser of the opium farmer for at least ten years, and from him and his assistants I have had excellent opportunities of learning the truth about opium. I have thus been able to get behind the scenes, and so have had such opportunities of acquainting myself with the subject as few other Europeans have possessed. I knew the late opium farmer, whom I might call a personal friend, intimately from the time of my first arrival in China. When I call him the opium farmer I mean the ostensible one, for the opium monopoly has always, in fact, been held by a syndicate. My friend was the principal in whose name the license was made out, and who dealt with the wholesale merchants, carried on all arrangements with the Government of the Colony, and chiefly managed the prepared opium business. I knew him so intimately and had so many professional dealings with him, irrespective of opium, that I had constant opportunities of becoming acquainted with all the mysteries of the opium trade. Now the conclusion to which my own personal experience has led me I have told you of before, and I have never met anyone who has lived in China, save the missionaries, whose experience differed from mine. I have tried to find the victims of the so-called dreadful drug, but I have never yet succeeded.

Many people in this country, I dare say, owing to the false and exaggerated stories which have been disseminated by the advocates of the Anti-Opium Society, think that if they went to Hong Kong they would see swarms of wretched creatures, wan and wasted, leaning upon crutches, the victims of opium smoking. If they went to the colony they would be greatly disappointed, for no such people are to be met with. On the contrary, all the Chinese they would see there are strong, healthy, intelligent-looking people, and, mark my words, well able to take care of themselves. I don't suppose there were five per cent. of my Chinese clients who did not, to a greater or less extent, smoke opium. I have known numbers, certainly not less than five or six hundred persons in all, who have smoked opium from their earliest days--young men, middle-aged men, and men of advanced years, who have been opium smokers all their lives, some of them probably excessive smokers, but I have never observed any symptoms of decay in one of them. I recall to mind one old man in particular, whom I remember for more than fifteen years; he is now alive and well; when I last saw him, about two years ago, he was looking as healthy and strong as he was ten years before. He is not only in good bodily health, but of most extraordinary intellectual vigour, one of the most crafty old gentlemen, indeed, that I have ever met; no keener man of business you could find, or one who would try harder to get the better of you if he could. The only signs of opium smoking about him are his discoloured teeth, by which an excessive smoker can always be detected, for immoderate opium smoking has the same effect, though in a less degree, as the similar use of tobacco, the excessive smoking of which, as I shall by and by show you, is the more injurious practice of the two. The Chinese, as a rule, have extremely white teeth--the effect, perhaps, of their simple diet, and their generally abstemious habits. They are proud of their teeth, which they brush two or three times a day, so that there is no difficulty in distinguishing heavy smokers from those who smoke in moderation. It is easy to compare the one with the other, and I may state that although the former be not often met with, he will be found to be not a whit inferior to the other in wit or sharpness. The old gentleman I have referred to, like many others of his countrymen, will settle himself down of an evening, when the business of the day is over, and enjoy his opium pipe for two or three hours at a stretch, yet, notwithstanding this terrible excess, as the Anti-Opium people would say, he continues strong and well. Nay, more, he has two sons of middle age, healthy, active men, who indulge in the pipe quite as regularly as their aged father. I have known many others like these men, but have never seen or heard of any weakness or decay arising from the practice.

