The Rise and Progress of British Opium Smuggling: The Illegality of the East ...

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THE

RISE AND PEOORESS

OP

BRITISH OPIUM SMUGGLING:

THE

ILLEGALITY OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY'S
MONOPOLY OF THE DRUG;

AND

ITS INJURIOUS EFFECTS UPON INDIA, CHINA,

AND THE COMMEECE OF GREAT BRITAIN.

ADDRESSED TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE
EARL OF SHAFTESBURY.

MAJOR-GENERAL R." ALHIx^ANDrS,

W ,_ ^/ > A ^^M

MADRAS ARMT. . ' '-v^ ^ /

THIRD EDITION REVISED AND ENhAl^l^ED. y *

LONDON:
JUDD AND GLASS, 21 PATERNOSTER ROW,

AND AT THE OFFICES OF THE SOCIETY FOB '' ST7PPEESSIKG OPIUM
SMUGGLINO,'' 13 BEDFOBD BOW, HOLBOBK.

1856.

LONDON:

JTJDD & GLASS, PEINTEBS,

GHAT'S INN EOAD.

b

1

6'j>

A6~7

CONTENTS.

1. On the InstitutioE of the Opium Monopoly, and its Effects upon

India .....

2. Else and Consequences of Smuggling in China

3. Effects upon the Commerce of Great Britain and China

4. Testimonies against the Contraband Trade .

5. Illegality of the Opium Monopoly in India, and Suggestions for its

Suppression ....

1

21
39
55

71

y

ivi374638

LETTER I.

THE INSTITUTION OF THE OPIUM MONOPOLY, AND ITS
EFFECTS UPON INDIA.

My Lord^

More than a year has elapsed since a
few gentlemen met in your Lordship's presence, to
consider the representations which have been so fre-
quently and forcibly made, regarding the progress,
extent, and evils of the contraband trade in opium
carried on by British subjects at the principal ports
and along the sea-coast of China.

Manv facts were then stated and authenticated:
but it was felt that information on the subject must be
collected and presented to the public in a manner as
concise as is compatible with a full apprehension of
the injury that is inflicted by means of this illegal
traffic on the population of China, on the commerce of
Great Britain, on the morality and prosperity of the
subjects of both nations, and — though last mentioned,
what is first in importance and paramount to all — on
the spread of true religion and the blessings of civil-
ization that follow in its train.

My Lord, I have no higher ambition in now ven-
turing to address you, than to collate these facts and

2 OPIUM MONOPOLY.

information, with the hope that in so doing, I may be
permitted to submit an humble foundation for mea-
sures which the statesmen and philanthropists of our
country will see fit to adopt, in justice to oiu: national
character, and in compassion to a people comprising
one-third of the family of man. I shall use the pri-
vilege of quoting freely, with or without acknowledg-
ment, and generally verbatim et literatim, whatever I
may find necessary to my purpose of presenting a clear
narrative of facts in the plain language of truth.

Beginning with India, I find that previous to the
year 1 767, the quantity of opium exported from thence
did not exceed 200 chests yearly — the trade was
carried on by the Portuguese in a legal manner, and
the drug, imported from Turkey, was admitted as a
medicine through the Custom-house in China by pay-
ment of a duty equal to 13s. English money on the
lOOlbs. In the year 1773, the East India Company,
acting upon the suggestion of a member of their
- Council in Calcutta, entered upon this traffic and es-
tablished a depot for opium in vessels anchored in a
bay to the south-west of Macao. The trade so con-
ducted does not appear to have been profitable, nor
did opium become a source of revenue to the Com-
pany until, as well as I can trace, about the year 1798,
or 1800 ; it seems that about that period they ceased
to be exporters, and had by fiscal measures secured
a rigidly guarded monopoly of production in India ;
they thus not only relieved themselves from the risks
of commerce, but were better prepared to steer a de-
vious course through the political embarrassments.

L^.J

ITS RISE AND PROGRESS. 3

i^hich it may be presumed, were foreseen as an in-
evitable consequence of forcing upon the xmwilling
government of China an importation, against which re-
monstrances, or resistance by force of arms, have since •
proved equally unavailing. It was part of the astute
policy of the Company, strictly to prohibit the cap-
tains and ofl&cers of their own ships from trading in
the drug, or allowing it to be received on board their
vessels ; they were not to be caMght^agrante delicto,
and it devolved upon diplomacy to answer '' Not
guilty," to nullify the evidence of complicity, and
screen its principal from the responsibility of being an
accessory before the fact : while on the other hand,
in the licenses granted for private ships trading to
China, there is a provision with penalty attached, that
no opium except that which the East India Com-
pany monopolizes shall be taken on board.*

A reference to the code of Regulations for the
Bengal Presidency shows that the first legislative
enactment for restraining illicit trade in opium was .
passed in the year 1 795, and by its preamble, proves
that as the government grasped at monoj)oly, an an-
tagonistic principle devolved itself in the smuggUng,
which had come into existence since the year 1767,
when the commerce, openly carried on by the Por-
tuguese, was legal both in India and China. ^

From the year 1795 imtil the year 1816, succes- '
sive laws were enacted by the government in Bengal,
prohibiting the importation of the drug from the sur-

* Fide Appendix to Report of a Committee of the House of Common
on the trade with China. 1840. Pp. 176—177.

"t OPIUM MONOPOLY.

rounding Independent States ; laying down niles for
the guidance of parties concerned in providing opium
for the government ; repressing the growth in some
provinces, Postering it in others, and passing more
stringent regulations for the repression of an increas-
ing iUicit trade. In the last-named year, these laws
were embodied in Regulation XI IL, and opium legis-
Jation arrived at the state in which it is at the present
day ; codified in an Act containing ninety-eight sec-
tions, sixty-eight of which have dh-ect reference to the
penalties to be inflicted on transgressors of the mono-
poly ; to legal processes peculiar to its circumstances ;
to punishment for frauds, oppression, and perjury ; and
to rewards for informers ; while the other sections
I grant authority to opium agents, and are more gene-
[ rally declaratory and supportive of the system.

If a nation's laws are to be taken as an index to '
the morality and civilization of its people, and to the
state of crime which especially calls for repression, the
whole tenor of this enactment bears testimony to the
evils that have been inflicted upon the population of
India by the growth of the opium monopoly. The zeal
of the loyal subject, the cupidity of the informer, and
the fears of the timid are excited to the utmost, while
the notorious profligacy and oppression of an Indian
pohce are recognized as existing, by penal clauses
which all experience proves to have been hitherto
ineffectual for the protection of the people. In illus-
tration of this, I will -quote some sections of the
above regulation XIII. of 1816, marking in italics the
passages to which I would call particular attention.

LEGISLATION IN SUPPORT OF IT. 5

** Sect. XIV. In the event of tbe cultiyator Ming to deliyer the
full quantity of opium agreed for by him in the manner specified in
Sect. XI. ; if the agent shall suspect or believe the cause of failure to
be in the wilful neglect of the ryot, he shall complain to the zillah, or
city judge, within whose jurisdiction the land of the ryot may be
Situated ; and if it shall be proved to the satisfaction of the judge that
the fulure has been owing to neglect, he is to award that the ryot shall
restore the proportional advance with interest, at the rate of 12 per
cent, per annum. The ryot so failing to fulfil his contract shall like-
wise be liable, at the discretioH of the judge, to a further penalty, not
exceeding the amount of interest, to the payment of which he will be
liable under the above provision." *" ^

Need I remind your Lordship of the world-wide
character of Indian police and informers? and of
what might be the consequences to a helpless ryot if
suspicion or belief should be instilled into the mind of
a man of ordinary capacity or more than ordinary
susceptibility, supported by that false evidence which
it is the curse of India to find everywhere procurable ?
On this subject I need but refer generally to the
Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire
into the question of torture at Madras,

" Sect. XXXn. All zemindars, talookdars, and other proprietors of
lands, whether malguzary or lakheraj, all sudder farmers, and under-
renters of land of every description, all dependent talookdars, all naibs,
gomastahs, and other local agents, all sezawuls, all tehsildars, and
other native officers employed in the collection of revenue and reuts of
lands on the part of the Government or Court of Wards, are hereby
declared accountable for giving the earliest information to the police, or
abkarry darogah, to the magistrates, collectors of revenue, or officers
in charge of the abkarry mehaul, collectors of customs, opium agents,
or their deputies, of all poppy which may be illegally cultivated within
the limits of the estate or feirm held or managed by them.

** Sect. XXXUI. Any landholders, or other descriptions of persons
alove noticed, to whom such responsibility is declared to attach, who

b OPIUM MONOPOLY.

may wilfully or knowingly neglect to give the infonnation hereby
required to the nearest policQ^ or abkarry darogah, the magistrate, the
collector of land revenue, or officer in charge of the abkarry mehaul,
the collector of Government customs, the superintendent of salt
chokies, the opium agent or his deputy assistant, shall, on proof of such
neglect before the collector of the land revenue, or other officer ii>
charge of the abkarry mehaul, be liable to the penalty,* with the
exception of imprisonment, stated in Sect. XXXL; for whatever
quantity of land shall be illegally cultivated with the poppy on their
respective estates or farms, or on the lands under their management,
unless it shall have been so cultivated without their knowledge or
connivance.

" Sect, XXXIV. All native officers of Government, of whatever
description J are hereby strictly enjoined, under pain of dismission from
office and such punishment as shall be specially prescribed, to give
immediate information to the authority under whom they are placed,
of all poppy which may be illegally cultivated within their knowledge."

Is it too much to affirm that such legislation as
this can find no parallel under the British crown?
The legal net is so constructed that there is no escape
for landowner, renter, agent, farmer, or officer of
Government in any of its departments; espionage and
inquisitorial search are evoked and pushed into all the
social relations of the people; neglect is constituted
into positive crime, and may be adduced as a charge
against a cultivator when the seasons or imavoidabie
circumstances have proved adverse to his crops ; there
is a power of '' punishing specially" without definition
or limit ; no allowance is made for an absentee land-
owner or tenant ; ignorance or indiscrimination renders

* i.e. To a fine of twenty sicca rupees per begah for whatever quantity
of land shaU have been so cultivated, and the destruction of the plants
if the opium has not been extracted ; if the opium shall have been extracted
and not seized, then the fine shall be thirty-two sicca rupees ; and in addi-
tion to the above penalties, the offender shall be liable to six months*
imprisonment if the fine is paid, and to a year's if it is not.

LEGISLATION IN SUPPORT OF IT. /

aiiy one liable to the suspicion of knowledge or conni-
vance, which, if not disproved, subjects him to severe
punishment ; and all this train of evil may be set in
motion by police and Abkarry Darogahs and officials,
than whom, the merest tyro in India admmistration can
inform your Lordship, there is not a more false or
corrupt set of beings upon earth.

By Sect. XLV., a person to whom any quantity of
contraband opium may have been given or sold, is
liable to a fine of 500 rupees, at the discretion of the
officer, whose merit with the Goverment is to raise
the opium revenue.

Prohibitions, fines, imprisonments, and confisca-
tions by summary jurisdiction, meet at every turn the
inhabitant of a district in which the growth of poppy
may be legalized ; nor may a person relinquish the
pmrchased privilege of vending opium until, xmder the
provisions of Sect. LXVI., '' he has paid to the col-
lector a sum equal to the daily tax of one month, over
and above the amount payable by him in the ordinary
course, under the engagements contracted with the
collector, or other officer in charge of the Abkarry
Mehaul, up to the date of the resignation of his
license.

The zeal of officials in stimulating the use of opium
is excited by a commission of five per cent on the net
amount reahsed by them on its sale, vide Sect. LXIX.

I must add one more reference to the Regulation
which provides so freely for fines to the amount of,
and exceeding 500 rupees, and imprisonment for even
trivial infractions of its rules. Of all the oppressive

8

OPIUM MONOPOLY.

acts of Indian police; perhaps none is more common
than that of dragging an innocent man from his home
and business, to answer a false accusation at a distant
court. If this very usual tyranny should be inflicted
under the provisions of the Opium Law, the im-
prisoned victim, ''who, after the investigation pre-
scribed by these rules, shall not have been convicted
of the offence with which he stood charged or suspected,
shall be immediately released, and the expense to
which he had been actually subject on account of the
inquiry, shall be paid to him by the collector or other
officer in charge of the Abkarry Mehaul on the part
of Government; should it further appear that the in-
quiry originated in mahce or in motives clearly vex-
atious and unwarranted on the side of the informant,
it shall be competent for the collector or other afore-
said officer to order such informant to discharge the
amount of any diet money which may have been paid
to the witnesses, and to pay to the party aggrieved
such moderate fine, not exceeding twenty rupees, as
may appear reasonable, or to be confined for a period
not exceeding fifteen days."

Here there is no hypothetical legislation against
merely imaginary grievance ; the judge is the officer,
whose sense of public duty is engaged in favour of a
rigid execution of the law under which a man is
arraigned, on possibly no other groxmd than suspicion
without distinct evidence ; if the ^^ suspicion" which is,
legally marked as distinct firom '' a charge," be not
converted into fact, and if the informajit has acted as
informants in such cases too often, and in general do

RESTRICTS FREE TRADE IN INDIA. 9

iict, from '^malicious, vexatious, and unwarranted
motives/' and the almost impossible proof of a motive,
ordisproof of a suspicion has been substantiated, then
the gratification of revenge, or the risk nm for reward,
is to be estimated by the small amount of payment
of diet money to defendant's witnesses (the informant's
evidence being as usual, or in all probability, his
accomplices), and the comparative slight punishment
to which his guilt is amenable.

Opium is manufactured in Malwa, one of what are
termed the Independent States of India ; the Native
Government does not interfere with the cultivation of
the poppy, which the ryots are at liberty to grow as
they do rice, grain, or any other produce ; if, however,
Malwa opium could be brought into the export
market at a merely remunerative price to the grower
and manufacturer, it is obvious that high prices in
Calcutta could not be maintained against competition
in Western India. But as Malwa opium cannot reach
a seaport without passing through the territories of
the East India Company, the paramount power of the
latter secures its own monopoly price, by the simple
protectionist expedient of imposing a transit duty of
400 rupees upon every chest of opium, and the enact-
ment of a law of confiscation of the property, and
heavy penalties of fine against the smuggler, for
whose enterprise such high stimulant is created by
large profits upon his illicit trade ; the transit duty has
gradually been increased from 100 rupees a chest, and
is, of course, Uable to be advanced as the interest of
the East India Company may require.

10 OPIUM MONOPOLY.

In a statistical paper, printed for the Court of
Directors of the East India Company in 1853, the
first words are, '' In Bengal the revenue from opium
is reaUsed by means of a Government monopoly;"
and almost immediately thereupon follow these sen-
tences : — '^ The ordinary consequences of monopoly,
increase of price to the consumer and restriction on
the employment of capital and industry, are not
wanting in the opium system ; the free cultivation of
the poppy would doubtless lead td the larger outlay
of capital, and to greater economy of production." It
is a pity for India, my Lord, that so sound and simple
an axiom in pohtical economy has ever been departed
from, and that now the consequences of such de-
parture from right principle have evolved those evils
which render retrogressive measures imperatively
necessary.

So completely is the production of opium in the
hands of the East India Company, that not a poppy
can be grown in the extent of their vast territories
without either the permission of the Government or
infraction of its laws. In Bengal only is the growth
allowed, and it is there carried on and the opium
collected imder the management of two principal
agencies, at the head of which are officers, who, to
judge from the largeness of their salaries and extent
of their powers, must stand high in the confidence of
the authorities by whom they are appointed. Under
the opium agents is an immense staff of officials,
whose designations would be unintelligible to a mere
European reader, and whose multifarious duties

INJURIOUS EFFCTS UPON THE PEOPLE OiUNDIA. 11

extend from making the advances of money to the
cultivators before the poppy-seed is sown ; watching
its growth and produce within the strictly-defined
boundaries of cultivation ; the delivery of opium at
the appointed places : its inspissation and preparation
for the taste of the Chinese consumers : its formation
into balls, and packages in chests especially adapted
to the convenience of smuggling : and finally to its
conveyance to Calcutta, where it is put up to auction
at the Government sales, and passes from the hands
of the officers of the State into those of the specu-
lators in illicit trade, and the daring contrabandists
who land it in China. "^

Another injury done to India by this monopoly is I
to be found in the poverty of the ryots, by whom the '
rich opium producing lands are cultivated ; to them
the poppy fields yield but a bare subsistence, while
the profit upon opium, which ranges as the diflference
between 250 rupees and from 1200 to 1600 rupees
a chest, goes to the Government, which exchanges
the drug for silver at the auction mart ; if this profit,
or a fair portion of it, was reahsed by the ryots, they
would become capitalists, and consumers of British
manufactures; and if the profit was derived from
sugar, indigo, cotton, or products for which these
richest of all lands are best adapted, there would be
an abundant supply of raw material for the purposes
of reciprocally beneficial commerce between the twa
countries.

There is a fallacy connected with the opium
monopoly and Abkaree system of India, which, while

12 • OPIUM MONOPOLY.

it is allowed to operate, must prove more and more
destructive to the social and commercial prosperity
of the people. As long as revenue is raised from, and
the respectabiUty of legal sanction given to, the prin-
cipal causes of crime and misery ; as long as capital
is invited to be embarked in the sale of ardent spirits,
opium, and intoxicating drugs, under the safe-guard
of Government contracts for monopolies, and pro-
tection of penal laws in their support, so will intox-
ication in its different forms, continue to spread, as it
has spread, among millions, who, before they were
thus demoralized, were to be classed among the most
sober, and generally abstemious people upon earth.
This is not the place to enter upon such a subject in
extenso, nor will I do more than suggest that if the
revenue derived from the Abkaree system and opium
monopoly, was balanced with the expenses of crime,
disease, and idleness, as well as of misdirection of
capital, and loss of productive power consequent
thereupon, there is an appalling amount to be carried
to the account of moral deterioration and material
loss. With strict relevance, however, to the opium
question, let me quote, first, the report of Mr. C. A.
Bruce, Superintendent of the tea-plantation in Assam,
and then the opinions of two other authorities of the
highest order. Mr. Bruce's words are, —

**I might here observe that the British Governmeut would
confer a lasting blessing on the Assamese and the New Settlers,
if immediate and active measures were taken to put down the
cultivation of opium in Assam, and afterwards to stop its importation,
by levying high duties on opium land. If something of this kind is
not done, and done quickly too, the thousands that are about to
emigrate from the plains into Assam will soon be infected with the

INJURIOUS EFFECTS UPON THE PEOPLE OF INDIA* 13

opium mania; that dreadful plague which has depopulated this
beautiful count|y, turned it into a land of wild beasts, with which it
is overrun, and has degenerated the Assamese from a fine race
of people, to the most abject, servile, crafty, and demoralized race
in India. /

"This vile drug has kept, and does now keep, down the
population; the women have fewer children compared with those
of other countries, and the children seldom live to become old men,
but in general die at manhood ; very few old men being seen in this
unfortunate country in comparison with others, Few but those who
have resided long in this unhappy country know the dreadful and
immoral effects which the use of opium produces on the native. He
will steal, sell his property, his children, the mother of his children,
and finally even commit murder for it. Would it not be the highest
of blessings, if our humane and enlightened government would stop
these evils by a single dash of the pen, and save Assam, and all those
who are about to emigrate into it as tea-cultivators, from the dreadful
results attendant on the habitual use of opium ? We should in
the end be richly rewarded, by having a fine healthy race of men
growing up for our plantations, fo fell our forests, to clear the land
from jungle and wild beasts, and to plant and cultivate the luxury of
the world. This can never be effected by the enfeebled opium-eaters
of Assam, who are more effeminate than women. I have dwelt thus
long on the subject, thinking it one of great importance, as it will
affect our future prospects with regard to tea ; also from a wbh
to benefit this people, and save those who are coming here from
catching the plague, by our using timely means of prevention." ^^

This official report receives confirmation from a
letter received from a gentleman also holding an
official situation under the East India Company in
Assam. His allusion being only casual^ is the more
striking : —

** The cultivation of opium is free in Assam ; the fearful results
from its use, which every day present themselves to notice, are
very painful to witness."

Mr. Henry St. George Tucker, Deputy-Chairman

14 OPIUM MONOPOLY.

of the East India Company, protested against the
whole of the traffic, in a minute of dissent dated
October 1839, and has left on record, that,

" By promoting the growth of the poppy throughout central India,
as we have done, we become accessory to the probable extension of a
pernicious habit among a race of men whose well-being ought never
to be an object of indifference to us."

And the late Sir Stamford Raffles thus wrote of
the evil, which has fearfully increased since his
day: —

''The use of opium, it must be confessed and lamented, has
struck deep into the habits, and extended its malignant influence
to the morals of the people, and it is likely to perpetuate its power in
degrading their character, and enervating their energies, as long as
the European Government, overlooking every consideration of poUcy
and humanity, shall allow a paltry addition to their finances to out-
weigh all regard to the ultimate happiness and prosperity of the
country."

To these I will add the testimony of the late
Lord Jocelyn, who, having visited the opium-shops
and smoking dens in the East, stated in Parliamentj

** He must acknowledge that the noble Lord (Ashley) had called to
his recollection scenes which he had witnessed of the lawless character
of the trade ; and that, in all he stated as to the moral, political and
physical evils, he concurred."

The following extract of authentic, and official
authority, on the subject, is so apposite, that, as I find,
so I quote it : —

" The produce of this delicate plant, the poppy, is extremely uncer-
tain, being liable to frequent injury from insects, wind, hail, frost, and
unseasonable rain. To the poor man the advance is the chief induce-
ment. He takes it at first, perhaps, to obtain a sum of money whea

INJURIOUS EFFECTS UPON THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 15

urgently wanted ; and having once become dependent upon this assist-
ance at a particular season of the year (as he barely ekes out enough
from his laborious occupation to pay his expenses), necessity compels
him to continue the cultivation. Only a small proportion of the
amount paid by the Government reaches the hands of the actual culti-
vator. It is stated by Langford Kennedy, assistant opium agent at |
Patna, and opium agent at Behar, from 1811 to 1829, in his evidence
before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1832, Nos. 721
and 722, that, ' advances were made by him to the gomastah, by the
gomastah to the suddor mattoo, by the suddor mattoo to the village
mattoo, and by the village mattoo to the ryot ;' and he adds, No. 757,
^the gomastah obtains a further income by a species of extortion/
which must ultimately fall on the unfortunate ryot.

" It is the interest of the deputy opium agent, who always did get,
and, in some instances, still gets, a commission on the Government
profits, to collect as much opium as possible. He is generally the
collector and magistrate of the district, possessing great power, and
from his situation, almost unbounded influence over the natives, which
it is not unfedr to suppose he would exercise to promote the extended
production of the drug: in doing this, he would not only benefit
himself, but be acting in strict conformity with the instructions of his
employers. Moreover, the boundaries of land in some districts are
extremely ill defined, and disputes often arise as to who is the rightful
occupant. It frequently happens in such cases that one of the dis-
putants offers to grow poppy, and a decision in his fia.vour is the almost t
invariable consequence. "

'' The statements contained in the last paragraph have been con-
firmed to me in the strongest manner by an eye-witness, Mr. Andrew
Sym, who resided eleven years at Gorakhpoer, and for about eighteen
months of that time had charge of the East India Company's branch
opium agency for that district. This gentleman, who has recently
^ returned from India, has permitted me to use the authority of his
name.