It must be borne in mind that the empire of China comprises eighteen provinces, quite large enough to form eighteen separate kingdoms. I am speaking now of China Proper, and am leaving out Thibet, Mongolia, and Manchuria, immense countries to the West, North-West, and North of China, and also the vast possessions of China in Central Asia, all forming part of that great empire. Many of these eighteen provinces are larger than Great Britain; one of them is equal in extent to France. Although there is in one sense a language common to the whole country, yet not only has each province a dialect of its own, different from that of the others, but it has, so to speak, innumerable sub-dialects. Dialect, perhaps, is hardly the correct word; it is more than a dialect, for not only each province, but each district or county, has a dialect, differing so essentially from each other that the people of one province, or one district, can, in most instances, no more make themselves colloquially understood by those of another than a Frenchman could make himself intelligible to an Englishman, if neither knew the language of the other. You will often find people living in villages not more than fifteen or twenty miles apart who cannot converse with one another. I have seen in my own office a man belonging to the province of Kwang-tung, in the south of China, unable to speak in Chinese to a native of the adjoining province of Fuh-kien. In this case the native villages of these two were not more than ten miles apart, and the only medium of conversation was the barbarous jargon in which Europeans and Chinese carry on their dealings, called "pidgin English"--a species of broken English of the most ridiculous kind. Now, when you take into account that each province differs in language from each other--for that is really what the case practically comes to--that they have separate dialects in each province, and also, to a certain extent, different customs and certain prejudices, I ask you, does it not appear a gigantic, if not an impossible, task for England, a small and distant country, to be able to demoralize, debase, and corrupt the people of each of these eighteen provinces? Yet that is really the allegation of the Anti-Opium Society against their own country, this small and distant England!

I have said that there are customs peculiar to each of these provinces, but there are others common to all; one of them is opium smoking; another, I am sorry to say, is hatred and contempt of foreigners. They one and all agree in regarding foreigners as an inferior race, whose customs, language, and religion they despise. Among the common people every foreigner, of whatsoever nationality, is called "Fan-Qui," or "foreign devil." The designation of foreigners amongst the better classes of people is "outer barbarian." No better instance could I give you than this to show the strong prejudice held by the whole nation against foreigners. "Fan-Qui" is still the term used by the lower orders to denote foreigners, even in the British colony of Hong Kong. To remedy this state of things, at the time of the making of the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858 , Lord Elgin, the author of the treaty, had very properly a stipulation inserted that the term "outer barbarian" should no longer be applied to British subjects. Now, when you take into account that not only are these three hundred and sixty millions of people spread over an enormous empire, having a prejudice common to all parts alike against foreigners, as well as their own prejudices against each other, forming eighteen separate provinces or kingdoms, speaking different languages, is it reasonable to suppose that they would, so to speak, simultaneously adopt the practice of opium smoking when introduced by the despised foreigner? If these people still despise our customs, as they do our religion, as they do everything, in fact, belonging to us, how can it be said that we are forcing this foreign drug upon them to their destruction?

I have already mentioned that the custom of opium smoking is common to all the people of these eighteen provinces. Whether they live in the valleys or on the hills they smoke opium. Now Mr. Turner is a great enemy of opium smoking; he is its determined opponent, and I do not think I wrong him--I certainly do not mean to do so--when I describe him as a person strongly prejudiced against the practice. The best, the wisest, and ablest among us have prejudices, and it is casting no stigma upon that gentleman to say that he has his. When I make you better acquainted with his book, which I shall soon do, you will, I think, agree with me on this point. When people have those strong prepossessions they are prone not to judge facts fairly; they see things, in short, through a false medium. That which to an ordinary person appears plain and clear enough, to one under the influence of prejudice stands out in different colours, and is passed over as untrue or misleading; sometimes, however, the plain truth will leak out, in spite of prejudice. It is laid down by legal text writers that truth is natural to the human mind, that the first impulse of a man if interrogated upon a point is to tell the truth, and that it is only when he has had time to consider, that he is inclined to swerve from it. Now in this book of Mr. Turner's, at p. 13, he confirms my statement. This is what he says. I need not read to you the previous part, because the context does not alter the sense of my quotation. He is arguing against the allegation of pro-opium people that opium has a beneficial result in counteracting the effects of malaria and ague, and he says:--

Now that is the testimony of the Rev. Storrs Turner, the most strenuous and, as I believe, the ablest advocate against the Indo-China opium trade. But then he adds:--

But nowhere do they all smoke opium. The smokers are but a per-centage greater or smaller in any place.