•* Other and grievous sources of oppression, arising from the sur-
veillance of the custom-house searchers, and the extortions of the
officers of the chokees, or search-houses, are forcibly detailed in the
following letter, written by a gentleman of my acquaintance, who, from
long residence in the interior of India, possesses an intimate know
ledge of the subject on which he writes ; this letter, though long, will
amply repay the perusal : —

16 OPIUM MONOPOLY.

*' * The evils whidb the cultivation of opiam entails npon onr 'fellow-
subjects in India arises partly from the ryots in the opium districts of
Patna and Benares being compelled to give up fixed portions of theur
lands for the production of poppy. It is true that the Honourable
Company pay &irly for the lands and labour thus wrested from the
ryot (farmer) ; and did the amount pdd by the government find its way
honestly into the possession of these people, there might not be so
much cause of complaint in this matter; but the contrary is the
case. These payments have to pass through the hands of numerous
employis of the Government; and scace twenty per cent, of it
ever reaches the legitimate owner. The evils of the cultivation,
however, do not end here. In consequence of being obliged forcibly
to cultivate this highly-taxed drug, the peasant is constantly exposed
to a suspicion of retaming some part of the produce for sale ; the
surveillance of the police is, therefore, especially directed to these
unhappy creatures ; and the oppressions which they are subjected to
in this way surpass belief. They are exposed to every sort of annoy-
ance which the ingenuity of authorised plunderers (the poHce and
custom-house searchers) can devise, in order to extort bribes. The
privacy of their miserable abodes — ^the sanctity of theur females — is in-
truded upon by these harpies of Government ; and no redress can be
given by the Government, unless they abolish the production of this
accursed drug.

***The evils arising from Government's trade m opium to the
people of Bengal, Behar, and Benares arises from the necessary
protection agamst the smuggling of this article of monopoly, and the
right of search given to the custom-house officers, who are placed in
search-houses, or chokees, at short distances along the bank of that
main artery of Indian trade — ^the Ganges, and allow no native boat
to pass, without bringing it to, for search. Before I proceed further
in this branch of the subject, I had better give some insight into the
character of the natives employed in these search-houses. They
consist of peons (pay ten shillings per month,) ameens (twenty-four,)
and writers (fourteen.) The writer is generally the more respectable
personage of the three ; he has charge of the rest ; his pay is seven
rupees per month ; his qualification is a knowledge of the Persian
language. He finds his own stationery, which costs him two rupees
per month, leaving ^ye rupees for himself. He has to give security
for good behaviour, to the amount of five hundred rupees {601.) The
five rupees which remain of his salary are not sufficient to provide him

INJURIOUS EFFECTS UPON THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 17

with food. Yet these men generally live expensively (that is to say,
for natives,) and save money. Were there nothing heyond the
authorised emolument of the situation ahove-mentioned, it is ohvious
that it would he impossible to get any one to accept such places. Yet
large sums are paid, as bribes, to those who are supposed to have
power with the European collector, in order to procure them. The
natural consequence is, that feelings of honesty and morality are
thrown aside, as incompatible with employh in the customs. In other
departments, in judicial offices, in the revenue, and even in the police,
honest native officers have been found, notwithstanding the British
Indian system (which seems as if it were devised with the view of
offering temptation to natives in authority to be dishonest) ; but, in the
customs, I never met with an honest native. Those who are employed
enter it with the sole intention of doing the best they can for them-
selves. Therefore, the bribery and perjury, apparent and acknow-
ledged in the system, is most lamentable.

" *I have already said, that the right of search is intrusted to
characters such as I have described. Therefore, all goods passing the
main artery of India— the Ganges — ^are exposed to it. Now this right
is not in any way used to protect the Government ; it is held out by
the custom-house officers as a means of extorting bribes. This tax
upon goods is made in every search-house established along the line
they have to travel. Nor are merchant boats alone subjected to these
extortions. They fall heavily upon mere travellers — especially pil-
grims, and those who travel with their families. The latter usually
have a separate apartment for their wives, sisters, and other females,
which the officers threaten to enter, under the pretext of suspecting
that opium is concealed there ; and we know that a respectable Hindoo
would sacrifice all he has in the world rather than expose his wives to
insult from these miscreant searchers.

" * The same system of extortion exists upon goods and persons
conveyed by land whenever they come within the limits of inland
custom-houses.

" * To sum up the curse consequent on this right of search, which
springs from the Government trade in opium, I may say they are as
follows: — The exactions and corruptions; the grevious delay; the
insolent exercise of low, ill-paid authority ; the interruption of commu-
nication, by shutting up ferries, roads, and routes ; the distress and
ruin resulting from false seizures and confiscations (got up by the
custom-house people to blind the Government) ; the diversion of trade

c

18 OPIUM MONOPOLY.

into channels less impeded ; the adyancement in price of all goods, by
reason of these checks and annoyances ; and, worst of all, the demorali-
zation of the habits of all parties connected with, or exposed to the
influence of, these oppressive and unjust measures. And we must
either submit to all these evils and hindrances, the happiness and pros-
pects, eternal as well as temporal, .of the inhabitants of this large and
wealthy tract of country, teeming with industry and fruitfulness, or
annihilate the right of search, which, as it is exercised, is replete with
every curse that can be inflicted on millions of our unoffending fellow-
creatures, whom, by the laws of God and man, we are bound in every
way to protect and comfort/

" But a still greater evil than the oppression of the natives, is the

BAPID DEMOBALIZATION OF THE VAST POPULATION OF InDIA, FEOM

THE GBOWiNa HABIT OF Opium-eating. Evcb the Hiudoos, said to
be the most temperate people in the world, have caught the mania. I
must again refer the reader to the letters from Assam, p. 19, and request
him to reperuse the harrowing statement of Bruce ; but these distress-
ing effects are not conflned to that province. In a written communica-
tion received from Mr. A. Sym, dated the 13th March, 1840, he
states, —

'* ' The health and morals of the people suffer from the production
of opium. Wherever opium is grown, it is eaten, and the more it is
grown the more it is eaten ; this is one of the worst features of the
opium question. We are demoralizing our own subjects in India;
one-half of the cbime in the opium distbicts, muedebs, bapes,
and affbays, have theib obigin in opium-eating.

'* ' Both Hindoos and Musselmen eat the drug ; and its pernicious
effects are visible on the population of the opium districts, particularly
in the neighbourhoods of the depdts.'

** It is important to remember that this gentleman speaks of what he
has actually seen, during a long residence in the opium districts. He
assured me that all the other evils of the opium trade, as &r as India
was concerned, sink into insignificance, compared with the debasing
effect upon the population; he added this remarkable expression,—
•One opium-culttvatob demobalizes a whole village 1' Com-
ment upon this is superfluous.

"Thus thousands of oub fellow-cbeatubes in India abe
oppbessed, and theib health alo) mobals destboyed, fob
the sake of this 'infebnal opium tbade.'"

INJURIOUS EFFECTS UPON THE PEOPLE OF INDIA. 19

Before leaving this part of my subject^ I will state
the result of my own experience of the progressive
and destructive course of intoxication by opium,
drugs, and ardent spirits, for corroboration of which
I can confidently appeal to almost every civil and
mihtary officer, and missionary throughout India.
The returns of courts-martial and defaulter-books of
the Madras army will show that the character of the
Sepoy is now tarnished by that \dce, which is the
one dark stain on the military superiority which his
European comrade bears over every other soldier in
the world. I have heard judges, magistrates, and
collectors, bear their testimonies to the rapid deteri-
oration of the native character in this respect, which
is more authoritatively proved by the records of their
couji:s and offices. Families feel it in their drunken
servants, and missionaries deplore it as an increasing
obstacle to the progress of the Gospel. During the
wars in Afghanistan and the Punjab, when it became
necessary to increase the native army, it fell under
my observation in the office which I then held as
Adjutant-general of the Army, that the commanding
officers of regiments represented very generally their
inability to procure the desired proportion of Mahom-
edan recruits, who were reported to be numerically
few, and physically inferior when compared with the
Hindoos, This induced me to make inquiries, not
only from our highly intelligent officers themselves
and other Europeans, but among the Mahomedans of '
all ranks, civil and mihtary, and I was much struck
with a fact that has also excited European attention, viz.

20 OPIUM MONOPOLY.

that the race is apparently wasting away. The
Mahomedans universally acknowledged the fact, and
accounted for it in various ways, hut in every instance
adduced the use of opium and bhang* as one cause of
the palpable diminution of the numbers and energies
of their people.

I have the honour to be, &c.

R. ALEXANDER.

* The inspissated jtdce of hemp, used for intoxication, the sale of which
is under monopoly purchased from the Goyemment, and protected by penal
laws.

LETTER n.

THE RISE, PROGRESS, AND CONSEQUENCES, OP OPIUM
SMUGGLING IN CHINA.

Mt Lord,

I now turn to the progress of the con-
traband trade of opium in China.

Until the year 1800, opium was admitted through
the custom-house as a medical drug. As I stated
before, the quantity imported previous to the year
1767 had not exceeded 200 chests, weighing about
133 lbs. each chest; nor did the powerful East India
Company enter upon the traffic until the year 1773,
when they established a depot near Macao.

In 1781, the Bengal Government sent an armed
vessel laden with opium to China, the proceeds of
the sales of which were to be paid into the treasury
of the East India Company at Canton ; the price of
the drug appears to have been then about ^100 a
chest.

In 1794 the Company stationed a large vessel
laden with opium at Whampoa, the anchorage for the
port of Canton ; and, as I learn from the pamphlets
and publications from which I am quoting, it was in

22 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

the year 1796 that the rapid progress of demoral-
ization was so apprehended by the Chinese Govern-
ment, that to arrest the vice it passed a law, that any
one found guilty of smoking opium should be
punished by being beaten with a bamboo, and
exposed in the streets with a wooden collar round
his neck, bearing an inscription of the crime for which
he was condemned. Thus early were the Chinese
alive to the consequences of the smuggling traffic,
and, according to their customs and rules of govern-
ment, energetic in their endeavours to suppress it.

The trade increased notwithstanding, and, in the
year 1800, the importation reached to the number of
2000 chests. From this period may be traced that
legislative and executive opposition of the Chinese
Government which eventually drew down upon the
nation the horrors of an unjust war, and the misery
under which its millions of opium victims now suffer.
Edicts were sent to the governors of provinces to take
stringent measures to suppress the use of the poison-
ous drug; punishments were increased in severity
against those who indulged in the destructive habit,
even to the extent of banishment and confiscation of
property; still the vice, introduced and stimulated
by the English contrabandist, spread Kke a contagious
disease, and the measures of the Chinese Government
were counteracted by an aggravation of the evils
inflicted upon the people; the custom-house and
other officers at Whampoa and Macao were bribed
into connivance at the trade which the Emperor
was endeavouring to suppress, and the corruption

PROGRESS IN CHINA. 23

of the public authorities was added as a fatally
necessary incident in the progress of national
demoralization.

Previous measures having proved ineffectual, the
Hong merchants, in the year 1809, were required to
give security for every vessel that came to Whampoa,.
that she brought no opium, before she was permitted
to open her hatches ; and it was made known, that
if opium was foimd on board any vessel, she should
be sent away without being permitted to discharge
her cargo, and the security-merchant should be
punished. Both parties are seen at this period to be
pursuing their objects with equal earnestness, but
with different degrees of success. The Chinese
Government, according to its laws and customs,
endeavoured to suppress the traffic, which, nurtured
by the East India Company, in the days when Free
Trade was unknown, is gradually assuming gigantic
strength and proportions. In 1820, the number of
chests smuggled into China had increased to 5147 ;
owing to some flagrant instances of crime having
come to the knowledge of the Governor of Canton
in 1821, when 7000 chests were imported, the senior
Hong merchant was disgraced for remissness of duty,
and more stringent measures were put in practice
against the trade. At the same time, when the
Chinese punished their own subjects for infraction of
the laws, they addressed the most earnest remon-
strances to the foreign merchants who instigated
them to do so.

The only consequence, however, of this activity

24 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

on the part of the Chinese was, that the depots for
opium were driven away from Whampoa and Macao,
and permanently established in armed vessels, which
lay at anchor under the island of Lin Tin, at the
entrance of the Canton river. From these armed
vessels the traflSic was managed thus : — The foreign
merchants resided in Macao or Canton. They
received the money in payment of the drug at their
counting-houses, and gave orders on the commanders
of the store-ships at Lin Tin. The Chinese pur-
chasers sent very fast boats, which were propelled
by forty or fifty stout rowers well armed, to the ship
to receive the opium, and smuggle it into Canton, or
wherever it was wanted; and these deliveries were
generally made at night, to avoid the observation of
the officers of Government.

Under such circumstances of impotent legislation,
disregarded remonstrances, and daring violation of
the laws, the trade went on. In 1824, the importa-
tion was 12,639 chests, and in the next ten years it
increased to 21,785. The insatiate craving of the
Chinese grew with what it fed upon to their de-
struction, so that in 1837 there was a succossful smug-
ghng of 39,000 chests, valued at 25,000,000 dollars.

That the Chinese Government was sincere in its
opposition to this contrabandism, is proved by the
consistency of its edicts, and the ineffectual severity
of its ill-executed laws. Charles Majoribanks, Esq., in
his evidence given before the House of Commons in
1830, states ''he did not imagine that the Chinese
possessed any means of putting it down by any

PROGRESS IN CHINA. 25

marine force which they had ; that the opium was
forced upon Whampoa^ where it was met by counter-
acting prohibitions and exactions of the Chinese
Government, and that the trade, entirely prohibited
by that Government, was compelled to take refiige
among the islands at the mouth of the Canton river,
where it was carried on to a very great extent." On
being questioned another day, the same gentleman
repUed, ''that the Chinese have frequently interposed
by the strongest proclamations, and that he knew of
some instances in which opium boats had been seized
and the heads of their crews were cut offr

Sir J. F. Davis, another able and experienced
officer of the East India Company's service in China,
was asked by the same Committee of the House of
Commons whether the Chinese had issued many
edicts against the opium traffic, and whether they
had been carried into force. He answered, " they
certainly have, to the utmost capabiHty of the weak
Chinese Government, which had rather evinced its
hostihty to the system than been ejffective in repress-
ing it."

A reference to the Third Report of the Commons
Committee on India Affairs in 1830, will show, that
by dispatches from its factory in Canton, the East
India Company was kept aware of the imdeviating
opposition of the Chinese Government, and of the
difficulties in which the legal trade became involved
by the pertinacity of the smugglers. The Emperor
and his ministers avowedly acted upon moral princi-
ples, and rejected every suggestion to replenish their

26 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

treasury by a revenue that must accrue in proportion
as the population became demoralized. About this
time the low average price of a chest of opium may
be taken at 700 dollars, and the annual importation,
at the very moderate estimate of 22,000 chests. Had
the Emperor consented to impose a duty of twenty-
five per cent., there was a revenue to be derived of
3,850,000 dollars.

In 1837 we find the Chinese Government exerting
all the vigour it possessed in issuing laws, edicts, pro-
clamations, and remonstrances, and pimishing with
the greatest severity such of its own subjects as it
could apprehend. At this period, therefore, the state
of the affairs stood thus — the East India Company
used its monopoly in India to produce any quantity
of opium that could be smuggled into China.
According to the evidence given before the House
of Commons, and recorded in its Blue Books, this
opium was not prepared for medical purposes, but
solely to suit the taste of the Chinese consumers ;
it was packed expressly for the convenience of the
smugglers, and sold by Government officers at
Government sales in Calcutta, for the known purpose
of being taken to China, there to be imported con-
trary to the laws of the empire. All this was done
with the knowledge and by the authority of the
Select Committee of the Court of Directors in
Leadenhall Street, the connivance or command of the
Board of Control, and carried practically into effect
by tbe Supreme Government of India in Calcutta,
with all the power of its legislative and executive

E. I. C/S SHARE A^D INTEREST THEREIN. 27

authority. So completely was the Indian Govern-
ment identified with the trade, that when heavy
losses were sustained in China, it bore its share
thereof as shown by the following Government noti-
fication issued in Calcutta : " Shippers to China of
opium purchased at the sales of January, February
and March 1837, if the ship left before the 1st of
August last will receive at the rate of 140 rupees
per chest .... Upon opium of the sales of
January, February and March 1837, shipped from
this port to any port of the Straits, or Eastern Archi-
pelago before the 1st of May last, nothing will now
be paid ; but if it shall hereafter be proved by the
production of bills of lading, to the satisfaction of the
Board of Customs, Salt and Opium, that any part of
this opium has been sent on from Singapore, Malacca,
or Pinang, to China," (alas poor China !) " before
the 1st of January 1837, then the shippers thereof
will receive the same amount per chest as all other
shippers of opium of the said sales to China, viz., at
the rate of 140 rupees per chest." Then follows
other adjustments upon Profit and Loss, varying
from 150 to 300 rupees per chest.

The British Government having thus intimately
identified its interests with that of the smugglers, I
will quote from a pamphlet published by Mr. Fry in
1840, some specimens of the way in which the latter
carried on their part of the business : —

Extract from a Letter dated Macao, 14/^ June, 1839.

" The opium trade is not annihilated. It has only, as it were,
cdianged hands. It has passed only from the established houses in

28 OPIUM SMUQGLINGL

Canton, under whose management it has ever been conducted with
the greatest moderation, and in the most orderly and quiet manner, to
a class of men prepared to carry on the traffic at all hazards, to over-
come all obstacles that may oppose their progress by weapons of war,
and who for this purpose, at this time, both here, at Manilla, and
Singapore, are fitting out vessels in such a manner as will defy all the
naval power of China."

The above comes from a house extensively inter-
ested in the opium trade.

Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman at Macao to his
Friend in London.

" The profit upon opium is at this time so immense, that people are
tempted to continue smugglmg it, although at a very great risk of
life. Even now, notwithstanding the merchants have signed a
paper declaring they would not bring any more opium to China,
vessels, armed to the teeth, are employed along the coast, and actually
forcing it into the country ; one of them was attacked by a Chinese
junk, two of the crew were killed, and about forty of the Chinese.
To say nothing of the morality or immorality of the trade, I think
it disreputable from the first introduction of it ; and the manner in
which it has lately been carried on is disgracefiil in the highest
degree. I consider all persons engaged in it, as much deserving
any punishment the Chinese may choose to inflict, as the smuggler
on our own coast is of that awarded him by the laws of England.
After so many warnings they have no right to complain of the
means used by the Chinese for the suppression."

From the Head of a Mercantile H(me.

" The smuggling trade, as now called on, too closely approximates
to murder, even to defend the morality of it ; to fire upon parties who
endeavour to stay them, or to sell opium to men who risk their heads
for money, is neither a gentlemanly nor an honourable trade.*' «

From a Correspondent in China,
" The Ann opium clipper having been up at a place called TienpSh,
in the neighbourhood of Amoy, had made arrangements with some
shore-boats to deliver a quantity of opium ; very fortunately she had

HOW CARRIED ON BY OPIUM CLIPPERS. 29

remained under way when a large junk came out upon her, propelled
by oars, the wind being very light. This junk engaged the Ann for
four and a half hours, when one of the Ann's guns burst and killed
seven of her crew. Most fortunately the breeze by this time had
freshened, which enabled the Ann to make sail and get away from the
junk. The captain of the Ann said, that, had it fallen calm, he should
have been boarded to a certainty.

" To show you that more of such occurrences may be expected,
we conversed the other day with a gentleman just arrived from
China, who informed us that, before he left Macao, he had been in
company with four captains of opium vessels, who declared to him
that they had fully made up their mmds to attack and sink all that
opposed them in any way whatever."

Extract from a Letter from Hong Kong, dated Oct, dth, 1839.
(From the Head of a Mercantile Howe,)

" A report is afloat of another fight up the coast of four smuggling
schooners and brigs, owned by the Portuguese of Manilla, but all
commanded by Englishmen, and with some of the crews English, all
were armed (one of them carrying long 18-pounders), having been
attacked by the mandarin junks, which they beat off, and of which
eventually they burnt five. The lives lost are not mentioned."

A merchant at Bombay wrote to this firm in
London in December 1839, as follows : —

" The opium trade is carrying on with the greatest vigour. The
Lady Grant, a clipper, left this in September with 700 chests, and
was leaving Singapore for the coast of China, armed with twelve guns
and a crew of fifty-five men : the Bed Bover, a clipper, had passed Sing-
apore with 1100 chests from Calcutta ; a letter from ■ of the Vansit-
tart, dated from Hongkong, states that a vessel has just arrived from
Calcutta, carrying eighteen guns and forty Europeans, besides her
Lascar crew. Our last letter would inform you that the Bengal
Government put up 6000 chests on 4th January. This is the answer
Lord Auckland makes to Captain Elliott when he forwards expresses
to him for assistance. From the following extract of a letter from
the brother of the writer you will have a good idea of what is going
on at Hongkong.

30 OPIUM SMUGGLING,

** * The opium trade is flourishing on the coast, and even at this
anchorage 850 dollars is offered for it here, and 1200 dollars is said
to be current on the coast. The Sir Edward Ryan has just arrived
with a full cargo, and fiilly armed and manned by a set of desperate
fellows, who bum and destroy everything that comes in the way of
their disposing of their opium.

" Those parties who are now engaged in China in selling British
manufactures and purchasing teas, and in no way connected with the
opium traffic, now seeing clearly that their interests have all along been
sacrificed to those of the opium party, will stand it no longer ; for
while their business was at a complete stand-still, and their con-
stituents' interests at home sacrificed, the opium party were carrying
on an enormous profitable trade.* "

The following, from a Hindoo, dated Calcutta,
August 1839,. is particularly forcible and striking : —

" The opium question is next treated by . If from what

was before known in England one book has been published * On the
Iniquities of the Opium Trade,' there will be dozens when the people
in England know as much of this trade as we now know. The latter
circumstance I will relate myself. The Ked Rover and Sir Edward
Ryan lately arrived from China, and they have both sailed within these
two or three days, the former with about one thousand chests, and the
latter with about seven hundred chests of opium. The agents of the former

are , and those of the latter are . They are armed to

the teeth and well manned. They have thus sailed out of a British
port, under the sanction of the British Government, with the avowed
object of landing their opium, and selling it at all hazards on the east
coast of China. Will it be hereafter believed that British merchants
in the nineteenth century could, in the face of the world, without a
cloak and without a blush, engage in such a nefarious and piratical
adventure for the sordid love of pelf?"

In November, 1855, I received from a friend a
letter, written by a gentleman of high character and
position in society, who is unwilling that his name
should be made public; no candid mind will, I
presume, reject the facts stated, nor be blind to the

HOW CARRIED ON BY OPIUM CLIPPERS. 31

system with which they are connected ; the informa-
tion is as follows: '^A vessel sailed out of the
harbour in broad daylight, well manned, of the very
finest build and rig which Aberdeen could furnish ;
built, laimched, and equipped under the light of
heaven, and before our eyes, and armed to the teeth
with every implement of war — an opium smuggler
for poor China ! the schooner Vindex. She is about

160 tons, of chpper build, built for of

. A vessel of the same kind, named the

Wild Dayrell, was launched firom a building-yard at
Cowes for the same trade, and as a companion for
the Vindex. The Captain of the Vindex is an
EngUshman, and the officers and crew came down
from London ; but the Captain having gone to sea
with the crew and found them inefficient, he brought
the vessel back, and shipped a new company, officers
and all. I am not aware that there is any secret in
what I have told you, the thing has been done firom
the beginning quite openly."

This, my Lord, connects the doings of the present
day with those of 1839, and I do not suppose that it
would be difficult to complete the links of the chain,
some of which would be affi)rded by one of the
richest public Companies Iq London.

Authority for what follows is to be found in Blue
books and official records, published in this country
and in China.

In 1836, there had commenced one of the most
remarkable consultations which are on record in the
history of any nation. The Chinese Government

32 OPIUM SMUQQLING.

had been trying to suppress a destructive vice
among its own people, and . to put a stop to an
iniquitous traffic in a contraband poison carried on
by foreigners.

But its efforts had been nugatory. The armed
smuggUng continued, the fascinating vice was still
spreading, and ^6500,000 sterUng of silver were ex-
ported in payment of the drug; in such an ex-
tremity, some advisers of the Emperor thought it
might be best to seek a remedy by legalizing the
traffic. The most distinguished statesman who re-
commended this policy was Heu Naitsi, and as it
was approved of by most of the foreign residents in
China, many of the Chinese at Canton thought it
would be adopted by the Emperor, and the more so,
as it had been concurred in by the Governor of
Canton, to whom, as well as the other governors, the
memorial of Heu Naitsi had been referred for their
consideration. In expectation of the trade being
legalized, measures were taken- by foreigners to
secure an increased production of the deleterious
drug. The ruinous nature of this line of poUcy
was, however, ably exposed by three very remark-
able state documents, drawn up by a Cabinet
Minister, Choo Tsun ; another by Hwang Tseotsze,
President of the Sacrificial Court ; and a third by a
sub-censor named Heu Kiu. The question of the
legaUzation of the traffic in opium, with these me-
morials against.it, was again submitted to all the
high officers of the empire for their consideration
and advice. After full and mature deliberation, ex-

ITS PROGRESS AND CONSEQUENCES IN CHINA. 33

tending over a period of more than a year's dura-
tion, the nearly unanimous decision of the advisers
of the Emperor was, that, on account of the injuries
it inflicted on the people, the nefe-rious traffic should
not be legalised. At the same time it was resolved
to have recourse to yet more stringent measures to
suppress the seductive, but ruinous vice, and to put
a stop to the smuggling of the poison, Heu Naitsi,
who had recommended the legalisation of the traffic
in opium was disgraced, and the severity of the
punishments for smuggKng by Chinese, and smoking
it, was increased. The names and residences of the
foreign merchants in Canton, who were concerned in
the traffic, having been reported to the Emperor, an
edict was issued, commanding their immediate de-
parture from China. To still fiirther excite the at-
tention of foreigners to the stringency of the mea-
sures now taken by Government to put down the
traffic in opium and suppress its consumption, early
in 1838, a Chinese, who had been engaged in smug-
gUng, was executed at Macao in presence of many
foreign and Chinese witnesses; later in the same
year, another of the transgressors of the laws against
opium was executed near the foreign residences in
Canton ; and again, early in 1839, a third Chinese
was executed in the same vicinity, and it was re-
ported that the upper hps of smokers in Hupeh
province were cut off to incapacitate them from in-
haling the fascinating poison. These measures
checked the consumption to a degree that surprised
many foreign residents, who had witnessed the in-

D

34 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

effectual maimer in which previous edicts had been
carried into effect. But it having been reported to
the Emperor that the foreign merchants still con-
tinued to carry on the obnoxious traflftc, and that the
store-ships still lay quietly at anchor at Lin Tin, the
Emperor's patience was at length exhausted by this
contumacious disregard of his edicts and continued
trampling on his laws; and in the latter part of
1838 he resolved to proceed to extremities. To this
end he clothed a trusted and valued public officer
with extraordinary powers, such as had only been
thrice delegated by the Emperors of this dynasty,
and sent him to Canton to put a stop to the traffic
It is said that the Emperor gave his distinguished
servant, Lin, his instructions in person; and as he
spoke to him of the evils that had been inflicted
upon his people for these tens of years by this Qver^
flowing poison, his emotions checked his utterance.
He paused and wept ; then turning to the Commisr
sioner he said, — " How, alas ! can I die and go to the
shades of my imperial father and ancestors until
these direful evils are removed?"

Commissioner Lin arrived at Canton, March 10,
1839. He immediately made known the purpose of
the Emperor to put a complete stop to the opiiun
trade ; he addressed the most earnest remonstrances
to the foreigners to abandon this illegal traffic, that
the legitimate trade might continue uninterrupted;
and he demanded that this smuggled poison should
be quietly and immediately surrendered to him for
destruction. This proper and reasonable demand.

LORD PALMERSTON'S DISAVOWAL THEREOF. 35

and which would have been enforced in every other
country, was refused. The Chinese Commissioner
then had recourse to more stringent measures, by
preventing the departure of all foreigners from Canton
till the opium was delivered to him by those who
owned it. The noble lord, the Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs, Lord Palmerston, had signified
to the British merchants, that their country's pro-
tection would not be afforded to enable them to
violate the laws of the empire to which they traded.
His language is as explicit as the sentiment is just.
" No. protection can be afforded to enable British
subjects to violate the laws of the country to which they
trade. Any loss, therefore, which such persons may
mffer in consequence of the more eff'ectual execution of
the Chinese laws on this subject must be borne by the
parties who have brought the los^ on themselves Sy their
own acts.*"

When the Chinese Commissioners had recourse
to more stringent measures for obtaining possession
of this forfeited property which was stored in the
vessels at Lin Tin, her Britannic Majest/s Superin-
tendent of Trade, Captain Elliot, stepped in to pro-
tect British subjects from the threatened losses,
which their own conduct had justly brought upon
them in direct contravention of the sentiments of the
noble lord the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Captain
Elliot called upon British subjects to deliver up the
smuggled opium to him for the use of the British
Government, and pledged the faith of that Govern-
ment to remunerate them. In answer to his call, the

36 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

enormous amount of 20,283 chests were delivered
from the accumulated quantity on hand ; accumu-
lated, because owing to the stringent measures which
were in operation to suppress its consumption, the
amount of sales had been greatly lessened* This
quantity was deUvered over to the Chinese Commis-
sioner by her Majesty's Superintendent under protest ;
and, on this authorised act of the Superintendent,
was based the claim afterwards made upon the
Chinese Government for the value of the opium,
which, at the then depreciated prices, was estimated
at about <£ 1,800,000. At the same time, the Chinese
Commissioner required a bond of all foreign mer-
chants, that they would not hereafter engage in this
traffic. That pledge was given in the following
language : — '' They beg to represent, that now being
made fiilly aware of the Imperial commands for the
entire aboUtion of the traffic in opium, the under-
signed foreign merchants hereby pledge themselves
not to deal in opium, nor to attempt to introduce it
into the Chinese Empire."

Lin having reported to the Emperor, that 20,283
chests had been delivered up, the Emperor sent down
his mandate that the whole should be destroyed.
This was most eflFectually done, in the presence of #
foreign witnesses, by mixing it with lime and salt in
large trenches ; after which process, the whole was
let out into the sea. The work occupied a period of
twenty days. Such was the Emperor's proceedings,
to show his regard for the lives and happiness of his
people, and to celebrate, as he supposed, the com-
plete success of his effi)rts to put a stop to this

THE OPIUM WAR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES, 37

desolating curse. The Superintendent of British
trade also announced to her Majesty's Government,
^' that as all the opium on hand had been destroyed,
and all the foreign merchants had given bonds not
to deal in opium, nor to attempt to introduce it
into the Chinese empire, the traflSc in opium was
entirely abohshed ! "

The consequence of seizing and confiscating this
smuggled opium, and of other measures growing out
of it, was the war declared by England. When the
Emperor and his high officers became fully sensible,
by dear-bought experience, of their inabiUty to resist
the prowess of the British arms, he concluded a
treaty, one article of which stipulated that the
Emperor of China should pay ^1,200,000 as indem-
nity for the contraband opium which he had, in
accordance with the usage of all nations, confiscated,
and ^3,000,000 sterling for the expenses of the war ;
but in this treaty there was not any provision or
stipulation made against the traffic, on accoimt of
which the two countries had been involved in a
destructive but unequal contest. After the high
Chinese Commissioners had signified their acceptance
of the terms, which were dictated to them by the
British envoy, '^ they eagerly requested to know why
we (the British) would not act fairly towards them
(the Chinese), by prohibiting the cultivation of the
poppy in our dominions." The British Envoy, Sir
Henry Pottinger, rephed, — "Your people must become
more virtuous, yoar officers incorruptible, and then
you can stop the opium coming into your borders.
Other people will bring it to you, if we should stop

38 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

the cultivation of the poppy ;" and in conclusion, the
Envoy added, " You cannot do better than legalise
it!" In order, however, to avert public indignation
in this country, and present some palliative to the
outraged principles of the opponents of opium smug-
gling, there was inserted in a supplementary treaty a
proviso that, *' If any merchant vessels shall, in con-
travention of this agreement, and of a proclamation
to be issued by the British plenipotentiary, repair to
any other port or places (than the five ports), the
Chinese Government shall be at liberty to confiscate
both vessels and cargoes." But the Chinese Govern-
ment, having had to pay so dearly for confiscating
the cargoes of smuggling vessels in 1839, has never
dared to interfere with the traffic in opium since, so
that the practical result of the opium war has been
to secure perfect impunity to the contraband trade.

Th^ matter is now very seldom referred to in the
Pekin Gazette. It was proposed to the young
Emperor, Hienfimg, in 1853, when he was involved
in great financial embarrassment, that he should assist
his revenue by legalising the trade in opium; it
being represented to him that the revenue therefrom
would be about £1,200,000 sterling. But after several
months' deliberation, the Emperor announced his in-
tention to continue the policy of his revered ancestors ;
thus have three Emperors in succession persevered
in views of moral rectitude, amid so many difficulties,
and so many allurements to induce the adoption of
an opposite policy.

I have the honour to be, &c.

R. ALEXANDER.

LETTER III.

EFFECTS OF THE OPIUM MONOPOLY AND SMUGGLING
UPON THE COMMERCE OF GREAT BRITAIN.

My Lord,

It would be but an irrelevant digression to
enter upon the bloodshed and devastating circum-
stances of the opium war. If you will imagine the
military and naval organisation of Great Britain to
have been retrograded to what it was about the reign
of Richard IL, and this country subjected to block-
ade and invasion by the Kne-of-battle ships and army
of France in their present perfection, you will be
able to form a fair idea of the comparative means
and resources of two such unequally matched belli-
gerents. When our troops came in collision with
the Tartars, they encoimtered an enemy whose half-
disciplined energy and desperate courage called forth
those high military qualifications of skill and valour
on our part, which triumphed over every resistance
that was oflFered; but, as regards the unwarlike
Chinese, I remember the expression of an old Ma-
homedan native oflScer of the Madras artillery, who
had served in the campaigns under the Duke of

40 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

Wellington, and through the hard struggles of the
first Birmese war. " Then, Sahib, our hearts rose to
contend with men, but as for firing upon these Cheen
Logue,* it was hke turning our guns upon flocks of
sheep.'*

The result of the war was, that having forced
the Chinese to pay for the contraband opium they
had confiscated, and the expenses of our imjust
invasion of their country, we entered into a treaty,
by which we recognise their right to seize and con-
fiscate the drug. The island of Hong Kong was
ceded to us, and five Chinese ports were opened for
legal trade, at which we were permitted to establish
consuls, for whom we engaged that they were to co-
operate with the Chinese authorities if any English
vessels should arrive within the range of their con-
sular jurisdiction with the contraband drug on board.
How these engagements have been fulfilled will be
seen as I proceed to show the effects of opium
smuggling upon the commerce and interests of Great
Britain, availing myself of some statements long
since pubUshed, and still, I believe, neither refuted
nor denied.

" The excess of exports from China to Great Britam over the im-
ports from Great Britain to China, in 1837, according to the statements
of the Canton Chamber of Commerce, was about ^3,200,000 sterling,
and the excess of exports to the United States over the imports from
that country, for the same year, was about ^£860,000 sterling, both
together nuddng <£4,060,000 sterling 1 This excess of exports to, over
the exports from, these countries, has been about the same every

* Chinese people.

INJURIOUS TO BRITISH COMMERCE. 41

successive year till 1852. The immense balance of iE4,060,000
sterling in favour of China every year, on the legalised commerce, ought
to enable China to take an enormous quantity of Western manufactures,
and iE3,200,000 ought to go to the purchase of the manufectures of
Great Britain. But what is the ^t ? The smuggled opium comes in
and sweeps away all this immense balance, and brings the Chinese in
debt to nearly an equal sum, nearly all of which (£7,000,000) is taken
away in silver to fill the coffers of the East Indian Government, and of
the opium merchant, to the prejudice of the upright and hard-working
manufacturer. But this is by no means the extent of the iiyury done
to the manufacturer. The Chinese have been so impoverished by this
continued drain upon their country of £4,000,000 sterling every year
for a long succession of years, that they cannot pay remunerating prices
for the quantity of Western commodities that they now take. It has
been estimated, that about £90,000,000 sterling have been taken away
from China in silver during this century in payment for opium. The
result is, that while the price of opium has been maintained or increased,
the price of Western manufectures has gradually fellen from one-half to
one-third of their former rates. In many cases, the prices are below the
cost of manufacture, not including the cost of transportation. A * Report
on the China Trade,' published in 1851, mentions as evidence of the
lowered prices of British manufe.ctures, that * long-cloths, valued, in
1836-7, at £1 sterling, are now (1851) quoted at from seven to eleven
shillings a-piece; while opium, which has doubled in quantity, has
generally maintained its price.' This diminution in price is much more
on some other articles, especially on articles of luxury and ornament.
It may then be asked if British manufactures are sold below remimera-
tive prices, how are the merchants able to continue importing them ?
The plan of operations is this : the merchants engaged in the China
trade can place their funds in China for the purchase of teas and aillfa
by manufectured goods, even at these low prices, at a less discount than
they can by importing silver, or purchasing exchanges ; and one reason
of this is, that they get manufewstures on credit, and hope to. get the
return of Chinese productions in" time to make payment for the manu-
factures, whereas the money would be at interest from the day they
despatched it. The merchants must then make up this loss incurred in
gettmg their funds to China, as well as their profits, by charging high
prices for Chinese productions. Thus, in the long-run, the manufac-
turers and the consumers of tea and Chinese silks pay the revenue of
^ £3,500,000, which the East India Company derive from opium, by the

42 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

loss sustained on manufactures sent to China, and by having to pay
enhanced prices on those articles imported from China.

** That the opium trade is iiyurious to every other commercial interest
with China, and p^yents the Chinese from taking an increased quantity
of Western manufactures, can be established by the testimony of the
highest authorities, and of those best acquainted with the China trade.
Mr. W. Norton gave the following testimony on this subject before the
Select Committee of the House of Commons, 20th April, 1847 : —
♦British general imports (British India included) [which was not
included in the statement given above] into China are iE2,321,692 ; the
exports from China are JE4,492,379, which w;ould give a balance of
trade in favour of China of JE2,170,687 ; and if that existed in reality,
I can easily conceive that the trade in British manufactures would
increase to an enormous extent. But the purchase of opium to the
amoimt of £5,400,000 (the cost in India, not reckoning the additional
cost in China) leaves a balance against China eventually of £3,229,313.
The Chinese, it is well known, are drained of their silver to an enormous
extent. It is a grievance, pressmg upon China to such an extent, that
it may, in the end, oblige them to break off their intercourse, contrary
even to their own will, in order to stop it, for it is reducing them com-
paratively to a powerless state as regards their circulation.'

" The * Friend of China,' in its issue for July 28, 1849, has the
following remarks : — * The opium trade has interfered with the legiti-
mate trade to an unusual extent since the opening of the northern
ports. Silk in particular has been taken in barter for opium to a very
large extent. Before the treaty, the shipments of raw silk to Great
Britain were from 3,000 to 5,000 bales annually. In the last com-
mercial year, the export from Shanghae was upwards of 17,000 bales ;
the previous year it was 22,000 bales. This large increase in the silk
trade would have operated fevourably upon the import of manufactured
goods ; but, unfortunately, the opium dealers cut in upon it. The silk
taken in barter for opium was shipped to England and sold at a profit ;
while Lancashire and Yorkshire goods — the legitimate articles of ex-
change — ^would have rotted in the stores at Shanghae, had the factors
not pushed them off for what they would fetch. Thus the larger con-
sumption of tea and silk in the British isles would be provided for by
the returns for opium. There is no way of getting over this difliculty.
The opium trade progresses steadily. The increased consumption of
teas and silk in Great Britain would merely result in the increase of the
opium trade ; the case of the British manufacturer is hopeless.'

INJURIOUS TO BRITISH COMMERCE. 43

"Mr. Montgomery Martin says,— 'I inquired of the Taoutai at
Shanghae, what would be the best means of increasing our commerce
with China ;' and his first answer to me, in presence of Captain Balfour,
Her Mfgesty's Consul, was, * Cease to send us so much opium, and we
will be able to take your manufiBtctures/

" The Canton Circular, in 1846, observed,—* Considering that the
prune cost of opium in Bengal is about 250 rupees per chest, and that it
is now sold by auction (m Calcutta) for 1,200 or 1,600 rupees a chest,
we need not ask the question, who have been chiefly benefited by the
war in China, justly termed the Opium War. With respect to the
opium trade, as at present conducted, it is certainly a great evil, and
indirectly injures the sale of other merchandise/

" Mr. Montgomery Martin says, * The true remedy of our deficient
trade with China is not to be found in the reduction of £1,000,000 or
jg2,000,000 sterling of tea duties, but in a perfect freedom of inter-
course with China ; in facilities of access to the interior of that vast
country ; and in the abolition of the pernicious opium traffic, which
absorbs the money, £4,000,000 sterling, that would otherwise be
devoted to the purchase of British manufactures/

" In an interesting article on * Tea and the Tea Trade,' published in
Hunt's * Merchant's Magazine' for January, 1850, Mr. Gideon Nye,
junior, a leading American merchant in China, says, * Until the taste
for this pernicious drug (opium) had spread insidiously over the empire,
and the traffic in it had largely increased, China was the recipient of
the precious metals from the western nations, in the acyustment of the
balance of trade in her &vour ; but smce the expiration of the East-
India Company's Charter (1834), the consumption of it has so largely
augmented, that, although the exports of China produce have also
greatly increased, yet the export of the precious metab la acyustment
of the balance adverse to China, has reached the annual sum of about
10,000,000 dollars, thus inflicting upon China a twofold ii\jury in the
demoralization of her people, and the imdermining of her pecuniary
resources, whose effects are of the most grave moment, as threatening
the very integrity of the empire/

" As one of the impediments in the way of the prosperity of the tea
trade, the consideration of the influence of this immense traffic is in
nowise a digression; nor can we consbtently content ourselves with
merely an incidental allusion to it, although it is no part of our purpose
to discuss the moral question, for we find it greatly prejudicial to the
whde legal trade with China. It seriously disturbs the financial affairs

44 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

of the country, thus impairing confidence and directly depressing the
prices of all other articles of importation, whilst, at the same time,
raising those of export articles.'

" Mr. Nye quotes from a letter of August, 1849, from ^ a mercantile
house at Shanghae, as follows : — * The country camiot take hoth goods
and drug, and thus the question is, so far as England is concerned, —
which branch of industry should be encouraged ? The East India
Company will never give up the drug, and probably the Government
would not, should the Company's charter not be renewed in 1854. It
appears to us, the difficulty must increase with the increasing quantity
of the luxury imported.'

" These authorities which might be definitely increased while they
dijffer as to the amoimt, according to the year in which their calcula-
tions were made, and the principles of reckoning the commerce, all
agree in these great and important facts, that the opium trade is
* intensely injurious' to the legitimate trade ; that it causes the prices at
which British manufactures can be sold to the Chinese to be depre-
ciated, and, in many cases, to be below the price of production ; that
it causes the prices of Chinese products to be enhanced to the British
purchasers, and that it deprives the British manufacturers of customers
that properly belong to them, who are ready to purchase to the enor-
mous extent of between three and four millions sterling.

** But, perhaps, some one may object and say, that the opium trade
does good in thus coming in to pay oflf the balance of trade, in favour
of China, in the legitimate commerce ; for otherwise the merchants
would have to import silver to pay it off, and it would be a heavy
drain upon Britain to export between three and four millions sterling
to China in payment for her products. If the opium trade was to
stop suddenly, some treasure would of course have to be imported to
pay* the balance of trade ; but the trade would soon arrange itself.
And if the Chinese nation were prevented squandering the eight
millions sterling annually for the pernicious drug, they would very
soon not only take the whole of the present balance in manufactured
goods, but they would take them at improved prices, and the exports
and imports would gradually and greatly increase. For the limit is
not near reached yet to which Great Britain can consume Chinese
products ; and so also of China, much less has she reached the limit to
which she could consume British products, if she was not so im-
poverished by this immense squandering for opium. But even if it
should be necessary to import treasure to pay the balance of trade, it

INJURIOUS TO BRITISH COMMERCE. 45

would be a great deal cheaper than to pay it with opium ; for thereby
you would enrich jone of your best customers, and thus in the end
enable them to take more goods and at better prices, and Chinese
products could be purchased at lower prices.

" The class of persons who are especially interested in the abolition
of opium smuggling, embraces the merchants in Great Britain, and of
the United States, and China, who are engaged only in the legal China
trade. The advantage which the opium dealer has over the honest
merchant can be seen at a glance. While the honest merchant has to
place his funds in China for the purpose of Chinese products, at a
greater or less discount, the opium dealer gets his fiinds there by opium
at, as it is said, a profit of 15 per cent. A still further advantage
that the opium dealers possess is, that they receive nearly all the pro-
ceeds of the opium in money, amounting nearly to j£7,000,000 sterling*
which gives them a preponderating influence in the money market,
and in regulating the rates of exchange between China and Great
Britain, and China and India."

As, however, this important branch of my subject
must come imder the consideration of others far more
competent to deal with it than I can pretend to be,
I will conclude with a short summary of the effects
of opium-smuggling on legal traffic. Your lordship
will perceive that there is a difference between some
of the figures taken from the table on the next page
and the Parliamentary Blue Book of 1854, and those
quoted from publications of earlier dates.

The trade with China has always been considered
by the Chinese as a barter trade, and it has been so
in Canton to a great extent.

China has no paper currency worthy of notice,
and, therefore, she is dependent on a clumsy metaUic
currency, consisting of Spanish dollars and ingots of
silver. There is also a copper coin used by the
poorer classes.

TABLE

Drawn up from Oflicial Returns, showing the value of Opium Smuggling in
excess of the Legal Trade of Lidia, and the dram of Specie from China to •
the detriment of the Comn^erce of Great Britain ; the exchange calculated
10 rupees for £1 sterling.

Imports.
Merchandise ...••....

1849.50.

1850-51.

1851.52.

1852.53.

1853-54.

187,099
797,917

153,445
441,627

BENGAL.

223,797
888,318

224,176
1,189,480

246,403
148,875

Treasure •

Total Imports.... £

Exports.
Opium

985,016

3,171,761
49,579
60,356

595,072

2,777,518

267,773

20,000

1,112,115

2,718,469
508,259
None.

1,413,656

3,482,948

353,551

5,275

895,278

3,069,895
185,923
260,700

Other Merchandise. . . .
Treasure ••••.

Total Exports.... £

Imports.
Merchandise

3,281,696

8,064,291

3,221,728

8,841,774

3,516,518

10,365

2,856

8,995

• •

MADRAS.
16,030

14,268

1,783

Treasure ••.. ,,

TotalImports....£

Exports.
Merchandise

13,491

105,534
55

8,995
118,820

16,030
136,276

14,268
166,202

1,783

37,530
20

Treasure •••....