Well, nobody ever said they all did smoke opium. Females, as a rule, do not smoke, and children don't smoke. It is only the grown men, and those who can afford to buy the drug, who smoke it. China, for its extent and its vast and industrious population, is still a poor country. Although its natural resources are considerable, the great bulk of the people are in poor circumstances. It is only those above the very poor who can afford to smoke opium occasionally, and only well-to-do people who are able to do so habitually. Opium smoking is, in fact, a luxury in which, every Chinaman who can afford it indulges more or less, just as English people who have sufficient means drink tea, wine, and beer, or smoke tobacco. The effects of opium smoking are no more injurious than are those articles, in daily use in England, nor is its use more enslaving. On the contrary, from my own observation, I feel persuaded that those who habitually drink wine or spirits are far more liable to abuse and become enslaved to the habit than the smoker of opium. This, as you are now aware, is confirmed by the great authority of Dr. Ayres. Yet Mr. Storrs Turner, in the face of that most damaging admission, and his disciples would have the British public believe that by supplying the Chinese with a small quantity of opium, which is used and grown largely in almost every province, district, and village of China, we are demoralizing and degrading the whole people. Now, if this practice of opium smoking has existed, and does exist, throughout these eighteen provinces, over this large and mighty empire, as Mr. Storrs Turner admits, can it be urged for a moment that England has had anything to do with it more than that Englishmen, in common with other foreigners, have imported for the last forty or forty-five years a quantity of the drug very much less than that actually grown in China itself? I say she has not. I say that opium smoking has existed for a thousand years or more, and that its use by the natives of China is simply limited by the extent of their purchasing power. But how is it that such divergent opinions can exist between Englishmen living in China and certain Englishmen here at home? My answer is, that the former, the English residents in China, derive their knowledge on the subject from actual experience formed from personal intercourse with the natives, from seeing with their own eyes, and hearing with their own ears; whilst people in England obtain their information from hearsay only. Hearsay testimony is their sole guide; and, as I shall show you by and by, this hearsay evidence is of the worst and most unreliable kind. But still the question remains why this should be so; why is it that among the educated and intelligent people of England, in an age when newspapers are universal, and books of travel cheap and plentiful, that such an extraordinary difference of opinion should exist? I will now give you the explanation of these opposite views.

The first is this:--China is ten thousand miles away. If that country were as near to us as the Continent of Europe, to which it is equal in extent, the people of England, including all these Anti-Opium advocates, would be of the same mind as their countrymen in China. The field of the imposture would then be so close to us that the delusion could no longer be sustained--if, indeed, under such circumstances it could ever have existence--it would be seen through at once. If it were sought to prove that we were corrupting and demoralizing the whole of the natives of the Continent by selling them spirits, beer, or opium, and if the persons who did so were to pity, patronize, and caress those people as if they were an inferior race, and but semi-civilized, as the anti-opium people do with the Chinese,--the persons who attempted to act in such an extraordinary manner would be scoffed at as visionaries, if not downright fools; yet the parallel is complete. Indeed, taking into account the existing prejudices of the Chinese against foreigners, the sound sense of the people of China and their frugal and abstemious habits, there should be less difficulty in effecting such wonderful results in Europe than in China. Perhaps, however, the best illustration of this is that afforded by the present agitation here in England, under the leadership of Sir Wilfrid Lawson against the liquor traffic. The evils of intemperance, unlike those alleged against opium smoking, are real evils, and are admitted to be so by all. Everyone is agreed upon this point; yet a large portion of our revenue, amounting to some twenty-six millions sterling, is derived from taxes upon spirits, wine, and beer, the abuse of which produces these evils. Sir Wilfrid Lawson is as determined a foe to the Indo-China opium trade as he is to the liquor traffic. Why does he not apply the same rule to the one as to the other? Why does he ask the Government to forego the eight millions derived from opium in India, and not demand the abrogation of these spirit, wine, and beer duties which are derived from so wicked a source here in England? He and his Anti-Opium friends would, if they could, prohibit the cultivation and exportation of opium in India, why do not he and his fellow teetotallers call upon the country to prohibit the manufacture of alcoholic liquors? Some few months ago an Anti-Opium meeting took place at, I think, Newcastle, attended by Sir Wilfrid Lawson. In the course of a facetious speech the Honourable Baronet, becoming serious, made quite light of this ridiculously small sum of eight millions sterling derived from the opium trade, and declared that he who did not believe that a substitute for it could be found was a "moral atheist"--whatever that may mean. Why does he not call upon the Government to forego the sum of twenty-six millions derived from alcohol, which is not more to England, if indeed so much, as the eight millions are to India, and declare that any person who said we could not find a substitute was a "moral atheist"? I answer thus: because the one concerns matters here at home with which he and the rest of the public are well acquainted, whilst the other relates to affairs ten thousand miles away, about which he and they know little or nothing. Sir Wilfrid and his followers very well know that if they advocated the abolition of the duties on spirits, wine, and beer, they would be simply scoffed at by the public as fools and visionaries, and that, on the other hand, if they required all our distilleries and breweries and all public-houses to be closed, they would be treated as downright lunatics; but it is quite different as regards India and China. With matters in those countries these enthusiastic gentlemen can and do disport themselves very much as they please, oblivious to the plainest facts.

I have before slightly touched upon the charges brought against the British Government and the British nation respecting opium. I will formulate them more particularly now; as the subject cannot, I think, be thoroughly understood unless I do so. I have read Mr. Storrs Turner's book and his reply to Sir R. Alcock, very carefully; I have read anti-opium speeches delivered in London, Manchester, Leeds, and London upon the subject; they all come to the same thing--one is a repetition of the other. As I understand the matter, this is what the charges of the Anti-Opium Society amount to. It is alleged that opium smoking, once commenced, cannot be laid aside, that it poisons the blood, reduces the nervous and muscular powers, so that strong men under the use of opium speedily become debilitated and unfit for labour; that opium smoking paralyses the mind as well as the body, and produces imbecility, or at least mental weakness; that it so demoralises the people using it, that it converts honest and industrious men from being useful members of society into lazy, dishonest scoundrels; that it saps the manhood and preys like a cankerworm upon the vitals of the Chinese people, injuring the commonwealth and threatening even the existence of the nation if the custom of opium smoking be not stopped, which, it is alleged, can be effected only by the supply of opium from India being discontinued. It is urged, in fact, that the sale of Indian opium to the Chinese is a crime not only against the people of China but against humanity; that much, if not all, of the misery and crime prevalent throughout China are due, either directly or indirectly, to the use of opium; and for all these fearful results England is held responsible. It is further said, that the sale of British opium to the Chinese interferes with legitimate commerce, creating, it is alleged, so much bitterness in the native mind against the English nation, that the Chinese refuse to buy our goods. And, above all, it is contended that the Indo-China opium trade impedes the progress of Christianity, the Chinese refusing to accept the Gospel from a people who have such terrible crimes to answer for as the introduction of Indian opium into China. Since the days of Judge Jeffereys never was there such a terrible indictment, nor one so utterly unfounded as happily it is. In fact, all the objections that in old times were made against negro slavery have been brought forward against this harmless and perfectly justifiable Indo-China opium trade. Indeed Mr. Storrs Turner, in his article in the "Nineteenth Century," coolly places the two in the same category, and modestly proposes that the revenue from opium should be discontinued, and that England should compensate the Indian Government for the loss, just as she did the slave owners. It is astonishing how liberal your political philanthropist can be in the disposal of other people's money. Well, I had always thought that the Government of India, for the past sixty years at least, had been actuated by one great and prominent object--the amelioration, the happiness, and prosperity of the teaming millions committed to its care, and I think so still. I have always believed that the Imperial Government, no matter which party was from time to time in power, had the prosperity, honour, and dignity of their country at heart, and were influenced by a sincere desire towards all the world to be just and fear not, and to diffuse as much happiness as possible amongst our own people, and all other nations and races with whom we became associated all over the world, and I remain of that opinion still. Some fifty years ago we washed the stain of slavery from our hands, performing that great act of justice from a pure sense of duty, without any outside pressure, and also without shedding a drop of blood. This act was unique, for at the time slavery existed in every country, and had so existed for thousands of years. We know that, thirty years later, a similar achievement cost a kindred nation a long and bloody war, and an aggregate money expenditure far exceeding our own national debt--the growth of centuries. That feat of ours showed what the mind and heart of this great nation then were, and I do not believe that we have since degenerated. Since then we have spent many millions of money in sweeping slavery from the seas and in endeavouring to put an end to that accursed evil throughout the world. In doing this our pecuniary loss has been the least of our sacrifices. We have spent more than money. We have lost in the struggle the lives of some of the best and noblest of England's sons. These are acts worthy of a great nation; compared with them the objects of the Anti-Opium Society sink into utter insignificance. The sublime and the ridiculous could not be brought more vividly face to face.