Total Exports. •..£

In^orts,
Merchandise

105,589

118,820

186,276

166,202

37,550

610,068
1,576,144

826,929
1,403,655

BOMBAY.

688,332
1,413,474

628,498
1,241,327

562,154
502,890

Treasure

Total Imports ....£

Exports,
Merchandise

2,186,212

704,858

2,371,827

250

2,230,584

891,620

2,96,560

1,000

2,101,806

1,794,789

3,368,838

• 3,575

1,869,825

629,624

2,987,967

26,251

1,065,044

676,449

2,732,575

459,322

Opium

Treasure

Total Exports.... £

3,076,935

3,189,250

5,167,202

3,643,842

3,868,346

Exports and Imports between Great Britain and China ; the former in the
best year (1852), being at the rate of about 1 Jd. for each subject of the
Chinese Empire.

Exports to China
(British produce.) £

Imports from China £

1849.

1850.

1851.

1852.

1853. ^

885,140
6,170,672

965,954
5,849,025

1,528,869
7,971,495

1,918,244
7,712,771

1,373,689
8,255,615

ITS -EFFECTS UPON CHINESE COMMERCE. 47

The opium trade, however, being contraband, the
natives who engaged in it found it most convenient,
for the purpose of secrecy and despatch, to pay silver,
which thus became the regular mode of payment for
opium.

The gradual extension of this trade from half a
million sterling in 1816 to three miUions sterling
before the war, seriously embarrassed the internal
commerce and revenues of the country by withdraw-
ing annually so large a siun from the needed circu-
lation. Since the war of 1841-2, the importations of
opiiun have continued to increase, till it now costs
between six and seven millions sterhng. Latterly, so
great has been the difficulty of getting silver, that
part of the China produce has been paid for the
opium, and dollars have been imported to relieve the
currency aVthe chief ports.

This will appear more clearly by looking at the

following figiu'es : —

£

Export of produce, China to Great Britain 8,255,615

Legal imports in part payment 1,373,689

Leaving to be paid by us £6,881,926

Were there no opium trade, this balance would
be reduced : —

First, — By a better price being given for the same
quantity of our manufstctures ; and, secondly, by an
increased demand for them.

But the opium trade entirely changes the face of
afiairs, and we have the following as the state of the
whole China Trade . —

9,576,061

48 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

£
Legal imports, British and Indian ... 2,273,591

American 900,000

„ Others.... 600,000

3,773,59]
Contrahand opium, at its value in

India, say 5,802,470

Export of produce :

British and Indian 9,065,955

American 2,000,000

Others 500,000

11,565,955

The opium and legal trade are mixed up to a
great extent, but the following is a rough analysis : —

British Legal Trade:

£

We receive from China produce, value, say 9,065,955

For this we pay in legal merchandise, say 2,273,591

•And there remains to he paid for in opium, or in ^

silver, the proceeds of opium, ahout £6,792,364

American Legal Trade:

£

They receive from China produce, value, say 2,000,000

For this they pay in legal merchandise, say 900,000

And there remains to he paid for in opium, or silver,
the proceeds of opium, ahout j£l,100,000

Opium Trade:

£
We now, in 1856, sell to the Chmese not less than

75,000 chests, value ahove 6,000,000

The question now is, how does this annual im-
portation of more than six millions sterling of opium,
and the annual large export of silver, aflFect China
and the legal trade ?

In three ways, 1st, in the destructive eflFect of

* A part of this bullion settlement is made in London, and the amount
is adjusted between India and Gbina^ by bills on England.

ITS EFFECTS UPON CHINESE COMMERCE. 49

opium-smoking on the Chinese ; 2d, in the derange-
ment of the circulation of the countiy ; and, 3d, in
an injurious influence on the legal foreign trade.

1st. The consumption of this destructive drug is
just so much capital destroyed, besides involving
thousands of Chinese families annually in ruin, caus-
ing the death of many more, and spreading poverty
and crime over the land.

2d. The evils resulting from the derangement and
restriction of the circulation can scarcely be exagge-
rated. Suppose a country like our own suddenly
reduced to a state of barter, and this to continue for
a series of years by the withdrawal of paper credit,
while a very scanty quantity of metallic money
remained. All the evils that would thus accrue are
those which have fallen upon China. The whole
machinery of commerce is impeded and contracted
within the narrowest dimensions, poverty becomes
general, and, in the absence qf efficient laws, crime
becomes rampant. Like the deteriorating of the
blood in the human system, the whole frame decays.
The current money annually removed from the
circulation of the country, through the consumption
of a destructive drug, the use of which is on the
increase, must inevitably lead the nation to ruin,
which can be but slightly, if at all, retarded, by the
inadequate supply of silver obtained from the mines
in China.

3d. The injurious influence on the legal foreign
trade is plain. Our own prosperity as a commercial
nation is wrapt up with the prosperity of the nations
with which we deal. As China becomes less and less

50 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

able to bear the drain of sfl ver, she is gradually paying
for the opium with her produce, the drug thus sup-
planting the foreign legal merchandise. Did she
retain the silver to keep up a healthy circulation at
home, there cannot be a doubt she could consimie
much more largely of our manufactures, besides
giving a better price for them.

A merchant resolved to keep himself clear of the
opium trade can scarcely maintain a position in
China. He cannot sell his manufactures for cash,
imless at a loosing price ; and he is constantly at a
disadvantage, in the difficulty of obtaining cash for a
favourable investment in China produce.

It has been argued that the trade is necessary to
keep up the commerce of the country from the
readiness with which it commands silver ; but this is
a fallacy, as has been already shown. The exchanges
of the East are no doubt facilitated by this trade, as
the larger the commerce in any part of the world,
the greater the facilities for exchange. Capitalists
in England send large sums of money out to India to
go to China, either in opium, or in bills on opium,
and to be returned home from China in bills or
produce, and thus the question of exchange has
become intricated with that of opium smuggUng, and
aflfects now the general Eastern commerce of Great
Britain and America. It might be deemed pre-
sumptuous in me strongly to maintain before a
community Uke that of the British pubhc a direct
affirmative of the cause and evil consequences of the
present drain of bullion, and its effiscts upon the
monetary system of Europe. Standing, however.

EXPORTATION OP BULLION. 51

upon what I consider the safe ground of facts and
authority, I avail myself of an extract from the Times'^
newspaper of 23rd October, 1856.

The Board of Trade have lately published some particulars far-
nished by Mr. Consul Eobertson, on the commerce of Shanghai, during
Ihe past year, together with a statement of the peculiar condition of
that port as regards its silver currency and the premium on the
Oarolus dollar. It appears that the imports in 1855, exclusive of
specie and opium, amounted to <£1,602,849, of which England sup-
plied JE1,122,241 ; America, <£272,708; and other countries <£207,900 ;
while the exports reached the extraOTdinary total of £12,603,540,
of which iB6,405,040 were to England, £5,396,416 to America, and
£102,084 to other countries. The balance to be met was therefore
£11,000,691. Towards this the treasure imported was £2,335,017,
and the opium from India £3,174,949. As the two latter items
however amount only to £5,509,966, there is, according to these
figures, an additional sum of £5,490,725, which must have been
liquidated by some unexplained means. Mscrepancies in the official
valuations would perhaps partly account for it, but it may be presumed
that at the end of the year a considerable sum remained to be dis-
charged by opium and silver which had yet to arrive. With regard to
the trade between China and the United States, the feet that wMe the
imports of American goods were only £272,708, the exports of teas,
silks, &e., to that country were £5,396,416, illustrates the extent to
which England acts as the banking agent between them, a large pro-
portion of the remittances brought by each New York packet bemg to
meet the draughts from Chma on American account made payable in
London. During the year the general trade of Shanghai gave employ-
ment to 871 vessels, representing 311,139 tons, w:hile the- revenue
derived from it by the Imperial Government in the shape of Customs'
duties was £845,146. It is to be regretted that no opportunity exists
of making a comparative statement with previous years, accurate
returns not having been before obtainable. The belief is, that not-
withstanding the disorganized * state of the empire, the import business
reached a &ir average of satisfactory prices, and it appears that the
stocks held at the close of the year were not so heavy as had been
anticipated. The opium trade has lately been characterized by freedom

♦ Vide Abstract of Exports on the' trade of various counties and places
for the year 1855, presented to both Houses of ParUament by command of
Her Majesty, 1856. Pp. 29 to 36.

52 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

from the speculative fluctuations which were common when steam covor
munication with India was less regular, and the quotations during the
past year have heen steady ; hut, owing to the disorganized state of
the interior, the Chinese dealers have restricted their investments as
much as possihle. The tea produce of the season was very late, hut
ultimately large supplies came down, and an extensive business took
place at fiiU rates, although some of the medium classes were diverted
to the rising port of Foochow.

Three incidents are noticeable in this extract, viz. : —
the large amount of opium over British manufactures ;
the precarious state of the inland opium traffic ; and
the vigour with which legal trade in tea and other
articles is carried on, and might be extended.

The antagonism of legal and contraband trade
being thus brought out, let me remind your Lordship,
that Lord Dalhousie in his published minute on his
administration of the Government of India, estimates
that the opium monopoly will this year raise the
revenue to ^5,000,000 sterling, dependent of course
upon increased smuggling into China.

The city article of the Times of the 18th Sep-
tember 1856, which discusses the question of ex-
change that I purposely avoid entering into, states
that the exportation of English goods to China
during the last three years, has averaged only about
£1,300,000 ; with this I contrast the following state-
ment of the exportation of bullion, and adverting to
the present political and commercial state of China
leave others to decide whether opium smuggling is
or is not injurious to our manufactures, and whether
the income which the East India Company obtains
from the monopoly of the drug, is not drawn from a
source that ought to aliment om: national prosperity

COMMERCIAL RELATIONS.

53

by the production of cotton, &c. for home manufac-
tures, and promotion of a larger demand for those
manufactures abroad.

REPORT OF GOLD BULLION TO THE EAST,

FROM LONDON TO-
Calcutta ^

YEARS ENDING 7th JANUARY.

From
7th Jan. to
7th Sept

1852-1853.

1854.

1855.

1856.

1856.

800
20,950

• •

24,207
2,400

133,310

120
310,629

350

17,889

1,232

276,912

769
8,327
1,500

136,517

Madras #•••••••••••

Bombay ••••••••••••

Singapore, Penaog, &'
China J

Total ....£

21,250

159.917

310,749

296,383

147,118-

EXPORT OF SILVER BULLION TO THE EAST.

FROM LONDON TO-
Calcutta £

YEARS ENDING 7th JANUARY.

From
7th Jan. to
7th Sept

1852-1853.

1854.

1855.

1856.

1856.

1,266,098
106,979
948,206

117,397

985,516

228,882

1,667,976

2,084,445

125,758

26,392

108,755

2,943,411

2,372,145

177,640

2,369,315

1,419,913

2,525,114

191,833

2,955,430

2,652,268

Madras

BomliAV ...•>«••••••

Singapore, Penang, &1
China J

Total .... £

2,438,680

4,966,819

3,204,336

6,339,013

8,324,645

EXPORT OF SILVER BULLION.

From MEDITERRANEAN
PORTS TO—

Calcutta £

YEARa

From
January to
4tli June.

From
January to
4th June.

1853.

1854.

1855.

1856.

1856.

88,517

175,561

5,785

643,612

No return
do
do

do

603,141

289,014

51,344

571,813

Gold.

i>
10,000

ft

50,000

Silver.

88,099
101,663

81,885

348,797

Madras

Bombav ••••••••••*.

Singapore, Penang, &1
China /

Total £

913,475

do

1,515,312

60,000

570,444

54 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

A Committee of the House of Commons deputed
in 1847, to take into consideration the state of our
commercial relations . with China, reported thus,
*'We regret that the trade with that country has
been for some time in a very unsatisfactory condition,
and that the result of our extended intercourse has
by no means realised the just expectations which had
naturally been founded on a free access to so mag-
nificent a market" From the same report maybe
taken passim the following extracts; ''We find that,
the difficulties of the trade do not arise from any
want of demand in China for articles of British
manufacture, or from the increasing competition of
other nations; the payment for opium from the
inordinate desire for it which prevails, and from the
unrecognised nature of the transaction, which
requires a prompt settlement of accounts, absorbs
the silver to the great inconvenience of the general
traffic of the Chinese, and tea and silk must in fact
pay the rest."

Another circumstance must be taken into consi-
deration, which is the probability that in the present
distracted state of China, bulhon is withdrawn from
commerce and secreted by the people as a measure
of security against future vicissitudes.

I have the honour to be, &c.

R. ALEXANDER.

LETTER IV.

TESTIMONIES AGAINST THE CONTRABAND TRADE IN OPIUM.

My Lord^

I have felt the diflBculty of condensing the
almost incredible operations of Inore than a half-
century's traffic, and their effects upon a people who
cling with unenlightened pertinacity to customs
which they trace back, with national pride, through
long ages of ancestral history and tradition ; these
customs still remain, and, however barbarous we
may deem them, they witness against the boasted
enhghtenment and Christianity of Great Britain,
who, by her intercourse with China, leaves their per-
manency unaltered, and has, as yet, introduced to
millions of heathen men, women, and children, but
little beyond the lawless enterprise of contraband-
ism, and the unmitigated misery inseparable^ from its
success.

I here adduce some very competent native autho-
rities on the subject, beginning with the statement of
Kinshan, one of the Uterati of Nankin, in 1836 :—

56 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

" Opium is a poisonous drug, brought from foreign countries. At
first the smokers of it merely strive to follow the fashion of the day, but
in the sequel the poison takes effect, and the habit becomes fixed. The
sleeping smokers are like corpses, — lean and haggard as demons ; such
are the iiyuries it does to life ; it throws whole families into ruin, dissi-
pates every kind of property, and destroys man himself. There cannot
be a greater evil than this. In con^arison with arsenic, I pronounce it
to be tenfold the greater poison, for those who smoke the drug are
injured in many ways. 1st. It exhausts the animal spirits. Hence the
youth who smoke will shorten their days, and those in middle age who
smoke, will hasten the termination of their years. 2nd. It impedes the
regular performance of business. 3rd. It wastes the flesh and blood.
Flesh is gradually worn away and consumed from the robust who smoke,
and their skin hangs down like bags, — the faces of the weak who smoke,
are black and cadaverous, and their bones are naked as billets of wood.
4th. It dissipates every kind of property. 5th. It renders the person
ill-feivoured — mucus flows from their nostrils, and tears from their eyes,
— their Very bodies are putrid and rotten. 6th. It promotes obscenity.
7th. It discovers secrets. 8th. It violates laws. 9th. It attacks the
vitals. 10th. It destroys Hfe. When he has pawned everything in his
possession, he will pawn his wife, and sell his daughters. Such are the
inevitable consequences."

Choo Tsun, in an able memorial, in which he
deprecates the legalizing of the opium trade, says : —

" To sum up the matter, the wide-spreading and baneful influence of
opium, when regarded sunply as iiyurious to property, is of inferior im-
portance, — ^but when regarded as hurtful to the people, it demands most
anxious consideration ; for on the people lies the very foimdation of the
empire."

Heu Naitsi, in a memorial to the Emperor, recom-
mending the legalizing of the traflSc in opium, says : —

" The population of this vast empire has increased from year to
year, but now the evil practice is spreading widely, and checking this
increase. All men smoke, the high and the low, the old and the
young, and life is degraded and shortened ; the subsistence of families
is wasted, and the wealth of the land is passing away."

CHINESE REMONSTRANCES. 57

The following is a translation of a paper, written
to dissuade men from opium-smoking, which was
placarded in the streets of Canton ;

" Of all the evils wMch afflict mankind, the greatest are those
which he perversely brings upon himself. In this life, he not only
follows up a line of conduct that leads him to a miserable death, but
he contentedly sinks down to the lowest of his species, and becomes
an object of hatred and scorn to his fellow-men. When people begin to
smoke, they at first observe no evil effects produced by it ; but having
smoked it still longer, the constitution gives way, the interior gradually
decays, thousands of worms and maggots gnaw the intestines, their
faces become discoloured, their teeth black, their appearance like char-
coal, their necks shrink in, and their whole frame is hateful as
that of a ghost or devil (which is the reason they are called' opium-
smoking devils), and, in fine, they insensibly hug their bane, till death
overtakes them in the very act. At first it was merely used by the
people of Canton and Tuhkien provinces, and those parts which border
on the sea ; now, however, it has gone East and West, it has crossed
the frontiers into Tartary ; nor is there a province in the empire where
it has not found its way. At first none but a few depraved wretches
of the male sex used it ; and now we find that even Buddhist and
Taonist priests, married women and young girls, are addicted to the life-
destroying drug. In every item, in every respect, the evil is becoming
more grave daily, more deeply-rooted than before ; so much so, that its
baneful influence seems to threaten, little by little, to degrade the whole
Qf the population of the Celestial Empire to a level with reptiles,
wild beasts, dogs and swine. Those foreigners, by means of their
poison, dupe and befool the natives of China. It is not only that year
by year they abstract thereby many millions of our money, but the
direful appearances seem to indicate a wish on their part utterly to
root out and extirpate us as a people. I repeat, that from the time of
our becoming a nation, until now, never did any evil, at first so bland^
80 enticing, blaze so fearfully as does this dreadful poison.''

That distinguished Chinese statesman, the late
Commissioner Lin, in the extraordinary letter which
he addressed to the Queen of England, expresses
the following sentiments : —

58 OPIUM SMUQOLINO.

" That in the ways of heaven no partiality exists, and no sanction is
allowed to the injuring of others, for the advantage of one's self; that
in man's natural desires, there is not any great diversity (for where is
he who does not abhor death and seek life ?), these are universally
acknowledged principles. Though not making use of opium one's self,
to venture, nevertheless, on the manu&cture and sale of it, and with it
to seduce the simple folk of this land, is to seek one's own livelihood
by the exposure of others to death — ^to seek one's own advantage by
other men's injury ; and such acts are bitterly abhorrent to the nature
of man, are utteriy opposed to the ways of Heaven."

The same Commissioner in his address to foreigners,
on the wickedness of smuggling opium, indignantly
asks: —

" Why do you bring to our land the opium which in your own lands
is not made use of ? by it defrauding men of their property, and causing
injury to their lives ? I find that by this thing you have seduced and
deluded the people of China these tens of years past ; and countless are
the uiyust hoards that you have thus acquired. Such conduct rouses
indignation in every human breast ; and it is utterly inexcusable in the
eye of Celestial reason. It is then a traffic on which Heaven looks with
disgust ; and who is he that may oppose its will ? If, then, your laws
forbid it to be consumed by yourselves, and yet permit it to be sold that
it may be consumed by others, this is not in conformity with the prin-
* ciple of doing unto others what you would they should do unto you."

Such remonstrances and statements of the evils
resulting to China from this trafl5c, might be largely
multiplied. But I will conclude them by repeating
the noble declaration of the late Emperor, made in
1844, when urged to legahze the trade — a declara-
tion which is worthy of being inscribed on the ar-
chives of other empires and kingdoms than that of
China : — '' It is true, I cannot prevent the intro-
duction of the flowing poison; gain-seeking and
corrupt men will, for profit and sensuaUty, defeat my

BRITISH TESTIMONIES AGAINST ITS EVILS. 59

wishes; but nothing will induce me to derive a

revenue from the vice and misery of my people/*

I now turn to the statements of Europeans, who

have witnessed these frightful and appalling evils.

The distinguished Missionary, the Rev. W. H. Med-

hurst, D.D., now of Shanghai, stated, at difiTerent

times, that —

** Those who have not seen the effects of opiom-smoking in the
Eastern World, can hardly form any conception of its ii^jurious results
on the health, energies, and lives of those who indulge in it The de-
bilitating of the constitution, and the shortening of life, are sure to
follow in a few years after the practice has been commenced. The
dealers in opium are little aware how much harm they are the uistni-
ments of doing, by carrying on this demoralising and destructiYe traffic,
but the differences between the increase of the Chinese people before
and after the introduction of opium ought to open their eyes, and lead
them to ask themselves whether they are not accoimtable for all the
diseases and deaths of all those who have suffered by its iatroduction.
And, if it be true that the Chinese increased at the rate of three per
cent, per annum before the commencement of the traffic, and at the
rate of one per cent, per annum since, it would be well for them to con-
sider, whether the d^ciency is not to be attributed, in some degree, to
opium, and the guilt to be laid at the door of those who are instrumental
in introducing it. In putting down the slave-trade, it was not considered
too much to maintain a naval force on the coast of AMca ; and to
abolish slavery in the British dominions, the sum of £20,000,000
sterling was willingly sacrificed ; yet slavery was not productive of more
misery and death than the opium traffic, nor were Britons more impli*
cated in the former than the latter. In the case before us, however, no
compensation-money could be demanded, and only a few light-armed
vessels would be requked. The lands now employed in the cultivation
of the poppy, being necessarily rich and fertile, would, if laid out in the
raising of other productions, be equally valuable to the possessors; and,
while the revenue was not diminished, the happiness, health, and
industry of the people, would be increased ; in addition to which, the
Divine blessing would, doubtless, be doubly bestowed on those who
renounced an apparent benefit to themselves in order to extend a real
good to others.^

60 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

Mr. Majoribanks, President of the Select Com-
mittee at Canton, observed in reference to the use of
opimn by the Chinese, —

" Opium can only be regarded, except when used as a medicine, as
a pernicious poison. To any Mend of humanity it is a painful subject
of contemplation that we should continue to pour this black and en-
venomed poison into the sources of human happiness. The misery and
demoralization occasioned by it ate almost beyond belief. Any man
who has witnessed its Mghtful ravages and demoralizing effects in
China must feel deeply on this subject."

A British merchant, in an Essay on the Opium
Trade, writes ; —

" There is but one point of difference between the intoxication of
ardent spirits and that of opium deserving of particular attention here,
and that is the tenfold force with which every argument against the
former applies to the latter. There is no slavery on earth to compare
with the bondage into which opium casts its victims."

Mr. Montgomery Martin exclaims —

"Why, the slave-trade was merciful compared with the opium-
trade ! We did not destroy the bodies of the Africans, for it was our
immediate interest to keep them alive ; we did not debase their natures,
corrupt their minds, nor destroy their souls. But the opium-seller
slays the body, after he has corrupted, degraded, and annihilated the
moisl being of unhappy sinners ; while every hour is bringing new
victims to a Moloch which knows no satiety, and where the English
murderer and Chinese suicide vie with each other in offerings at his
shrine."

Captain John Shepperd, recently Chairman of
the East India Company, who has often been in
China, gave in evidence that —

" The smoking of opium has the most demoralizing effects. To a
certain extent it destroys men's reason and faculties, and shortens life."

OFFICIAL TESTIMONIES AGAINST ITS EVILS. 61

Sir R. Inglis^ in the debate on opium in the
House of Parliament, April 4, 1843, stated that —

"He held in his hand a statement which had appeared in the

* Batavian Gazette,' being an account by an individual who had visited
one of the houses where opium was consumed. This individual said,

* I visited one of the opium-houses, and shall I tell you what I saw in
this ante-chamber of hell ? I thought it impossible to find anything
worse than the results of drinkii^ ardent spirits, but I have succeeded
in findmg something far worse.' He says he saw Malays, Chinese,
men and women, old and young, in one mass, in one common herd,
wallowing in their filth ; beastly, sensual, devilish, and this under the
eye of a Christian Government."

Captain Elliot, Her Majesty's Superintendent of
Trade at Canton, pointed out the necessity for the
occasional visits of vessels of war, to protect the
legal trade, on account of the embarrassments and
dangers arising from this illicit commerce. He wrote
to Lord Palmerston, Feb. 21, 1837 :—

" The fiict, that such an artide should have grown to be by far
the most important part of our import trade, is of itself a source of
painful reflection. And the wide-spreading mischief which the manner
of its pursuit has necessarily entailed, so ably and faithfully repre-
sented in some of the papers I have the honour to transmit to your
Lordship, aggravates the discomfort of the whole subject.

" And, perhaps, your Lordship may be led to think that a gradual
check to OUR own growth and imports would be qf salutary
effect.

** It cannot be good that the conduct of a great trade should be so
dependent upon the steady continuance of a vast prohibited traffic in
an article of vicious luxury, high in price, and liable to frequent and
prodigious fluctuation. In a mere commercial point of view, therefore,
1 believe it is susceptible of proof , that the gradual diversion of
British capital into other channels of employment than this, would be
attended with advantageous consequences, ^'^

* Fide " Correspondence relating to China, laid before the Houses of
Parliament m 1840."

62 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

And in another letter to Lord Palmerston he
says : —

*' No man entertains deeper detestation of the disgrace and sin of
this forced traffic on the coast of China than the humble individual
who signs this despatch. I see little to choose between it and piracy."

Lord Broughton, when President of the Board of
Control, in the debate in Parliament on the opium
question, spoke thus : —

" Far be it from me to wish to say anything less than was deserved
of the unfortonate results of that traffic, or to palliate them. He
could not but deprecate it as a vice, for a great vice it was."

The Rev. E. B. Squire, who resided several years
in China, as an agent of the Church Missionary
Society, says of the opium dens in Canton : —

" Never, perhaps, was there a nearer approach to hell upon earth,
than vrithin the precincts of these vile hovels, where likewise, gaming
is carried on to a great extent."

He adds :—

" Truly it is an engine in Satan's hand, and a powerful one ; but
let it never be forgotten that a nation professing Christianity supplies
the means, and that nation ia England, through her possessions in
Hindostan."

Again, the Rev. Howard Malcolm, of the United
States, says:—

" The great blot upon foreigners at Canton, though not upon all, is
the opium trade. We have little reason to wonder at the reluctance of
China to extend her intercourse with foreigners, when such intercourse
brings upon her pestilence, poverty, and crime, and disturbance. No
person can describe the horrors of the opium trade. That the govern-
ment of British India should be the prime abettors of this abominable
traffic, is vnrong, as we continue to introduce into China with one hand

THE OPIUM SMOKERS. 63

our transcendantly pure Christian Gospel, but with the other the
destructive and demoralizing opium drag I If ever the enterprising
spirit of our merchants shall succeed in breaking through the ^barrier
which ancient jealousies and habits still > &terpose to a free intercourse
with the interior of this vast empire, it will be by making the Chris-
tian missionary his pioneer, and by availing himself of that powerful
impulse which religious zeal in a righteous cause can alone confer and
sustain. The examples of disinterestedness and imiversal good-will
which our Christian missionaries and physicians have exhibited in
union, in China, in the free hospitals already established at Canton
and Hong Kong, are calculated to soften the obdurate hearts, and
have not been altogether thrown away, even upon the lawless and
hostile population of Southern China. It can hardly be necessary to
add that whatever thus raises the moral, religious, and social character
of foreigners in China, must tend, in an eminent degree, to a juster
appreciation amongst the Chinese of the advantages generally of
foreign intercourse."

From different parts of a narrative of an ex-
ploratory visit to each of the Consular cities of
China, in the Years 1844, 1845, 1846, by the Rev.
George Smith, now Bishop of Victoria. I extract
the following passages : —

" Our own vessel, though not engaged in the opium trade, carried
750 chests, which were discharged on board one of the receiving ships
stationed at Woo Sung. My Chinese boy more than once asked me
whether I knew there was opium on board, and what I should say in
reply to the Chinese, if, after hearing me speak about Yay-soo-taou-le,
* Jesus' doctrines,' they should ask why I had come in a ship that
brought opium, of which so many of his countrymen ate and perished?"

Again, at page 499 : —

" The Chinese as a Government have been, during the last half
century, opposed to the introduction of opium into the country. Indi-
vidual officers have, for the sake of peace or bribes, doubtless connived
at the evil ; but, as a Govemment,thGjh3.Ye prohibited the introduction
of opium by that inalienable, inviolable right, by which every Govern-

64 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

ment can exclude articles of contraband trade. Consistently with the
prohibited importation of opium, its growth has been interdicted in
China itself, in six provinces of which it has at various times been
clandestinely raised. The Chinese Government have always had it in
their power to exclude foreign opium, by the simple process of
encouraging the growth on their own soil. They have, however, pursued
the opposite course ; no sUght evidence that the moral evils greatly, if
not principally, influenced the prohibition of opium by the Imperial
Government."

Did space permit, I would gladly quote the whole
of the 29th chapter of the Bishop's work. He thus
describes the opium smokers : —

" They formed a motley group of sallow, sunken cheeks, and glassy,
watery eyes, as, with idiotic look and vacant laugh, they volunteered
items of information, and described the process of their own degradation.
There was to be seen the youth who, just emerging from boyhood, had
only commenced the practice and was now hastening to premature old
age ; there was the man of middle age, who, for half his life a victim
of this indulgence, was bearing to an early grave the wreck of his worn-
out constitution.; there was the elderly man, whose iron strength of
frame could better ward off the slow but certain advances of decrepitude,
but whose bloated cheek and vacant stare told of the struggle that was
raging within ; there was, again, the early spectacle of old age ; and
the man of sixty lived to tell of forty years consumed in the seductions
of this vice. They all assented to the evils of their course, and pro-
fessed a desire to be freed from its power. They all complained of loss
of appetite— of the agonizing craving of the early morning — of prostra-
tion of strength, — and of increasing feebleness ; but said they could not
gain resolution to overcome the habit. They all stated its intoxicating
effects to be worse than those of drunkenness, and described the extreme
dizziness and vomiting which ensued, so as to incapacitate them for
exertion. The oldest man, with strange inconsistency and candour
expatiated on the misery of his course. For three years he had
abandoned the indulgence, at the period of Commissioner Lin's edicts
and compulsory prohibition of opium. At the conclusion of the British
war, the foreign opium ships came unmolested to Amoy ; he opened an
opium shop for gain, and soon fell a victim to the drug. Some of the

OFFICIAL TESTIMONY AGAINST ITS EVILS. 65

Chinese aaked us to give them medicine to cure them of the habit. On
hearing that I was an English missionary, they exposed the inconsist-
ency of my rebuking them for smoking opium, while my countrymen
brought them the means of indulging it.

" The opium drain is severely felt in China, the more patriotic of their
scholars speak of the rapid decay of their cities from their ancient
wealth and splendour as the consequence of the system. This subject
is the great difficulty that will, sooner or later, embarrass the two Go-
vernments. Let then the Christian legislators of Great Britain look
to this evil, and boldly confront the danger. Let Indian revenues be
collected from other sources than from a nation whose Government we
have humbled to the dust, and incapacitated for the vigorous enforce-
ment of her laws. Britain has displayed her power, the giant's
attribute. Let her also exhibit the noble spectacle of a Christian
Government, superior to the arts of oppression, and actuated by a
regard for the best interests of mankind."

Sir George Staunton, than whom there is no
higher authority in questions pertaining to China,
thus expresses his view of the subject : —

" Every friend of humanity must surely desire that the revenues
raised from the vast and fertile fields of India should be derived from
a produce beneficial to man, rather than from one which, however
ingeniously defended, or at least palliated, unquestionably leads him
morally, as well as physically, to his destruction. It is mere trifling to
defend the cultivation of opium on the score of its utility in medicine.
The drug used in medicine, and that prepared for the purpose of a
vicious luxury, are well known to be totally and essentially different.
The same may be said of the attempt to place the abuse of opium upon
the same level with the abuse of spirituous liquors. It is the main
, purpose in the former case ; but in the latter it is only the exception.
Nor can the opium farms be fairly justified on the ground of their
supposed analogy to our gin-shops. It is true that our government
tolerates gin-shops, but at least it does not build and maintain them.
I cannot, therefore, but think that if Mr. Ball shall have decided the
Government of India to persevere in their encouragement of the culti-
vation of the grateftd, and at least innoxious, tea-shrubs, in place of
the seducing, but poisonous poppy, he will be entitled to the cordial
thanks of every genume philanthropist."

66 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

But what will our countrymen think of an extract
from Mons. Hue's '' Chinese Empire," published at
Paris in 1855 : —

" When we set off again, we remarked that our escort was much
more numerous than usual. Our palanquins proceeded between a
double line of lancers on horseback, whom it appeared the Governor of
Tchioung-tcheou had given us to protect us from robbers. These
robbers were the smugglers of opium, and we were informed that for
several years past they had come in great numbers to the province of
Yun-nan, and even as fer as Birmah, to fetch the opium sent to them
from India. They came back with their contraband goods quite openly^
but armed to the teeth, in order to be able to defy the mandarins who
might oppose their passage. Instances were mentioned to us, of
murderous conflicts in which both sides had fought desperately, the one
to keep, the other to get, the smuggled goods ; for Chinese soldiers are
only valiant against robbers and smugglers when they hope to get pos-
session of the booty themselves. When these armed bands of opium
traders meet any rich travellers on the road, they seldom fail to do a
little more business by attacking and plundering them.

" Everybody is aware of the unfortunate passion of the Chinese for
opium, and of the war this fiital drug occasioned in 1840, between
China and England. Its importance in the Celestial Empire is of
rather recent date, but there is no trade in the world the progress of
which has been so rapid. Two agents of the East India Company were
the first who, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, conceived the
deplorable thought of sending to China the opium of Bengal. Colonel
Watson and Vice-President Wheeler are the persons to whom the
Chinese are indebted for this new system of poisoning. History has
preserved the name of Parmentier; why should it not also those of
these two men ? Whoever has done either great good or great harm
to mankmd ought to be remembered, to excite either gratitude or
indignation.

" At present China purchases annually of the English opium to the
amount of seven millions sterling ; the traffic is contraband, but it is
carried on along the whole coast of the empire, and especially in the
neighbourhood of the five ports which have been opened to the Europeans.
Large fine vessels, armed like ships of war, serve as depots to the
English merchants, and the trade is protected, not only by the English
Government, but also by the mandarins of the Celestial Empire. The

FRENCH TESTIMONY AGAINST ITS EVILS. 67

law which forhids the smokmg of opium under pain of death, has indeed
never been repealed ; but every body smokes away quite at his ease
notwithstanding. Pipes, lamps, and all the apparatus for smoking
opium, are sold publicly in every town, and the mandarins themselves
are the first to violate the law and give this bad example to the people,
even in the courts of justice. During the whole of our long journey
through China, we met with but one tribunal where opiimi was not
smoked openly and with impunity.

'^ At Canton, at Macao, and at other ports open to European com-
merce, we have heard people attempt to justify the trade in opium, by
the assertion that its effects were not so bad as wa^ supposed ; and that,
as with fermented liquors and many other substances, the abuse only
was iiyurious. A moderate use of opium, it was said, was rather bene-
ficial to the feeble and lymphatic Chinese. Those who speak thus,
however, are commonly dealers in opium, and it is easy to suppose that
they seek by all possible arguments to quiet their consciences, which
can hardly fail to teU them they are committing a bad action. But the
spirit of trade and thirst of gold completely blind these men, who, with
this exception, are generous in their conduct, keep their purses always
open to the unfortunate, and are prompt in every good work. These
rich speculators live habitually in the midst of gaiety and splendour, and
think little of the frightful consequences of their detestable traffic.
When from their superb palace-like mansions on the sea shore, they see
their beautiful vessels returning from the Indies, gliding majestically
over the waves, and entering with all their sails spread into the port,
they do not reflect that the cargoes borne in these superb clippers are
bringing ruin and desolation to numbers of ^uuilies. With the exception
of some rare smokers who, thanks to a quite exceptional organisation,
are able to restram themselves within the bounds of moderation, all
others advance rapidly towards death, after having passed through the
successive stages of idleness, debauchery, poverty, the ruin of their phy-
sical strength, and the complete prostration of their intellectual and
moral faculties. Nothing can stop a smoker who has made much
progress in this habit ; incapable of attending to any kind of business,
insensible to every event — ^the most hideous poverty, and the sight of a
family plunged into despair and misery, — cannot rouse him to the
smallest exertion, so complete is the disgusting apathy in which he is
sunk.

" For several years past some of the southern provinces have been
actively engaged in the cultivation of the poppy and the £sibrication of

68 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

opium. The English merchants confess that the Chinese product is of
excellent quality, though inferior to that of Bengal ; but the English
opium suffers so much adulteration before it reaches the pipe of the
smoker, that it is not in reality as good as what the Chinese themselves
prepare. The latter, however, though delivered perfectly pure, is sold
2^t a low price, and only consumed by the smokers of the lowest class.
That of the English, notwithstanding its adulteration, is very dear, and
reserved to smokers of distinction; a caprice which can only be
accounted for from the vanity of the rich Chinese, who would "think it
beneath them to smoke tobacco of native production, and not of a
ruinous price ; that which comes from a long way off must evidently
be preferable,

" 'Tutto il mondo,^ fatto come la nostra famigHa.*

" It may be easily foreseen, however, that this state of things cannot
last ; and it is probable that the Chinese will soon cultivate the poppy
on a large scale, and make at home all the opium necessary for their
consumption. The English cannot possibly offer an equally good article
at the same price ; and when the fashion, at present in their favour,
shall have altered, they will no longer be able to sustain the competition.
When that happens, British India will experience a terrible blow, that
may possibly even be felt in the English metropolis, and then, who
knows whether the passion of the Chinese for this fetal drug may not
decline. It would be by no means surprising if, when they can procure
opium easily, and at a low price, they should gradually abandon this
degrading and murderous habit.

" It is said that the people of London, and many of the great manu-
facturing towns of England, have been for some time addicted to the
use of opium, both in its liquid and solid form ; but the circumstance
has attracted little attention, though the progress of the habit is alarm-
ing. Curious and instructive would it be indeed, if we should one day
see the English going to buy opium in the ports of China, and their
ships bringmg back from the Celestial Empire this deleterious stuff to
poison England. Well might we exclaim in such a case, * Leave judg-
ment to God!'"

To add to such authorities — European, Ameri-
can, and Chinese — would be superfluous: I will
therefore conclude my extracts with another of the

OFFICIAL TESTIMONY AGAINST ITS EVILS. 69

emphatic statements of Mr. Montgomery Martin^
who, be it remembered, was Her Majesty's Treasurer
in China, and returned to England to lay before Her
Majesty's Government a Report on the state of our
affairs in that country. In the Minutes of Evidence
before the Select Committee of the House of Com-
mons, on commercial relations with China (1847)
are to be found the following question and answer : —

" 3941. In what respect do you think the trade injurious to us in
our relations with China ?

" 3942. Politically, with reference to our position with the Grovem-
ment of China. Had France, or America, or Eussia, granted us an
island on their coast, as a commercial station, and had they prohibited
the use of opium, believing it to be iiyurious, we dare not in that case
have made it a smoking-shop for the empire ; and I would not act to
the Chinese Government in a different manner than I would act to a
government in Europe. Then, socially speaking, I believe it is the
duty of this Government to uphold moral principles, iind to disseminate
religious truth, and she cannot do that with one hand, while on the
other she is introducing into China an amount of opiiun which furnishes
17 grains a-day to each of three millions of people, and which, in the
language of Mr. Lay, her M^gesty's late Consul at Amoy, is 'ham-
stringing the nation :' that was the expression of Mr. Lay. I think it
is desolating China, corrupting its government, and bringmg the feibric of
that extraordinary empire to a state of more rapid dissolution. Com-
mercially speakmg, it is iiyurious to us, because it prevents the extension
of our manu&ictures in China. Four or five mercantile houses are
engaged in that traffic, and derive a large amount of income from it,
but the trade in England is materially cramped by the extension of
opium consumption in China, to the extent of at least four millions
sterling."

That the stigma of smuggling is peculiarly British
I prove by the facts of the Spaniards prohibiting the
export of opium jfrom Manilla to China, and the
Dutch from Batayia. The Americans having, like

70 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

ourselves, entered into a treaty by which smuggling
the drug is prohibited, no vessel of the United States
dare cover the contraband article with their star-
spangled banner in the presence of their Consular
authorities* The red-cross flag of England, my
Lord, flies over the ships of other countries while
engaged in their buccaneering traffic, and our na-
tional faith is not only habitually broken, but was
especially dishonoured, when so late as September,
1856, the English opium smugglers, at anchor at
Foo Choofoo, saluted with their cannon his Excel-
lency Sir J. Bowring, Her Britannic Majesty*s repre-
sentative in China.

Nor let any one imagine that England is allowed
to encourage crime with impunity. Retribution is
overtaking us, and the plague is spreading, es-
pecially among our working classes, and with the
votaries of fashionable hfe. Besides the use of
opium in other ways, I am informed by an eye-
witness that miscreants, who probably learned the
trade in China or India, have established smoking
dens in London, at which victims are intoxicated
cheaper than with gin.

I have the honour to be, &c.,

R. ALEXANDER.

i k

LETTER V.

the illegality op the opium monopoly, and
suggestions for its suppression.

My Lord,

The last point which I undertake to
assert is, that not only is the opium traffic contraband
in China, but that the opium monopoly in India is as
contrary to the laws of this kingdom, as to the dictates
of humanity, and every sound principle of inter-
national policy and commercial economy.

To maintain this proposition, T turn to the Act
of Parliament 3 & 4 William IV, cap. 85, entitled
" An Act for effecting an arrangement with the East
India Company, and for the better government of
His Majesty's Indian territories (28th August 1833,)
by the third section of which is enacted, ''that the
exclusive right of trading with the dominions of the
Emperor of China, and of trading in tea, continued
to the said Company by the Act of the fifty-third
year of King George the Third, shall cease."

Had legislation stopped here, it would have left
no alternative but for obedience to be rendered
according to the literal meaning of a positive com-
mand. But not only did Parliament enact that the
exclusive right of trading with China should cease, it
went on by the fourth section of the same Act
ftirther to prescribe, that '' the said Company shall

72 OPIUM MONOPOLY.

with all convenient speed after the 22nd day of April
1834^ close their commercial business and make sale
of all their merchandise^ stores and effects, at home
and abroad, distinguished in their account books as
commercial assets, and all their warehouses, lands,
tenements, hereditaments, and property whatsoever,
which may not be retained for the Government of the
said territories, and get in all debts due to them on
account of the commercial branch of their affairs,
and reduce their commercial establishments as the
same shall become necessary, and discontinue and
abstain from all commercial business which shall not
be incident to the closing of their actual concerns,
and to the conversion into money of the property
hereinto-before directed to be sold, or which shall
not be carried on for the purposes of the said
Government,"

So fiilly in earnest was the mind of the nation
upon this important question : so determined in its
deliberate wisdom to put an end to the anomaly of a
Sovereign power being engaged in speculations and
unseemly competition with the interests of its subjects,
that by Section VI. of the above-named Act, the
Board of Control was authorised ''to superintend,
direct, and control the sale of the said merchandise,
stores and effects, and other property herein-before

directed to be sold, and the said

Board shall and may appoint such ofl&cers as shall
be necessary to attend upon the said Board during
the winding up of the commercial business of the
said Company."

ILLEGAL BY ACT OF PARLIAMENT. 73

Such was the law introduced by the Minister of
the Crown to the House of Commons, carried through
the Peers, and estabUshed by the concurrent autho-
rity of the three constitutional powers of the realm.
Its purposes and provisions were so fully apprehended,
that whatever fell imder the vigilant observation of
the people of this country, was, with legal prompti-
tude carried into effect The East India Company
parted with the finest commercial navy the world
had ever seen, and pensioned the officers of that de-
partment of their service : trade property was sold,
accounts closed, and warehouses disposed of; the
delegated sovereignty of the East was raised to its
proper dignity, and commerce, relieved firom the
trammels in which it had been guided and restrained
since the year 1600, appeared to have a fair field for
free trade, to the reciprocal benefit of Great Britain,
China, and our empire in India, Parliament and
people, happy in this as in other instances, to think
that an important question had beeh satisfactorily
settled, confided in the obedient integrity of the
executive authorities, and turned their attention to
other subjects. That this national confidence has
not been justified is manifest in the fact, that though
the East India Company relinquished trade in tea,
and all that was deemed competitive in England, they
illegally retained two monopolies by which free trade
and production were most effectually repressed
abroad. By the salt monopoly, the use of one of the
principal supports of human existence is restricted
in quantity and enhanced in price to 150,000,000 of

74 OPIUM MONOPOLY.

our Indian fellow subjects ; and by the monopoly of
opium^ a poisonous drug is cultivated for^ and sold
by, tile East India Company, for the purpose of so
*' exclusively trading with the dominions of the Em-
peror of China/* that no other opium shall be brought
into competition.

It is also to be remarked, that although imder
the 33rd George III, cap. 52, sec. cxxxvi, the in-
land trade in salt, beetle nut, tobacco, and rice, was
granted to the East India Company, that of opium
was not included — ^by what right, therefore, the local
Government maintained the odious monopoly of this
drug, or continued that of salt, after the Act 3 & 4
of William IV, cap. 85, was passed; is not to be
discovered by a perusal of the laws under which
India is, or should be, governed. All that appears by
them is, that of the two monopohes now in existence,
that of opium was never granted by the law of this
country, and both it and the monopoly of salt have
been exercised with more intense illegality since the
year 1834, when the present corporation ceased to be
'^ the United Company of Merchants trading to the
East Indies," and by virtue of Sect, cxi, 3 & 4
William IV, cap. 85, became the *' East India Com-
pany" without either commercial charter, rights,
privileges, or designation*

If ambiguities were to be recognised in Acts of
ParUament, I confess that one might be suspected in
the concluding words of Sect, iv, 3 & 4 Wilham IV,
cap. 85. To show, however, that ''the purposes of
Government" there meant, are only such as might be

BRITISH RESPONSIBILITY^ 75

lawfully carried on after the cessation of all trade
and the closing of all commercial accoimts^ reference
may be made to the explanatory note in the margin
of the Act, which, though not of judicial authority,
may in all fairness be taken to express the mind of
ParKament, as understood by the House and its own
officers, in these words, '^ Company to close their
commercial business, and to sell their property not
retained for Government;*' this obvious meaning
is borne out by the evident necessity of so far quali-
fying the preceduig part of the section, as to enable
the Company to retain unsold their house in Leaden-
hall Street, and the various Government houses, pubhc
offices, and depots, which every State must possess
for transaction of its business, safe keeping of clothing
and arms for troops, ordnance material, provisions,
and grain.

It is only on the supposition that the East India
Company must have something to adduce in ex-
tenuation of their flagrant violation of the laws of their
country, and because I cannot discover any other
passage in the Acts of Parliament that could be used
as a peg on which to hang a plausibility in explanation
of their conduct, that I enter so fiilly upon what might
otherwise appear unworthy of argument. Let me,
however, if possible, exhaust the subject.