For the last fifty years there has been one feeling predominant in the minds of the people of England, and that is a manly, generous anxiety to protect the weak against the strong all over the world. Yet these foul and untenable charges against England are now spread broadcast by this Society, whose only warrant for doing so are the statements made to them by a handful of fanatical missionary clergymen, whose unfounded and fantastic views are accepted as so much dogma which it would be heresy to doubt. Why, if we were guilty of but half the wickedness attributed to us, it would not require this Anti-Opium Society to cry it down; the nation would rise as one man to crush it for ever. There is not a British merchant in China who would not raise his voice against it, aye, though he was making that princely fortune which Mr. Turner refers to in his book; for let me assure you that your fellow-countrymen in China, who are but sojourners in that land, as they all hope to end their days at home, have as warm a love for their country and as keen a sense of their country's honour and dignity as any set of Englishmen residing here at home, however high their station and great their wealth.

The petition of the undersigned Missionaries of the Gospel in China humbly sheweth:

That the opium traffic is a great evil to China, and that the baneful effects of opium smoking cannot be easily overrated. It enslaves its victim, squanders his substance, destroys his health, weakens his mental powers, lessens his self-esteem, deadens his conscience, unfits him for his duties, and leads to his steady descent, morally, socially, and physically.

That by the insertion in the British Treaty with China of the clause legalizing the trade in opium, and also by the direct connection of the British Government in India with the production of opium for the market, Great Britain is in no small degree rendered responsible for the dire evil opium is working in this country.

That while the clause legalizing the opium traffic remains in the British Treaty, the Chinese Government do not feel free to deal with the evil with the energy and thoroughness the case demands, and declare their inability to check it effectively.

That the opium traffic is the source of much misunderstanding, suspicion, and dislike on the part of the Chinese towards foreigners, and especially towards the English.

That the opium trade, by the ill name it has given to foreign commerce, and by the heavy drain of silver it occasions, amounting, at present, to about thirteen million pounds sterling annually, has greatly retarded trade in foreign manufactures, and general commerce must continue to suffer while the traffic lasts.

That the connection of the British Government with the trade in this pernicious drug excites a prejudice against us as Christian missionaries, and seriously hinders our work. It strikes the people as a glaring inconsistency, that while the British nation offers them the beneficent teaching of the Gospel, it should at the same time bring to their shores, in enormous quantities, a drug which degrades and ruins them.

That the traffic in opium is wholly indefensible on moral grounds, and that the direct connection of a Christian Government with such a trade is deeply to be deplored.

That any doubt as to whether China is able to put a stop to opium production, and the practice of opium smoking in and throughout her dominions should not prevent your Honourable House from performing what is plainly a moral duty.

Your petitioners, therefore, humbly pray that your Honourable House will early consider this question with the utmost care, take measures to remove from the British Treaty with China the clause legalizing the opium trade, and restrict the growth of the poppy in India within the narrowest possible limits.

Your Honourable House will thus leave China free to deal with the gigantic evil which is eating out her strength, and creates hindrance to legitimate commerce and the spread of the Christian religion in this country.

We also implore your Honourable House so to legislate as to prevent opium from becoming as great a scourge to the native races of India and Burmah as it is to the Chinese; for our knowledge of the evil done to the Chinese leads us to feel the most justifiable alarm at the thought that other races should be brought to suffer like them from the curse of opium.

We believe that, in so doing, your Honourable House will receive the blessing of those that are ready to perish, the praise of all good men, and the approval of Almighty God.

And your petitioners will ever pray.

SIR,--I beg to acknowledge receipt of a copy of your circular, dated June 24th, with form of petition to the British House of Commons against the importation of Indian opium, and also to express my sympathy with the spirit and motives that have suggested the petition; but, at the same time, I must also express disapproval of the proposed petition, and disbelief of many of the statements contained therein.

Then, again, I beg to express my hearty dissent from the idea presented in the petition, that the Chinese people or Government are really anxious to remove the abuse of opium. The remedy has always been, as it is now, in their own hands.

Neither do I believe that if the importation of Indian opium ceased at once, the Chinese Government would set about destroying a very fruitful means of revenue. On the contrary, I feel sure that the growth of Chinese opium would be increased forthwith.

I therefore beg to return the petition in its present form, with the suggestion that Christian missionaries had better direct their attention to, and use their influence upon, Chinese.

Ningpo, 15th July.

I now confront Mr. Storrs Turner with another book, which everyone must admit is of greater authority than his. It is a book published towards the close of 1881 by a high official of the Chinese Government, then Mr. but now Sir Robert Hart, G.C.M.G., the Inspector-General of Chinese Customs, a man who knows China and the Chinese better, perhaps, than any living European. That gentleman tells a very different tale about opium to what the Anti-Opium Society has hitherto regaled the world with. This book is an official one, issued from the Statistical Department of the Inspector-General of Chinese Customs at Shanghai for the use and guidance of the Chinese Government. It stands upon a very different footing to the volume published by Mr. Turner, the paid secretary and strenuous advocate of the Anti-Opium Society. Sir Robert Hart has entire control over the revenue of China as far as regards foreign trade. At every treaty port open to foreign vessels there is a foreign Commissioner of Customs, and Sir Robert Hart is the supreme head of these commissioners. He is a man deservedly trusted and respected by the Chinese Government; a man of learning and talents, and I need hardly add of the very highest character, and, I believe, he is one of the most accomplished Chinese scholars that could be found. He says that opium has been grown in China from a remote period, and was smoked there before a particle of foreign opium ever came into the country. This is the passage from his--the now famous yellow-book:--

So much for Mr. Storrs Turner's bold assertion that it is only recently that opium has been cultivated in China; the obvious inference which he wished the reader to draw from it being that it was the importation of the Indian drug into China that induced the natives to plant opium there. Now, with respect to that most unfounded charge of the Chinese disliking the English for introducing opium into their country, and British commerce declining in consequence, I assure you that all that is simply moonshine. These statements are not merely false assumptions, they are simply untrue. No one who has had any experience of China and its people, does not know perfectly well, that of the whole foreign trade with China the British do at least four-fifths; not only have we the lion's share of the trade, but it is an unquestionable fact that of all the nations who have made treaties and had dealings with China, the British are and have been for many years the most respected by the Chinese people. It is, I say, an indisputable fact, that notwithstanding all our past troubles about smuggling and our wars with China, which Mr. Turner is so fond of dilating upon, that at this day, by high and low, rich and poor, from the mandarin to the humble coolie, England is held in higher regard than any other nation. If trade with China has in any way declined, the fact is traceable to other and different causes, which it is not my province to enter upon.