My argument is strengthened by the 5th section
of the above-named Act of Wilham IV, which pro-
vides that '' the Company may sell at the sales of their
own goods and merchandise by this Act described, or
authorised to be sold, such goods and merchandise

76 OPIUM MONOPOLY.

the property of other persons, as they may now
lawfully sell at their public sales." By section 4, no
commercial business, and consequently no sales, are
permitted to the Company except for the purpose of
winding up their trading business: by section 5,
they may sell at such sales, but at no others, the
goods of other persons : therefore, even though opium
should be incidentally included in this permission, it
is plainly only allowable to sell it at such sales as are
authorised by the Act itself — ^whereas it is a patent
fact that the sales of opium are a distinct thing, and
in no way connected with the sale of any other
merchandize.

But admitting, merely on behalf of the East
India Company, that a British Parhament could
have been so lost to all feelings of legislative dignity,
as purposely to have left open a door for opiimi
smuggling to be driven through its Act, the futility
of such proceeding is palpable to every mind
acquainted with the ftindamental principle of our
common law, that nothing can be recognised as legiti-
mate which is contrary to reason and religion. That
the opium traffic is under every aspect and in every
incident contrary to both, is simply proved by the
monopoly in India being arbitrary and impolitic, and
the trade in China contraband, carried on against the
known laws of the empire, and deeply dyed with the
blood of its victims and opponents. Reason and re-
ligion ahke condemn its existence and its crime, and
both are happily combined in the dicta of the great
commentator on our laws. In Vol. I, of Blackstone,

ILLEGAL BY ACT OF PARLIAMENT. 77

and in the third section, which treats of '^ The Laws
of England/' we find among the rules given for the
construction of Statutes, that ** One part of a Statute
must be so construed by another, that the whole may
(if possible) stand : ut res magis valeat, quam pereatJ*
We find also these words : " Lastly, Acts of Parliament
that are impossible are no vahdity; and if there
arise out of them collaterally any absurd conse-
quences, manifestly contradictory to common reason,
they are, with regard to these collateral consequences,

void Where some collateral matter

arises out of the general words, and happens to be
unreasonable, then the judges are in decency to con-
clude that this consequence was not foreseen by Par-
liament ; and therefore they are at liberty to expound
the statute by equity, and only quoad hoc disregard
it" Now, to such a construing of our laws, I gladly
commit the few concluding words of the section of
our Act of Parhament, well assured by common
reason, and every idea of decency, that it was not
foreseen by Parhament, that an Act for the cessa-
tion of legal commerce was to convey either sanction
or authority for the most outrageous contrabandism
by which humanity has ever been disgraced.

The limits of a pamphlet obhge me to omit from
these letters much that I desire to bring to the know-
ledge and consideration of its readers, who yet require
to be informed of the atrocities of the opium trade in
Cochin China, Siam, Borneo, Sumatra, and on the
coasts and islands of the Malay peninsula; of the
demoralization that follows upon the gambling and
respondentia transactions connected with Government

78 OPIUM MONOPOLY.

sales in Calcutta^ and opium speculations at Bombay,
as ruinous to individuals as axe, in this country, the
risks upon horse racing to the victims of the turf.
I could bring forward much more evidence from our
Parliamentary Blue Books, and also show to my
countrymen how such distinguished men as the
Count de Montalembert* and other French and
American writers hold up to the reprobation of
mankind a traffic, the opprobrium of which is at-
tached to our nation by the suicidal impolicy of the
East India Company and the oversight or connivance
of a Minister of the Crown.

But it may, and I presume it wil], be asked, what
is the East India Company to do for the revenue
derived from this source ? I might answer. Let
the merchants and Parliament of Great Britain
answer that question ; or, taking a higher ground,
point to an example in oiur Bibles, recorded in the
Second Book of Chronicles, xxv. 9, — ''And Ama-
ziah said. But what shall we do for the two hundred
talents ? And the man of God answered. The Lord
is able to give thee much more than this/' On the
authority of parties interested in the present system,
«. e. opium agents, whose writings I have before me,
I find that the poppy requires the richest lands in
India for its cultivation, and is a plant of extreme
delicacy, and liable to injury in many ways from
variations of temperature, changes of wind, a greater
or less quantity of dew, and other frequently occur-
ing causes. The soil best suited for its growth is
the best adapted for the richest productions of

♦ ** The Political Future of England," by Count de Montalembert, p. 219.

MEANS OF SUFPRESSION, 79

the East, — such as sugar, cotton, indigo, and others,
for which this country can give her manufactures
in exchange. Why, my Lord, it seems to be an
insult to the administrative wisdom and moral
feelings of our nation to entertain for a moment
such a supposition, as that in the undeveloped
resources of the richest portion of the globe, inha-
bited by upwards of 150,000,000 intelligent subjects
of our gracious Sovereign, there are not sufficient
means of raising revenue* without having recoinrse
to an expedient as degrading as it is uncertain. By
such political economy we are exposed, not only to
the contempt of true statesmen and philanthropists,
but to that righteous retribution which both Divine
Revelation and the whole history of mankind show
to be inextricably involved in every unholy system
based upon false principles. The East India Com-
pany appear blind to the dangerous precariousness
of the profits upon which they rely, and to the fact
that with the growth of their monopoly has also
grown the impending element of its destruction,
either by success of the demand now made in the
name of justice and humanity for the abolition of
opium smuggling, or by the eventually certain climax
of its perishing under the weight and consequences of
accumulated misery and crime.

Let, however, the East India Company diminish
its advances for poppy cultivation by twenty or
twenty-five per cent per annum, maintaining its own

♦ See on this important subject Colonel Arthur Cotton's pamphlet, pub-
lished by Richardson & Co., " Profits on British Capital expended on Indian
Public Works;'* also that officer's and Mr. Bourne's pamphlets, "Public
Works in India."

80 OPIUM SMUGGLING.

imposed restrictions upon the growth, and in a few
years there would not be produced more than suffi-
cient opium for the purposes of legal trade and jus-
tifiable uses. Their government would thus free itself
from the odium of an illegal and impohtic monopoly;
and, acting in accordance with the right principle,
which I quoted from a paper of their own publica-
tion, would afford opportunity for private capital to
be employed in those districts from whence mono-
poly excludes competition, and where the wealth of
the Government Treasury excites an unnatural de-
velopment; in the ordinary course of events, this
would soon subside, and the legal cultivation and
trade in opium fall to their level in the relative value
and importance of sound commercial enterprise.
Most deeply are our manufacturers and merchants
interested in this question ; for there is not a poppy
field in which cotton might not be grown, nor a chest
of opium provided in India that does not render
Manchester and the trading cities and towns of
Great Britain more dependent upon the American
market for slave produce from the shores of the
Mississippi.

One sentence, my Lord, from a despatch of the
East India Company, would, if acted upon in sin-
cerity, settle the whole question : —

'' Were it possible to prevent the use of the

DRUG altogether, EXCEPT STRICTLY FOR THE PURPOSE
OP MEDICINE, WE WOULD GLADLY DO IT IN COMPASSION
TO MANKIND."

I have the honour to be.
Your Lordship's most obedient Servant,

London Nov. 1856. R. ALEXANDER.

V

WHAT IS THE OPIUM TRADE

BY DONALD MATHESON, ESQ.

FORMERLY OF CHINA.

EDINBURGH: THOMAS CONSTABLE AND CO.
HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO., LONDON.

MDCCCLVII.

WHAT IS THE OPIUM TRADE?

As 80 little is known by the public generally on the subject
of the trade in Opium with China, and as erroneous and exag-
gerated views have been put forth in the absence of correct
information, it is hoped that the following plain statement of
facts may not seem uncalled for at the present time.

The first inquiry which naturally suggests itself is, — ^What
is opium-smoking, for which this extensive trade exists ?

Opium-smoking, then, is not, as some suppose, similar to
tobacco-smoking, where the smoke is merely taken into the
mouth and forthwith puffed out again. In the case of opium,
the fumes are inhaled into the lungs by a deep-drawn breath,
and retained as long as possible. There they '^ act on the ner-
vous fibres that are spread over the extensive membrane which
lines every cell of the lung," and the effect of this process on
the human system is even more injurious than that of eating
opium. In proof of this it may be stated^ that the regular
smoker in China arrives at the same stage of delirium by the
use of about one-third of what is required by a regular opium-
eater in Turkey.* When a Chinese is about to partake of the
indulgence, he retires to a private apartment, and, reclining on
a couch^ takes his pipe, made for the purpose, and placing upon
the bowl of it a little opium, about the size of a pea, he sets it

* Dr. Smith, while at Smyrna, took pains to observe what the doses of opium
taken hy the Turks in general were. He found that three drachms in a day was
a cqnunon 4]nantity among the larger eaters of it, but that they conld take six
drachms a day wiihont mischief. — ^Rees* Eneydopcedia.

on fire at a small lamp, and then throwing himself back on the
couch, inhales the smoke at short intervals in a listless mood,
till he has attained the desired stimulus, or delirium, as the
case may be. If he is a confirmed victim, he usually falls into
a profound but restless sleep, till the effects of the indulgence
have passed off. In the latter case, the craving soon returns,
and with it all the languor bnd misery and pain, till the next
period of relief.

Evidence as to the pernicious effects of this practice on the
population is sufficiently abundant.* Nevertheless, being chiefly
gathered from what has been witnessed in the public smoking-
shops, and among the lower orders, it must be admitted that
this is but one phase of the case. The writer has inspected
some of these opium dens, and although more quiet prevails
there than in a London gin-palace, the grovelling sensuality is
greatly more painful to the visitor. On the other hand, as
practised in private houses, there is not the same outrage on
public decency as in the case of drunkenness. The victim
quietly sleeps off his debauch. But those who would compare
this with drinking wine, or ale, or even spirits, in moderation,
must be unwilling to look at it in its true light. The only
comparison that can be made is between opium-smoking and
drunkenness; and w^e all know the wretchedness which that
produces in our own land. Opium, however, is unquestion-

* Dr. Little states, that in 1847 there was in Singapore a population of 40,000
Chinese, male and female, of whom about 15,000 of both sexes smoked opium ; the
average quantity being about twenty grains' weight per day for each person,
although ranging from 10 to 200 grains (the latter in rare cases) per day. In the
course of his investigations he visited eighty licensed smoking-shops, and examined
603 persons who smoked opium. The rate of wages for a labourer there is about
six dollars per month, or one shilling per day, and this sum is also about the ave-
rage sum daily expended on opium by the Chinese in that settlement ; the poorer
victims in some cases expending their whole earnings. Some of these had been
addicted to the vice for twenty-five years ; but a much shorter period produced
sickness and emaciation. He states as the result of his experience, that "the
habitual use of opium not only renders the life of the man miserable, but is a
powerful means of shortening that life." He adds, " I cannot suppose, after what
has been written, that one individual can be found to deny the evil effects of the
habit, the physiqal disease it produces, with the prostration of mind and the cor-
ruption of morals." - Bee Dr. Little's pamphlet on the HabitualUie of Opium in
Singapore.

ably more seductive, and more tenacious in. its grasp, than
spirits.

Dr. Little remarks, — " A state of excitement, or one of seda-
tive tranquillity, is what is primarily desired by the opium-
smoker, and which, at first, is effected by a small quantity of
the drug. That small quantity soon loses its effect, and to
produce the same amount of excitement, the dose must be
doubled, and that again increased, till I have known the original
quantity multiplied one hundred-fold."

The writer has known men who have smoked opium for many
years without appai'ent injury, just as in this country we know
men who consume an alarming quantity of wine or spirits appa-
rently unscathed. Still, the Chinese, heathens as they are, un-
questionably look upon the indulgence as a vice, and not as a
harmless luxury. There are various ways in which the habit
takes root. A friend, who is suffering from headaches, is recom-
mended to try a whiff or two of the pipe, and finding it bring
relief, he recurs to it again and again, till the habit is formed,
and he is on the downward road to ruin. Others, again, take
a whiff or two to stimulate the faculties for the business of the
day, or to soothe the nervous irritation at the close of it. Others
begin the practice, as our young men at home, by imitating the
fashionable vices of their seniors. But in whatever way the
habit is formed, it has a fearful tendency to grow with what it
feeds upon. The truth is, the saying that a Chinese smokes
the " black dirt/' is the same as that among ourselves, that
such a one is " fond of his glass." Whatever hopes of immunity
may mingle with present appearances, we all feel that it fore-
bodes future evil.

Of some cases which have come under the writer's observa-
tion, two may be mentioned. An opium-broker, called Bighead,
gave the following testimony : — " He had been in the habit
of smoking the drug for three years past He commenced by
tasting samples as a dealer, and cannot now give it up. He
knows it is very bad for him — everybody knows that — but he
cannot help himself. The Chinese say, when a man smokes
opium, ^ that he is making his own coffin.' Formerly he had
been strong and muscular, now his arms and legs are thin and

weak, and his face of a black unhealthy colour. A Chinaman
that sniokes opium can do without rice {i. e. meals) for a time,
and without clothes too, but not without opium ; if he does not
get this, he wishes himself dead."

The career of a young man, named Keet-Kwan, was watched
with painful interest. He was a fine-looking man of about
twenty, with a wife and family, and with a singularly intelli-
gent, honest, and amiable countenance. He was employed
by a mercantile house in- China to go to Bombay to inspect
the season's supply of the drug. A year passed, and he
returned from Bombay. His face had a darker complexion,
and he was somewhat thinner, which might have been occa-
sioned by ordinary ill-health. He went the next year on a
similar voyage, and on his return the second time he was much
altered for the worse. His fine full eye was sunk, and flashed
wildly, — a livid hue appeared about his lips, and his whole face
was discoloured, as if he had been half-strangled. He had be-
come a confirmed opium-smoker. I remarked to his father —
" Your son smokes opium, I fear." He replied — " Ah 1 that is
a bad business, we need not talk of that ; I would give a hun-
dred dollars for physic to cure my son, were that possible 1"
Two months after this interview Keet-Kwan again made his
appearance, but now his eyes were lustreless, and a watery
rheum was secreted from them ; his features were thin, and
had a look of great delicacy, and his nose sharpened ; his neck
had lost all the volume of muscle which it formerly showed ;
his body was attenuated, and he stooped considerably. Two
years later I saw Keet-Kwan once more. It was now four
years since he commenced the habit. He seemed to have grown
twenty years older in the interval ! He was quite emaciated,
but retained his amiable expression. He was not a bad cha-
racter. He was a quiet respectable man, engaged in business ;
but he was hurrying to the grave, a victim to this fatally fas-
cinating drug.

But the injury done by this habit is not confined to the
individual ; it brings families to misery and ruin ; it tempts to
crime, and, being illegal, it leads to the demoralization of those
engaged in the retail trade ; and what is worst of all, it is

spreading rapidly. In proof of this, two extracts may be given
from letters lately received from most trustworthy witnesses in
China. The first is from the Kev. W. 0. Burns, who has been
more than eight years in that country, and who writes from
the neighbourhood of a station for opium vessels, called Namoa,
where the demoralizing influence of the traflic on the popula-
tion is more seriously felt than further inland. He writes,
under date July 16, 1856 : — "The ravages of opium we meet
with here on every hand, and the deterioration of the morals of
the people generally, I cannot but ascribe, in great part, to the
use of this ensnaring and destructive drug. When will mea-
sures be taken by those in power to lay an arrest on the opium
traflSc, which is inflicting such indescribable injury on this
people, and which threatens in its progress, by its direct, and
still more by its indirect efiects — poverty and anarchy — to sweep
away a great part of this nation from the face of the earth ?"

The second extract is from the Eev. Oarstairs Douglas, of
Amoy, who had been little more than a year in China at the
date of his letter, namely, August 21, 1856. He writes : —
" Friends at home often ask me about that question (opium-
smoking). I have been here too little time to say much upon
it We do see plainly that the vice is exceedingly prevalent
and destructive, and that it is steadily on the increase. The
nature and eflfects of the trade more and more seem to me to be
like those of the liquor traffic at home, with the additional ele-
ment of unlawfulness. We also see that about the most common
objection brought against us when we go out to preach is, that our
nation grows, and sends, and sells the opium. It is. also worthy
of remark, that so many persons are anxious to give up the use
of the drug, that the manufacture and sale of pills, which some-
what assist the attempt to give it up, forms almost a self-sup-
porting branch of our mission ; the sales of the medicine for
some months past averaging fifteen dollars a month, which just
about covers the necessary expenses."

It should also be borne in mind by those who contend that
this is only one form of pleasurable stimulus, of which every
nation upon earth possesses some kind or other, that opium is
not with the Chinese a national stimulant. They have had

their national stimulants of tea, wine, spirits, and tobacco, for
aught we know, for the last 4000 years, whereas opium-smoking
is not a century old among them, and is as yet most in use in
the coast provinces.

Under these circumstances, it need not surprise us that the
Chinese Government has prohibited the importation as well as
the use of the drug throughout the empire, and although these
prohibitions are now little more (han formal, there is no reason
to doubt its sincerity in the matter, as we may judge from the
severe measures enacted against its own subjects in 1838, im-
prisonment and death being then the pendties for smoking.
We have also the Emperor's steady refusal from first to last to
legalize the trade, even with the prospect of a large revenue.
The official reply of the Emperor Taou Kwang to such repre-
sentations on the part of our Government has been often
quoted : — " It is true I cannot prevent the introduction of the
flowing poison ; gainseeking and corrupt men will, for profit
and sensuality, defeat my wishes ; but nothing will induce me
to derive a revenue from the vice and misery of my people."
At present, however, there is comparative immunity from
punishment, and this, with the cheapness of the drug, causes a
rapid increase in the number of smokers. Their number is
now variously estimated at from three to nine millions.*

Opium, which in Europe is one of our most valuable medi-
cines, but which in China feeds this depraved taste, is manufac-
tured from the juice of the whit« poppy J a small quantity of
which is grown in Turkey and Persia, and in China itself; but
it is cultivated to the greatest extent in India, both in the
British dominions, and in the Independent native states.
The process of cultivation and manufacture may be shortly
described. The finest soil is required for the plant. The
seed is sown in November. The preparation of the ground,
and the subsequent weeding and watering, require much atten-
tion. The time for collecting the juice is in February and
March. The poppy heads are then cut or scratched with a
sharp instrument, and a milky juice exudes, which becomes

* The estimates differ according to the daily average a smoker is supposed to
consume, varying from twenty to sixty grains' weight of smokeable extract.

brown in colour and thick in consistency by exposure to the
sun and air, and is carefully collected by the farmer and hi8_
family. This is the crude opium. In Bengal this is delivered
by the small farmer to the agent of the East India Company.
It is then prepared under the inspection of these agents for the
China market. The principal districts in which the poppy is
grown are Patna, Benares, Behar, and Malwa, from which the
different kinds of drug derive their names. In Bengal it is
grown exclusively for the Grovernment, under severe penalties
for any infraction of the laws. It is understood also to be a
forced production, which could not be entered upon with profit
to the farmers, but for advances in money made by the Govern-
ment. This point is disputed ; but the poppy has undoubtedly
occupied some of the finest land formerly used for indigo, sugar, i
and other produce. ^

The opium is prepared by the Government agents for the
China market, by rolling it into large balls covered with a
coating of opium-paste and poppy leaves, so as to exclude the
air; it is then packed in chests — forty balls to a chest,
and transferred to the Government warehouses at Calcutta,
whei-e the drug is put up to auction at the Government
sales, of which there are four each season, at intervals of
a month, commencing with December or January. At these
sales the drug sells at prices varying from 700 to 1600 rupees
a chest, containing 116 lbs. weight, and yielding a profit to the *
Government of from £40 to £120 per chest. Their total
revenue from this source, including a transit duty on the
Malwa exported from Bombay, is estimated at five millions
sterling for the year 1857. Malwa opium is that grown in the
Independent native States. It must all pass through Bombay,
where, in order to keep down its production, it is charged with
a duty of 400 rupees (£40) per chest.

The merchants in India purchase the opium either on their
own account or for mercantile houses in China or elsewhere,
and it is then shipped in fast-sailing vessels capable of carrying
from 500 to 1000 chests. Of late years the monthly steamers
of the Peninsular and Orientarl Company have carried cargoes
of the drug to China.

8

The quantity thus imported into China from both sides
of India now exceeds 70,000 chests, roughly estimated at
£7,000,000 sterling. A portion also goes to Singapore for
consumption throughout the islands of the eastern Archipelago.

On arrival in China, say at Hong Kong, the opium is usually
transferred to large receiving ships stationary in the harbour,
the storing of opium on the island being prohibited by our
Government.*^ From these receiving ships, supplies are for-
warded in small schooners and other fast sailing craft to dif-
ferent points on the coast according to the demand.

At these coast stations there is no other trade carried on but
that in opium. The drug is transferred from the small
schooners to ships permanently anchored there, and the local
Chinese Government makes no attempt whatever to interfere,
as it is enriched by the bribes or fees of the native dealers.
These dealers come oflf in boats to purchase the opium, bring-
ing silver in payment ; but if the station be the outer anchorage
of one of the free ports, such as Shanghae, Fuh-Chow, Amoy,
or Canton, the sale is usually made on shore, in exchange for
silver or Chinese produce, and an order given on the ship for
delivery of the quantity sold.

The opium being thus conveyed into the country by the na-
tive dealers, it undergoes a process of boiling down to fit it for
smoking. This reduces the weight one-half, so that one chest
of the drug yields only half a chest of smokeable matter. It is
then retailed at smoking-shops, or purchased by the wealthier
classes for use at home. The laws against smoking are now so
completely in abeyance, that the smoking shops in the free
ports are almost as numerous as our own public-houses. Al-
though this freedom from legal restraint exists, there is no
question that the moral feeling of the Chinese Government and
people is against the indulgence, and it is this which contri-
butes in some measure to keep down the consumption.

Let us now trace as shortly as possible the course of this
trade. Before the year 1800, only a small legal trade in opium
was carried on with China, but in that year the drug was
made contraband by the Chinese Government. This was done
in consequence of a memorial from a leading statesman, who

* Since the abore was printed, this statement has been found incorrect. For some years past the
prohibition has been removed, and Opiom is now stored largely on the island of Hong Kong.

makes it " a subject of deep regret that the vile dirt of foreign
countries, should be received in exchange for the commodities
and the money of the Empire, and fearing lest the practice of
smoking opium should spread among all the people of the inner
land to the waste of their time and destruction of their pro-
perty/' he requests that " the sale of the drug should be
prohibited, and that offenders should be made amenable to
punishment." In spite of this the annual importations rose
gradually from 2000 chests in 1800 to 5000 in 1820. Till 1820
opium had been mixed up with the legal merchandise at the port
of Canton, but in that year the authorities again became alarmed
at the extent of the traflSc, and obliged the merchants to give
security that no opium was on board before the ship could
discharge her cargo at Whampoa ; this led to the storing of
it in receiving ships at Lintin at the mouth of the Canton river,
and this system continued till the year 1834, when the impor-
tations exceeded 20,000 chests. During the period from 1820
to 1834 occasional collisions took place between the native
smugglers and the Chinese authorities, arising out of disputes
as to the amount of fees, but none occurred between that Go-
vernment and the British receiving ships. In continuing this
narrative, we quote from Williams' "Middle Kingdom*': —
" Towards the close of the East India Company's charter, in
1834, the contraband trade in opium, oflf the Bogue and along
the coast eastward, had assumed a regular character. The fees
paid for connivance at Canton were understood, and the highest
persons in the province were not ashamed to participate in the
profits of the trade. The attempts to sell it along the eastern
coast had been mostly successful, and almost nothing else could
be sold. . . , The increasing demand at Namoa and Chinchew
(on the coast) led to the frequent despatch of small vessels, one
taking the place of another, and finally to stationing receiving
ships there, to aflford a constant supply. The local authorities,
finding their paper edicts quite powerless to drive them away,
followed the practice of their fellow-oflScers at Canton, and
winked at the trade for a consideration. It is not, however,
right to say that the venality and weakness of these officers in-
validated the authenticity of the commands they received from

a2

10

Court ; however flagitious their conduct in rendering the orders
of none effect, it did not prove the insincerity of the Emperor
and his ministers in issuing them. By the year 1834 the eflforts
of the local authorities to suppress the trade, resulted in a
periodical issue of vain prohibitions and empty threats of
punishment, which did not more plainly exhibit their own
weakness in the eyes of the people, than the strength of the
appetite in the smokei's."

The opium vessels are all well armed, but chiefly as a pre-
caution against pirates, which swarm on that coast. Although
there has been more than one serious tragedy in conflict with
pirates, there does not appear to have been any actual encoun-
ter between the opium vessels and the authorities.

During the years 1837 and 1838 attempts were made by
some British merchants to smuggle the drug into the port of
Canton, which led to serious collisions and disturbances on the
river. Captain Elliot, H. M. Superintendent of Trade, took
measures, along with the Chinese authorities, to put a stop to
these highly irregular proceedings on the part of a few, and
these measures proved effectual. But meanwhile the Imperial
Court at Pekin was organizing plans of a much more extensive
kind to annihilate the whole trade, and- to stop the smoking of
the drug. A Chinese statesman of the name of Heu Naetse
sent up a memorial to the Emperor, praying that opium might
be legalized, as the best method of dealing with an unavoidable
evil. Two other statesmen, Choo Tsun and Heu Kew memo-
rialized the Emperor in favour of an opposite course, requesting
that the existing laws should be put in force with the utmost
rigour. The prohibitory counsels prevailed with the Emperor,
and although these measures utterly failed, it has been well
said by a writer in the North British Review : — " No man of
any humanity can read without a deep and very painful feeling
what has been reported of the grief, the dismay, the indignation
of men in authority, and the Emperor, on finding that their ut-
most efforts to save their people were defeated by the craft and
the superior maritime force of the European dealers, and by the
venality of their own oflScial persons, on the coast." To proceed,
the prisons were soon crowded with victims, and death by

11

strangling was inflicted in several instances on smokers and
native dealers. An Imperial Commissioner, Lin, was sent to
Canton to proceed against the foreign merchants. On his
arrival there, in March 1839, he immediately put the mer-
chants under arrest, compelled them, through H. M. Superin-
tendent of Trade, to deliver up the whole of the opium then on
the coast, amounting to 20,283 chests, and formally destroyed
it by mixing it with lime and salt, and casting it into the
sea. For some months after this, opium was almost unsaleable,
and the prohibitory measures against smoking it were so eflfec-
tual, that the consumption fell to less than a tenth of what it
had been.

The war which ensued, although it arose out of the seizure
of the opium as the immediate cause, really sprung from one
more deep-seated and more remote in point of time. This was
" the arrogant assumption of supremacy over the monarchs
and people cf other countries claimed by the Emperor of China
for himself and for his subjects, and our long acquiescence in
this state of things.'' The war thus commenced in 1840, and con-
cluded in August 1842, however, decided not only the superiority
of the British arms, but convinced the Imperial Court that fur-
ther attempts to put down the opium trade were vain. Thence-'
forward the laws against smoking became more and more lax,
whilst the trade, nominally co: traband, went on with fewer
restrictions than before. At the present time, the trade has
assumed all the importance of an established recognised traffic,
and the merchants engaged in it, including nearly the whole
foreign community in China engaged in commerce, shelter
themselves under the plea of the sanction given to it by the
British Government, ani the alleged insincerity of the Chinese
in desiring to prohibit it. In China itself, also, the growth of
the poppy has been extending with the connivance of the local
authorities. The quantity thus grown is not positively known,
but it was stated on good authority to be not less than 10,000
chests, so far back as 1847. It is inferior to the Indian drug,
and, being much cheaper, is used for mixing with it.

Having thus traced the progress of this traffic to the present
time, we proceed to inquire what have been its effects on legal

12

commerce, on our friendly relations with China, and on the
progress of the Gospel in that empire, that we may thus arrive
at the true character of the trade itself, and of the Indian
revenue derived from it.

And first, as to its effects on legal commekce. To the candid
reader it must appear quite evident that these effects are highly
injurious, and that the consumption of opium materially cur-
tails the means of the Chinese population for purchasing British
manufactures. In our own country, for instance, a drunken
family cannot afford to purchase more than the scantiest supply
of clothing, and we are warranted in saying the same of the
opium-smoker's family. But what is true of the individual is
true of the whole class, and hence we lose them as customers
for our manufactures, and to an extent even greater than the
value of the opium. For supposing the seven millions' sterling
worth of opium thrown into the sea, instead of passing through
their lungs as smoke, the loss would only aflfect their pockets ;
but the actual consumption not only sweeps away the seven
millions sterling, but incapacitates the victims for productive
and prosperous labour. The wealth thus destroyed, with which
they might purchase British manufactures, cannot, of course,
be estimated, but must be considerable:

It has been objected to this, however, that the purchase of a
hat by a man does not necessarily impoverish him so much as
to prevent his buying also a pair of shoes, or any other article
of clothing, and therefore the purchase of opium does not inca-
pacitate the Chinese from buying long cloths. Unfortunately
the hat and the opium are not parallel cases. In the purchase
of the hat, its value is more than returned in comfort, preservation
of health and industrial power, by which he may obtain more
means to buy a pair of shoes ; whereas, in the purchase of
opium, instead of any value being returned, he loses his money,
and, in the u e of the drug, he loses his comfort, his health,
and his industrial power to produce that with which he may
buy clothing. This is one of the simplest truths of political
economy, and need not be pursued further. The writer in the
North British Review has put this in a very plain form when
he says, — " These facts leave us no room to doubt that the

13

opium-chest, lauded upon the whole line of contiaental ChiDa,
and rapidly making its way inland upon the rivers and canals^
is not merely draining the country of its means as a customer
for our goods, but is actually destroying our customer himself
by thousands or by millions ; or it is bringing him down from
a condition which is improvable, to a condition of desperate
and irrecoverable wretchedness."

*' If the British commercial policy were to be thought of as
a wholCy — as a devised scheme of national enterprise, what we
are doing, described in its naked reality, is just this, we are
drugging to the death the man whom we are hoping to see
^nter our shop daily, purse in hand."

But it is again objected, — supposing it possible to annihilate
the opium trade. What will you put in its stead to pay for
Chinese produce ? It may be replied : recover a drunken
family from habits of intemperance, and then let us picture the
numberless articles of food, furniture, and clothing that would
be introduced into the once empty home, for the benefit of the
family and of those with whom they deal. And then multiply
this unit by all the victimized families in China, and we arrive
at some conception of the enormous powers of healthy con-
sumption that would be created by the annihilation of the
opium traffic. Free access to the empire would then be more
readily acceded to us, and China, with her magnificent rivers
and canals and enterprising population, would soon exhibit a
development of wealth, with the aid of steam-power and
machinery provided by ourselves, that would enable her to take
from us in British goods the equivalent of her own tea and
silk.

We would here refer, in a single paragraph, to the difficulties
connected with the " leaking out" of the Sycee silver. This
was, no doubt, a strong objection to the opium trade on the
part of the Chinese Government ; for many years there was an
annual export of silver from China to pay for opium, averaging
£2,000,000 sterling. This drain of silver seriously embarrassed
the internal commerce and revenues of a country destitute of a
silver coinage of its own, and possessing no paper currency.
The very continuance of this evil, however, has at length

14

• worked out its own cure, idthougb at the cost of much incon-
venience to China. When China had no more silver to export,
Chinese produce began to be taken in barter for opium, and by
the year 1852, not only had the " leaking out" of the Sycee
entirely ceased, but the current had set in in the opposite
direction, and it is now our turn to feel the inconvenience of a
drain of the precious metals. As, however, this source of
anxiety to the Imperial Government of China has now ceased,
it need not be further discussed here. j

If we now consider the effects of this trade on the progress of
Christianity in China, and on our friendly relations with
that empire, the consequences appear infinitely more disastrous.
The opium scourge has proved one of the greatest obstacles to
the reception of Christianity by the Chinese, and it is remark-
able that it rose simultaneously with modem Christian missions,
at the commencement of the present century, as if the Archfiend
were vigorously counterplotting the army of the Prince of Peaca
At a later period, there was a striking illustration of this at the
port of Fuh-Chow, where, for some years after it was opened, no
legal trade of any kind existed, and the only foreign influence
at work (if we except the consular oflScers), consisted of a con-
siderable band of Christian missionaries, and — the contraband
opium trade 1 The interests of Christianity and of the opium
trade were thus in open conflict on the same field, and in strong
contrast, as influences for good and for evil on the population.
But so far as the Chinese were able to discern, it was but one
party — British Christians — ^presenting the Bible with the one
hand, and opium to enslave them with the other. In proof of
this, we may simply state what has been repeated in almost
every missionary publication referring to China, that the con-
stant reply of the poor heathen to the missionary is : Why do
you bring us opium ?

In regard to friendly relations with this empire, both govern-
ment and people look upon us with an unfavourable eye ; and
although we do not lay the whole of this on the opium trade,
it is impossible to remove the impression while that trade
continues ; nor need we wonder at their jealous prohibition of
free access into their country for the same reason. ** They

16

must still be left to look at missionary stations, and at Bibles, .
as seen over that mountain of opium-chests which is set
down furtively every year upon their coasts ; ' black dirt,' they
call it, and the fumes of this blackness darken all the objects
that are seen through it/'*

As to the measure of responsibility resting on the different
parties implicated in this trade, it should, we think, be distri
buted according to their power of removing the evil, and un-
questioi^ably no small share of this rests on the British public.

The Chinese Government are morally and physically help*
less, — ^the Chinese people are equally so for throwing off this
fatal habit, which has fastened on the very vitals of the nation,
and under which they groan, destitute of the moral and Chris-
tian energy that might break its thraldom. The position of the
British merchant, as will presently be shown, is a diflScult one
also, and, at all events, the remedy is beyond the control of in-
dividuals of which a commercial community is composed. But
the British public have the power, through their Parliament,
and taking a large view of the subject, and acting on the broad
principles of humanity and justice, of using their influence with
the East India Company, that the cultivation of the poppy for
the Chinese market may cease, for the plain reason that it is
sent there to supply a vicious and illegal demand. The revenue
derived from spirituous liquors in Britain has been adduced as
a parallel to the Indian opium revenue ; and because the for-
mer is a good one, therefore the latter is also. But the parallel
is not complete. The revenue from spirits is the veiy best that
could be raised, because it enriches the Government while it
restrains the use of a dangerous article, by enhancing its cost.
The revenue from opium is obtained by the Government first
producing this destructive article^ and then promoting its con-
sumption in spite of the prohibitions and remonstrances of a
weak and heathen nation, whose moral feelings are, neverthe-
less, outraged by our act.

It has been said that the position of the British merchants in
these transactions is a difficult one. In justice to these parties,
it must be stated that they are not, as many suppose, a set of

* " North British Review," No. Hi. p. 544.

16

lawless buccaneers, but as respectable a class of merchants as
can be found in any part of the world, and their share of the
trade is conducted with r^ularity and business propriety. To
explain this apparent anomaly, it must be borne in mind that
practically the trade has become almost legalized. It enjoys
the dignity and importance of an established recognised traffic.
Indeed a merchant can hardly be engaged in trade in China at all
without being more or less mixed up with it. The very steamer
of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, by which he goes to
China, carries a cargo of the drug. If a ship is consigned to his
care, there is probably opium in it for himself on freight or for
sale. If he is to have any command of money, or to compete
with his neighbours in that market on anything like fair terms,
he must deal in opium ; and should he be so scrupulous as to
decline such a connexion, he may as well leave China. Now,
this is a distressing state of matters to a conscientious man, and
yet he is often driven to acquiesce in it, rather than leave a
position which he has occupied at considerable trouble and cost.
Then, in addition to the force of custom " which familian'zes
men's minds with systems where the greatest abuses prevail,"
the merchants shield themselves under the plea that the trade
is not only countenanced by their own Government, but forms
one chief item of revenue to our Indian empire. It may be
added, that if we depart from the high standard of Christian
principle in judging of the traffic, the question easily admits of
being argued. Descending for a moment from the Christian
point of view, the merchant argues that opium is only poison to
those who abuse it ; that the British merchant does not smuggle
it into China, but merely brings it to its shores, to be purchased
by the natives under the very eye of their own Government,
with little more than a show of objection : and further, that
the merchant is a mere agent between supply and demand ;
and that when these two elements of industry are brought to
bear upon one another in any given field of commerce, their
consequences concern him no further than the extent to which
he can benefit himself by the interchange of the commodities.
But neither a Christian merchant nor a Christian nation can
rest satisfied with such views. And to those taking a manage-

17

ment of, or having an interest in the trade, and who believe in
the Christian religion, it is submitted for their serious conside-
ration whether, in view of the foregoing statements, they do
not feel themselves called upon to cease from a course of action
which is plainly opposed to the spread of Christianity in China.
Let them consider whether any inducement, however lucrative,
would lead* them to incur the solemn responsibility of attempt-
ing to introduce this insidious scourge of opium-smoking into
a new and imtiied field like Japan (with which commercial
relations may be established at no distant date) ; for if it would
not, a grave responsibility rests upon them for participating in
an old-established evil in China, where its true character is
ascertained. Ij\ short, every Christian who will examine the
matter, will find that the opium trade with China cannot for
one moment be defended on Christian principles ; and that by
applying such a test, it is at once disclosed to view as an evil
which is devastating the East, and of which he, if he is engaged
in it, should wash his hands at all hazards.

In appealing to the British public to do their duty in apply-
ing a remedy, we would place foremost the grand instnimentality
of Christian missions as going directly to the root of the evil.
The success that has of late years attended missions in China
has been so remarkable as to be of itself sufficient to stimulate
British Christians to increased efforts in that direction. The
entrance of the truth into the heart has been found to clear
away the habit of opium-smoking as light dispels darkness.
The medical missionary has also done, and may yet do, impor-
tant service in supplying the Chinese with medicinal means for
curing the habit. Let these aids be multiplied. The field is
all but a boundless one. Such efforts cannot fail in time to
commend themselves to the Government and people of China,
and encourage them to persevere in discountenancing the use
of the drug.

But to give efficiency to such measures on our part, and to
remove suspicions, it is absolutely necessary to show our since-
rity by removing, as far as in our power, the temptation itself.
The Bengal monopoly was originally established under Lord
Comwallis, ^^as the best means of raising a revenue without

18

aggravating the enormous evils contemplated/' and '^ to obtain
the largest amount of revenue from the smallest possible amount
of consumption/' Again, on the opening of the China trade in
1834, the Indian Government expressly stated that they retained
the opium monopoly, not so much with a view to revenue, as to
restrain the use of this pernicious drug. But they appear to
have long since abandoned that humane policy, as we may
judge from the fact, that in 1848, when information reached
Calcutta that opium cultivation was extending in China, inqui-
ries were made of the British authorities in China as to the
truth of the statement ; and, with the view of driving the
Chinese drug out of the market, the supply from Bengal was
largely increased, and has been increasing ever since. But this
policy may not always be practicable. China may be induced
to grow all that is needed for her own consumption. She is
believed to be quite capable of doing so. Or, should the pre-
sent revolutionists in China succeed, they are determined oppo-
nents of opium-smoking, and although we have no faith in
physical force to cure such habits, who dare say, that a combi-
nation of religious and legal restraints, acting on the awakened
conscience of the nation, may not, to a large extent, accomplish
the object. Without any such measures, the use of opium in
Turkey, once so prevalent, is now almost extinct. The revenue
is, therefore, at best a precarious one. To those who can only
see the ruin of our Indian empire in the loss of that revenue, we
recommend the perusal of an able article in the North British
Beview for this month, (February 1857.) The writer shows
that there is an elasticity in the resources of India which might
with ease more than recover any such loss in a few years.
Moreover, no sudden measure is desirable. The following
remedy is merely suggested.

It is a fact well known to all connected with the trade, that
the consumption of opium is affected very much by its cost.
Whenever the price rises, consumption is checked ; and when
the price falls to a low figure in any given season, the consump-
tion is large. Applying this principle to the production of
opium in India, let the 70,000 chests now exported be annually
reduced by 5000 or 10,000 chests, and the East India Company

19

may count on realizing nearly as large a revenue from the sale
of the reduced quantity from year to year as it does now, and
meanwhile it may be providing for its ultimate loss by develop-
ing its resources in some other direction. Let American cot-
ton, for instance, be more largely cultivated, encouraging this
by means of advances transferred from the poppy culture. On
the other hand, the higher price of opium in China will check
consumption, and annually reduce the number of smokers, till
it becomes confined to the select few who can afford it. Opium
can be supplied by no other nation in any quantity for a long
time to come.

We conclude this paper with an extract from the writer in
the North British Review, already referred to : — " But it is
said if the opium manufacture were abandoned, or were only
restricted in India, a stimulus would be given to the culture
elsewhere ; the people of China toiU destroy themselves in this
way, and the Indian Government may as well profit by their
infatuation. This is the old plea for all kinds of abominations.
It is, or it was, the argument of the slave trader ; it is the plea
of those who live and fatten upon detestable practices ; it is the
plea of aU who live by the crimes and vices of others ; it is the
pretext of the receiver of stolen goods ; it is, and ever has been
the legend upon the rogue's escutcheon all the world over, — * I
don't make the wickedness — I only live by it.' It would be a
great wrong to suppose that such a doctrine should be taken
up and used either in Leadenhall Street or the Government
House, Calcutta.

" The time is passed, or it is passing away, in which courses
of conduct on the part of governments or corporations, which
the individual man would abhor, may be palliated, connived
at, and left to weigh upon the soul of the automaton, whose
business it is to sign ofiScial documents. That which is false
and wrong, and crael and ruinous to the weak and the ignorant,
is coming to be scouted as a mistake in political economy, as
well as a crime.

" The opium traffic of the East India Company with China
has come down to us along with many other evil things and
great mistakes, from times when atrocities and political errors

20

bugged each other complacently, and were seldom called to
give an account of themselves. But the opium traffic, along
with other mischievous usages, must now be prepared to show
cause why it should not be condemned, not only as a source
and the direct cause of incalculable miseries, but as an enor-
mous error in international polity."

To this admirable extract we can but add the Scripture tes-
timony and appeal, — " Woe unto the world because of oflfences !
for it must needs be that offences come ; but woe to that man
by whom the offence cometh 1" — Matt xviii. 7.

Fbbedart 1857.

BDIRBDftGH : T CONSTABLS, P&IIITSB TO HBB MAJBSTr.

I

QUESTIONS OF THE DAY.

No. I. .

INDIAN REVENUE FROM INDIAN OPIUM ;
CHIKESE MONEY AT THE EXPENSE OF CHINESE LIFE *

BRITISH HONOTTB OR BRITISH DISGRACE ;

QUESTIONS WHICH SHOULD BE
CONSIDERED IN THE '

TREATY TO BE CONCLUDED WITH CHINA.

By
CAPTAIN TYLER, R.E.

LONDON :

JAMES RIDGWAY, PICCADILLY.

1857.
(Prioe One Shilling.)

^^ <U

0ij&.. )KJt^ /(faJ^a^ X-><vl2D.2/.

"\

BRITAIN AND CHINA.

On a recent well known occasion, the Chinese Origin of
authorities boarded a vessel called the ^^ Arrow/' |o®stf[|Jigj
belonging* to a Chinese subject resident in Hong ^^ China.
Kong, which was trading in the Canton river,
under British colours, under a British name, and
under a British master ; and, after hauling down
the British ensign, they carried off* twelve Chinese
subjects, out of the fourteen men who composed its
crew, upon the plea that som^ of their number had
been guilty of piracy.

The ^^ Arrow" was in the habit of trading at Registry
Canton, under a licence from the ColcS^iol Govern- "Arrow."
ment at Hong Kong, renewable annually ; and the
tferm of that licence had expired elbven days before
the transaction referred to. The Chinese could not,
however, have been aware of its expiration; and
th^re appears to be no doubt^ that, though they
objected to the ayatem which had obtained, of grant-
ing British licence^o the vessels of Chinese subjects,
they yet acted on the belief that the ^^ Arrow '' had
a right, according to British custom and British
regulations, to British protection.

Conceiving, therefore, that a gross insult had stepa
been offered to the British Flag, the Officers S.^^

A 2

apti charged with the superintendence of British in-

Chinese

Authori. terests on the spot, demanded an apolog'y for what
had occurred, as w^ell as an assurance that the British
Flag" should be respected for the future j and these
demands not being** complied with to their satisfac-
tion, they seized upon a Chinese Junk by way of
reprisal. As the Imperial Commissioner still per-
sisted that he was in the right^ and still neglected
to comply with the requirements of the British re-
presentatives, and as he refused to grant that much
coveted object — a personal interview, either to the
chief Superintendent of Trade or to the Admiral
commanding", forts were taken, and hostilities were
thus commenced by the British forces. The Chinese
Commissioner protested against these measures, and
professed, on his part, the greatest moderation ; but
his subjects retaliated to the best of, their power, by
poison and assassination, and even offered, in a
public proclamation, a reward of £33,* for every
Englishman that should be taken alive, or whose
head should be '' cut oflF and delivered to the autho-
rities.'^

Opportu- In consequence of these proceedings, the two

nity will . ^ . . i />i . • -i

be offered uatious are now at war m the Canton river, and
Treaty?^ an Ambassador of high rank and great reputa-
tion is proceeding to China with a considerable naval
and military force, for the purpose of continuing
hostiUties, and of concluding a peace when they

* Blue Book "Proceedings of H.M. Naval Forces at Can-
ton," p. 128.

shall happily be terminated. As an opportunity
will thus be afforded for remodelling; the existing*
Treaties, and making a fresh one, the present is a
most appropriate occasion for considering seriously
the means by which the real interests of the two
empires may be best promoted.

In reflecting upon this important subject, it must Our chief
not be forgotten, that whilst we are the most favoured a new
nation on the face of the earth ;— whilst our wealth, '^^^^'
our power, our maritime supremacy,our advancement
in civilization, our freedom of intercourse, and, above
«11, our possession of the light of the Gospel, and
our facilities beyond those of all other nations for
its extension, are so great ; — whilst we possess all
these advantages, of which we ar^ sufficiently proud,
and in which all of us who reflect must rejoice;— our
national responsibilities are at the same time strictly
proportionate to our national opportunities ; and it
is our solemn duty, in providing for the increase of
our commerce, the safety of our countr3''men, and
the honour of our flag, not to lose sight of, under-
value, or neglect those higher destinies with which
Providence has entrusted us : but to afford a con-
spicuous example, at once of firmness, justice, and
forbearance ; to promote, to the best of our power,
the fulfilment of just laws ; and to abstain, ourselves,
from giving unnecessary offence to all other nations
whatsoever, whether they be weak, or whether they
be strong.

These convictions should dictate the terms of all Our mo-
our Treaties, and this spirit should guide their ob- action.