It is not very long since the Governor of Canton paid a visit to the Governor of Hong Kong; such an act of courtesy to Her Majesty's representative on the part of so great a Chinese magnate was until then, I believe, unprecedented. The constant exclamation of the great mandarin as he was being driven through the streets of Hong Kong was--"What a wonderful place! What a wonderful place!" in allusion to the fine buildings, the wide and clean streets,--a strong contrast to those of Canton--and the dense and busy population around him. And yet more recently, that is during the summer of 1882, a greater personage still paid an official visit to the Hon. W. H. Marsh, who during the absence of Sir George Bowen, the Governor, worthily administers the affairs of the colony--I refer to the present viceroy of the provinces of Kwantung and Kwangsi, commonly called the "two Kwangs," an official only next in importance to His Excellency Li Hung Chang, the Governor of Petchili. Do you think we should have such a state of things if we were demoralizing and ruining the people of China, as is alleged by the Anti-Opium Society, or if, indeed, the Chinese people or Government had any real grievance against us.

Upon this point I cannot refrain from mentioning an incident that occurred soon after I arrived in China. A respectable Chinaman asked me to prepare his will. He gave me for the purpose, written instructions in Chinese characters, which I had translated. On reading the translation I found his instructions very clearly drawn up, but what was gratifying to me, and what is pertinent to my subject, was the following passage, with which he commenced them:--"Having," said he, "under the just and merciful laws administered by the English Government of Hong Kong, amassed in commerce considerable wealth, I now, feeling myself in failing health, wish to make a distribution of the same." There are thousands like that Chinaman in Hong Kong, and also in Shanghai, and in all the treaty ports of China. In speaking as this man did, he was only giving expression to the feelings of all his countrymen who have had dealings with the English in China. Are such feelings on the part of these Chinese consistent with the consciousness that we are enriching ourselves by ruining the health and morals of their countrymen, as is most wrongfully put forward by the Anti-Opium Society and its allies the Protestant missionaries? No; they bespeak perfect confidence, respect, and gratitude towards us; for oppressed and plundered as the Chinese have been by their own officials, there is no other people on the face of the earth who more thoroughly appreciate justice and equity in the administration of public affairs; thus it is that they respect the British rule, which they have found by experience to be the embodiment of both.

Oh, had we some bright little isle of our own In a blue summer ocean far off alone, Where a leaf never dies, midst the still blooming bowers, And the bee banquets on through a whole year of flowers.

He little thought that on that very site there would soon be many thousands of houses, some of them palatial buildings, including many Christian churches and some heathen temples, for liberty of conscience reigns there supreme; with a Chinese population of over one hundred and fifty thousand. These people are all doing well. Some of them are wealthy merchants; many of them are shop-keepers; others are artificers; and a very large number of them are labourers or coolies. There is no pauperism in the colony. The people there are all well-to-do, or able to live comfortably, and, what is more, they are all happy and contented. A comparatively small body of police preserves the peace of the colony; for, thanks to a succession of wise and able governors, local crime has been reduced to a minimum; serious offences are very rare amongst the regular inhabitants. It is the criminal classes from the mainland which really give trouble, for Hong Kong labours under the disadvantage of being close to two large cities on the Pearl River--Canton and Fatchan, notorious for piratical and other criminal classes. You might send a child from one end of the town to the other without fear of molestation. Indeed, the natives themselves are the very best police; for, take the Chinese all round, they are the most orderly and law-abiding people in the world. They respect the British Government as much as the British people do themselves. They bring their families to Hong Kong, settle down there, and make themselves perfectly at home, finding more security and happiness there than they ever could attain in their own country; because in Hong Kong there is and has always been perfect equality before the law for every man, irrespective of race, colour, or nationality. The life and property of every man there is secure. This is not the case in China.

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