6

BeFvance. Then will our sway permaneintly extendj
and then will our power be beneficial. Thus oidy
can we fulfil our highest destinies, and doB ^j
can we hope to meet with the ^proral, and escape
the rig^hteous judgments, of Him who of dereth all
things. Avoiding ui^ue intervention, we i^uld
not, however, shrink from just wars ; but we should
exert all our strength, when necessary, in the de-
fence of that which is right, and in opposition to
that which is wrong ; and, taking ^^ Dieu et nion
di'oit," in reality, as our national motto, we should
always remember that such wars, though the
greatest of temporary evils, are intended ultimately
to answer good purposes, and that they have been
not only permitted, but enjoined, from tie earlier
ages. If w« ourselves abstain from wrong and in*-
jur}' to the Chinese, we have always strong reasons
for war with them so long as they refuse to treat us
as equals, and to afford to us those facilities for
intercourse and commerce which nations have no
right to deny to each other. But we must keep
our own hands clean while claiming these our
rights, We must give the Chinese no just cause for
refusing to admit us into their countrj^, or for declin-
ing to grant suitable means for carrying on the trade
which has sprung up between the two nations, upon
an equitable footing,
General There are many who wish that the nominal cause
on the^' of the hostilities now pending was a more unexcep-
war:^^ tionable one, but there are few who are not in fiivour
of a vigorous prosecution of jthe war that has re-

aulted. It has happened that a mnjarity of the
Lower House of Parliament has condemned the
proceeding's of the British officers in China, while
the mass of the country has approved of them ; and
sufficient eaase may he assigned for this difference
of opinion^ without attributing* it to the party feeling-,
or to the &ctious combinations, that have been so
much assisted on. The representatives of the
country, who studied more minutely the papers that
were placed before them, came to the conclusion that
the insult offered by the Chinese did not render ne-
cessary the violent measures that were adopted, and
desired that an officer of hig-her rank should be
dispatched to the scene of action, with full powers ;
the merchants on the spot, with strong feelings in
regard to other matters, and deeply interested, them-
selves, in humUing* the Chinese authorities and the
inhabitai^ of Canton, believed that such measures
would ultimately improve their position; and the
nation at larg^e, less informed upon the abstract ques-
tion, always ready to uphold the honour of the
British Flag, and with a strong feeling that war
only would improve its relations with a people that
refuse foreign intercourse, despise foreign com*
merce, and oppose all progress,— gave credit to the
officers employed, for acting with as much humanity
as the case permitted, for being actuated by proper
motives, and for using sound judgment.

It may be regarded as certain that the English Go-
vernment would never have been placed in a minority
upon this question, either if Sir John Bo wring had

8

Policy of ntore fully eicplaiued the real cause of his proceeding's,
Bowring. or if the course which was afterwards adopted had in
the first instance heen taken^ of sending* a Flenipo^
t^tiary to the Chines^ waters. Sir John Bowring
has been much blamed for insisting in his communi-^
cations with Commissioner Yeh, that the " Arrow ''
was a British vessel^ while he admitted to Consul
Farkes that she had no right to be considered as
such ; and the question of the right of the vessel to
British protection has thus been too prominently
causes of brought forward- The real causes of quarrel with
quarrel, jj^^ Chinese were, that they acted under the belief
that the ^' Arrow '^ was a British vessel, according
to the Colonial regulations, that they intended to
break the 9th article of the supplementary treaty^
that they intended to insult the British Flag, and
that they refused to make the apology for the past,
and give the assurance for the future^ that was ia
consequence required from them ; and if Sir John
Bowring had represented these simple facts to the
Chinese Commissioner, had told him the exact cir^
cumstances connected with the registry of the
'^ Arrow,'' and had informed him that the necessary
satisfaction for the intendedmmit would be required ;
he would then have had a clear case, and a good
cause, and have been saved from much animadver-
sion. Sir John Bowring no doubt committed an
error of judgment, in not thus entering into more
ample explanation with the Chinese Commissioner,
but no harsher term can properly be applied to his
conduct of the negociations.

Different opiniom may be^ and are entertained^ Object of
on these subjects ; but, whatever be thought of pS^hiet.
the justice or injustice of the present war, there
can be no disagreement on one point. All must
desire that the Treaty to be concluded at its termi-
nation, should contain such provisions as will tend to
forward the real interests of British commerce, to
promote friendly intercourse on equal terms between
the two nations, and to extend the blessings of
Christianity. It is not to be doubted that the great
body of the nation, would, if their feelings were con-
sulted, and their opinions taken, pronounce as dis-
tinctly for the abandonment of any course of action
that should be calculated seriously to interfere with
these objects, to sully the British name, or to inflict
real evils upon others, as they have done for the
jprosecution of the war; that they would be as
anxious to preserve the honour of the British Flag*
in the one case as in the other ; as desirous to avoid
the giving of just cause of offence to others as they
are ready to demand redress for insults offered to
themselves. Under the full conviction that such is
the temper of the British nation, and under the be-
lief that the present moment — while a Treaty is pend-
ing — is auspicious for bringing forward the subject,
the author desires to make an appeal to his fellow-
countrymen, in addition to those which have already
been laid before them, against the Opium traffic
which is being carried on between their Indian pos-
sessions and the coasts of China ; to suggest to
them the course that should be taken bv themselves

10

f^r the removal of a national dii^frace ; and to urge
them to obtain a settlement of this much vexed
question. A great deal has already been published
on this subjed;, both in the numerous general works
that have appeared on China and the Chinese, and
in various reviews and pamphlets specially devoted
to its considOTation ; and the author only endeavours
now to collect, and repeat as concisely as he is able,
the leading features of the case ; and to lay befoi^ the
public, as forcibly as he may, the conclusions to which
they lead.
Cultiva- Opium is prqpared from the juice of the white'
Buppiy^of poppy^ which is cultivated for commercial purposes
apium. j^ India, China, Persia, and Turkey. In China the
cultivation is prohibited by the Government; but
since the war of 1842, and the rebellion of Tae Ping
Wang, the Imperial authority has not been suffi-
ciently strong to enforce its prohibition ; and the
annual yield of opium, which is rapidly increasing,
is now suppc^ed to amount to some thousands of
chests. In Persia and Turkey the production is
comparatively small, and need not be further re-
ferred to. In India the poppy is grown, both in
British and independent territory. In Bengal
there were sold in 1855,* 58,319 chests of 164 lbs.
each ; and the exports from Bombay in 1864-6
reached 27,688 chests, of 140 lbs. each; and,
as nearly the whole of this quantity was for the
Chinese market, the total amount supplied by India

* " The Opium Revenue of India," pub. by Allen and Co. p. 10.

11

to China in 1866 is admitted to be nearly 80,000
chests, even by the upholders af the trade. Calcu-
lating roughly, 60,000 chests, or 8,300,000 lbs. from
Bengal, furnish 47,000,000,000 grains of opium, ot
28,600,000,000 of smokeable extract, as it is called j
and 27,000 chests, or 3.780,000 lbs. from Bombay,
furnish, in like manner, 22,773,000 grains of opium^
or 1 1,400,000,000 grains of smokeable extract. The
Bengal export supplies, therefore, 3,200,000 custom-
ers, at 7,300 grains a year of smokeable extract, or 20
grains (equal to 40 grains of opium) a day ; and the
Bombay export, 1,500,000 customers,atthesame rate. ^^

The opium shipped from Bombay is grown princi- Bombay ?
pally in Malwa. The Indian Government, since the ^^^^^'
subjugation of Sindfa, has been able to prevent it
from being carried to the Portuguese ports of Din
and Demaun ; and now levies a duty of £40. per
chest upon it.

The Bengal opium must, as the average produce Bengal
is about 22 lbs. per acre, be gathered from 400,000
acres of the richest knd in the British territo-
ries. The Government agents advance money to
the ryots, or native farmers, for the cultivation of
the poppy ; they compel them to sell the juice, which
is extracted from the poppy-head on the fall of the
flower, at a fixed rate j they prepare it and flavour it
specially for the Chinese market ; they carry it to Cal-
cutta, and there sell it to the speculators who convey
it to the Chinese coasts.

The net opium revenue derived by the Indian Gk)- Opium
vernment in 1854-6 was £3,282,401, the costs or of hfdiaf

12

Minute,
28 Feb.
1866.

McGre-

gor'sCom*

mercial

Statistics,

vol. V. p.

75.

charges amounted to £1,636^846, and the gross re-
venue for that year was therefore £4,81 8,647. The
gross opium revenue for the j- ear 1856 was estimated
by Lord Dalhousie at £5,000,000, or about one-
sixth of the whole revenue of the Indian empire.

Of the net revenue for 1854-5, £3,187,449, or
about two-thirds, was derived from the Government
monopoly of Bengal, and £1,094,952 or about one-
third from the duty levied in Bombay. The cost or
charges on the monopoly revenue, which was in
gross rather more than three and a half millions,
amounted to nearly a million and a half. The
prices obtained for the opium vary considerably,
but it may be stated, roughly, that each of the 50,000
chests of monopoly opium which go to China, is sold
by the cultivator for £25, by the Government for
£100, and by the speculator for, perhaps, £150.

The following tables will be interesting* to the

reader: —

Table I.

Quantities of Opium exported from Calcutta and Bombay to

China and otheb CoriTTBiES.

Calcutta.

Bombay.

Y£ARS.

Total

No. of Chests,

No. of Chests.

No. of Chests.

1795-96

5,183

1796-97

5,644

1797-98

3.503

1798-99

3,342

1799-1800

8,926

1800-1801

4,788

1801-1802

3,467

......

1802-1803

3,068

1803-4

3,053

••••••

1804-5

3,358

13

Table I — (continued.)

Teabs.

Calcutta.

Bombay.

Total

No. of CbesU.

No. of Cbesti.

No. ofCbesta.

1805-6

3,657

1806-7

4,384

1807-8

4,255

1808-9

4,639

1809-10

4,246

1810 11

4,909

1811-12

4,713

1812-13

4,832

1813-14

4,272

1814-15

3,872

1815-16

3,848

1816-17

4,325

1817-18

3,708

1818-19

4,299

••••••

1819-20

3,091

1820-21

5,147

2,278

7,425

1821-22

2,591

3,855

6,446

1822-23

4,100

6,535

9,635

1823-24

5,209

6,063

11,272

1824-25

7,076

5,563

12,639

1825-26

5,165

5,565

10,730

1826-27

6,568

4,504

11,072

1827-28

7,903

7,709

15,612

1828-29

6,554

8,099

14,653

1829-30

9,678

12,856

22,534

1830-31

7,069

9,333

16,402

1831-32

7,427

14,007

21,434

1832-33

9,485

11,715

21,200

1833-34

11,930

11,678

23,608

1834-35

11,050

12,933

23,983

1835-36

14,807

11,724

26,531

1836-37

12,734

21,073

33,807

1837-38

19,317

10,627

29,944

1838-39

18,221

17,515

35,736

1839-40

18,510

5,292

23,802

1840-41

17,410

15,762

33,172

1841-42

19,739

16,356

36,095

1842-43

16,670

18,321

34,991

1843-44

17,774

1844-45

18,794

14

McCul-

Commer-
cial Die-
tfonary,
1850. Ar-
ticle,
Opium.

TkVLX 2,— Different Sp9cimiflndiim Opium imported into China-

Statisti-
cal paper
printed
for the
Court of
Directors
oftheEast
India
Company
in 1853,*

?[uoted
rom pagre
76,Churh.
Mission-
ary Intel-
ligencer,
April
1857.

Fata*

and Benues.

Malwa.

Total

Valua

Tbam.

No. of Chests.

in Dollars.

No. of Chests.

No. of Chests.

1816-17

2,670

600

3,270

3,657,000

1817-18

2,530

1,150

3,680

3,904,250

1818-19

3,050

1,530

4,580

4,159,250

1819-20

2.970

1,630

4,600

5,583,200

1820-21

3,050

1,720

4,770

8,400,800

1821-22

2,910

1,718

4,628

8,314,600

1822-23

1,822

4,000

5,822

7,988,930

1823-24

2,910

4,172

7,082

8,575,100

1824-25

2,655

6,000

8,655

7,679,625

1825-26

2,442

6,179

8,621

7,608,205

1826-27

3,661

6,308

9,969

9,610,085

1827-28

5,134

4,401

9,535

10,425,075

1828-29

5,905

7,771

13,736

12,535,115

1829-30

7,143

6,857

14,000

12,057,157

1830-31

6,660

12,100

18,760

11,904,263

1831 32

5,672

7,831

13,503

10,934,695

1832-33

8,167

15,403

23,570

15,322,759

1833-34

8,672

11,114

19,786

13,056,540

1834-35

7.767

8,747

16,514

9,655,010

1835-36

6,173

10,612

16,785

10,539,875

1836-37

8,078

13,430

21,508

14,287,330

1837-38

6,165

13,875

20,040

10,883,157

N.B. During the first ten years of the present century tbe exports of Opiam
from India to China averaged about 2500 chests, of 149^ lbs. each. — MeOul-
loch*9 Com* JHct, 1850.

Table 3. — Statement eahihiting the Number of Oheete of Opium
sold in Bengal or exported from Bombay from 1840 to 1849.

"■

NamberofChesU

Number of Chests

„

of 164 lbs. each.

of 140 IbB. eaeh.

Ybars.

Bengal.

Bombay.

1840-41

17,858

i6,773

1841-42

18,827

14,681

1842-43

18,362

24,337

1843-44

15,104

13,563

1844-45

18,350

20,660

1845-46

21,437

12,635

1846-47

21,648

18,602

1847-48

30,515

15,485

1848-49

36,000

16,509

15

Table 4.

Quantity and Value qf Opium exported from Bengal and Bomhay in
each qf the years ending Sdth April 1851, 1852^ 1853, 1854, 1855.
{Calculated at 2s the Company's rupee).

l^EASS.

1851

1853
1854
1855*

Bengal
Chfists.

24,162
23,274
36,178
41,917
53,319

Value.

£4

3,155,075
3,137,781
4,020,094
3,688,963
3,711,137

Bombay ! Value.
ChesU.

19,2002,304.060
28,2423,377,433
25,219^3,013,981
26,258 2,748,135
i5/,Doo • » • •

Total
Chest».

Total YOm

9666.

43,362

52,1

61,397

68,175

81,007

£.

5,459,135
,515,214
7,034,075
6,437,098

Boftra or

Trade
Hetumr.

Tabxb 5*

QmittHiy and Fedue pf Opimm exported from Briti^ India^ b,p sea, in the
year ending 30/A ^rii, 1853, and the eounfries te which it was sent.

Pamphlet
"The
Opium
Hevenue
of India,"
p. 10.

Bengal.

Begne.

China.

Fenang, Singa-
pore, Malacca.

Coartof
Afiica.

Total.

Qnan-
tltiet.

28

Value.
3,097

Qoan-
tttiea.

Value;

Quan-
tities.

Value.

Quan-
titles.

Value.

Quan-
titieau

Value.

31,433

£.

4,717

534,049

^.

£.
nil.

36,173

£.
4,020,094

Bond^y.

na.

wL

24,979

a,9a7,»6T

239

25,9^

1

1

64

1

25,819

3,013,981

Board of

Trade

Returns.

N.B. The above return does not include the quantities shipped to
ports in British India, or to Ceylon.

Board of

Trade

Returns,

Parti.

1856,

p. 13.

Opium
Trade
with
China.

Board of

Trade

Blue

Book,

Parti.

1856,

p. 361.

16

Table 6.

OroM and net amount of Revenue derived from Opium, and net
Bevenue from, other sources in British India, in each year
ending ZOth April, from 1840 to 1854.

Tears.

Opium.

Total net
Receipts from
other sources.

Gross Receipts

Charges.

Net Receipts

1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845
1846
1847
1848
1849
1850
1851
1852
1853
1854

£

784,266
1,430,499
1,599,628
2,087,696
2,638,766
2,848,786
3,578,002
3.678,207
2,735,129
3,913,091
4,497,254
3,795,300
4,259,778
5,088,184
4,777,231

£

446,489

656,221

580,862

511,114

613,940

667,498

774,652

792,005

1,071,745

1,067,328

966,974

1,044,952

1,120,532

1,370,252

1,418,211

£
337,777

874,278
1,018,766
1,576,582
2,024,826
2,181,288
2,803,350
2,886,202
1,663,384
2,845,763
3,530,280
2,750,348
3,139,246
3,717,932
3,359,080

£
17,029,595
17,695,487
18,447,223
19,261,739
20,119,254
20,154,863
20,766,111
22,527,831
21,162,423
21,781,395
23,917,625
23,904,690
23,945,300
24,376,833
23,681,842

The opium is conveyed from India to China in
well armed, well mainned, clipper ships, and of late
years even in the Peninsular and Oriental Company's
monthly steamers ; and on its arrival it is stowed to
a great extent in receiving* ships, from whence it is
conveyed to different parts of the CQUst, according to
the demand. The official returns from the colony of
Hong Kong show that as many as 36,499 chests of
opium were imported into that island in 1863, and

17

46,765 chests in 1864, in the steamers of the Penin-
sular and Oriental Company.

' In order to give an insight into the proportion of Relative
leg'al and illegal trade carried on between the Bri- tion of
tish and Chinese empires, it may be stated, that the mf gaf "
value of the opium imported from India is equal to ^''*™^-
three times the value of all other British imports,
(exclusive of bullion and specie,) and that it amounts
to three-quarters of the value of all the produce that
we receive from China ; so that more than half of
the whole trade which passes between the two
empires is contraband.

Such is the nature, and such the extent of the
Indian opium trade with China ; and such are the
leading" facts connected with the cultivation of opium
in our Indian territories. The Indian Government
enjoys what is believed to be an illegal monopoly in
producing" and manufacturing" the drug» specially
prepares it for contraband purposes, and, by publicly
selling" it in Calcutta for the Chinese market, does
its best to encourage a lawless race in an unlawful
calling. It must next be stated what are the effects
of this opium upon the Chinese, and what means the
Chinese Government has adopted to prevent its
importation.

Well known as a valuable medicine, opium is in Effects of
many countries employed as a narcotic, but when ^^^^^'
thus used it has always produced lamentable effects
upon its votaries. It is sometimes eaten and

B

18

sometimes smoked^ the effect being* somewhat similar
in both cases ; but the process of smc^ng produce^
a more immediate result^ and appears to be more
seductive and more hurtful than that of eating* it;
It has been stated that opium smoking* and alcohol
drinking^ maybe considered much in the same %h(^
and that o|Hum smoking* k in one respect the lesser
of the two evils, inasmuch as the alcohol drinker is
led on to criminal actions, and is an offence to society,
while the opium smoker stupifies himself, and i»
harmless to his neighbours. But this k not altoge-
ther correct. Opium has exciting* qualities, though
not to the same extent as alcohol ; the want of it to
a regular opium eater, or opium smoker, leads to the
commission of the worst crimes, as well as the use
of it J and it acts differently upon different disposi-
tions and temperaments, and according to the amount
of the dose. We may see in this country, and un-
fortunately too often, some stupid, others furioi^,
and others again who are amusing underthe influence
of alcohol } and, in fact, any qualities that a man
•♦ Chemis- »iay happen to possess are liable to be exaggerated
Common when he is intoxicated. So also in other countriefi^
Johnst n ^^^ ^ ®^^ *^ Tartar, who, by the use of the stimu-
Toi. ii. lant opium, is enabled to perform enormous journeys
upon scanty fare and without restj and the "Cut-
'^ chee horseman who shares his store of opium with
" his flagging steed.'^ We read of the excitement
of the Malay, and also of the Javanese, who rushe4

p. 71.

19

under its influence upon the pikers point, and eonti- Mr.Sim^s
nued fighting with the weapon in his body, utterly is'^arch
regardless of his wounds. We hear that in 1840, i640,p.
'^ one-half of the crime in the opium districts (of Aiexan-
'^ India), murders, rapes, and aflrays, had their pamphlet.
" origin in opium eating.^ We are told that con*
finned opium eaters will commit any crime, will sell
their wives and property, and even be guilty ofvidep.23.
murder, in order to obtain their accustomed dose.

There are strong reasons why alcohol cannot Alcohol
compare wath opium in regard to the injury which comi«.red!
it inflicts. Alcohol is taken by whole nations in
various forms, and is productive, no doubt, of much
crime and evil : but a state of habitual, constant
drunkenness, is the exception amongst those who
drink spirituous liquors. Opium is indulged in by
vast numbers of Chinese, Indians, and others ; but
the exceptions amongst its votaries appear to be
those who can eat it, or, more particularly, smoke it
for any length of time in moderation, and without
becoming more or less victims to it. Alcohol af-
fords, in different forms, a luxurious beverage, and
sometimes a beneficial, and even a necessary one.
Opium is only admissible as a medicine, and the
constant use of it for other than strictly medicinal
purposes, is a vice. A regular partaker of beer, wine,
or other spirits, may be, and is generally, a sober
man ; and he can give up his stimnlants at any time,
when it may be necessary for him to do so j but the

B S

20

opium smokery when once he has become habituated
to the practice, loses his life if suddenly deprived of
his drug, and can only be broken of the habit by
means of such an ordeal as few can be induced
to undergo, however much they may lament the
p 5 Mr ^^^^ *^^* possesses them, and fear its ultimate conse-
Matthe- quences. The Rev. Carstairs Douglas, of Amoy, in
pamphlet, writing to England in 1856, stated that so many of
these unhappy opium smokers were anxious to give
up the habit, that the manufacture and sale of pills
which somewhat assisted the attempt to abstain fi*om
it, covered the necessary expenses of the mission.
The only fair comparison between alcohol and opium
is, as has often been stated, that which places the
habitual drunkard, and not the habitual partaker of
wine^ beer, or spirits, in moderation, on a par with
the regular opium smoker.

It is impossible to do more here than lay before

the reader a few extracts from the writings of those

who have testified to the effects of opium j but

further evidence on this subject will be found in the

several works which are referred to at the end of the

present pamphlet ; and under the head of Narcotics,

in Johnston^s " Chemistry of Common Life,'^ may

be seen an able and impartial description of opium

and its effects.

Forbes— In an official report, dated Hong Kong', 8th

Sin August, 1845, Mr. Consul Alcock says, " The use of

^^347'" " ^^ (^P^""^) in China seems to extend to the very

21

^^ lowest classes ; coolies and even beggars are in
^^ the habit of taking a pipe, though it may often be
^^ at the price of their meal of rice. They allege
^' that having once commenced the practice, they
'^ become unable to follow their avocations if the daily
^ stimulus be withdrawn/'

A Chinese paper says :— ^^^^l^

^' I have learned that those who smoke opium, P«|>- 1?46,

*^ ^ voL 111. p.

*^ and eventually become its victims, have a periodi- 204.
^ cal longing for it, which can only be assuaged by
'^ the application of the drug at the regular time.
^^ If they cannot obtain it when that daily period
^^ arrives their limbs become debilitated, a discharge
^' of rheum takes place from the eyes and nose, and
^' they are altogether unequal to any exertion ; but
^^ with a few whiffs their spirits and strength are
" immediately restored in a surprising manner.
^^ Thus opium becomes to opium smokers their very
^^ life : and w hen they are seized and brought before
^^ the magistrates, they will sooner suffer a severe
^^ chastisement than inform against those who sell
'' it/'

A quotation in No, 62 of the North British ''C^^°.«««
Review is thus ffiven : — topy," for

^' There is no slavery on earth to be compared quoted in
^' with the bondage into which opium casts its victim, pamphlet!
^' There is scarcely one known escape from its toils,
'^ w^hen once they have fairly enveloped a man."

Mr. Marjoribanks, who was president of the select ''o^^ggg ^

22

of British committee at Cayilon^ is thus quoted by 6i»eral

sSu^ Alexander : —

p^ 6^' " Opium can. only be reg^arded, except wh^i used

^^ as a medicine, as a most pernicious poison. To
• " any fidend of humanity it is a painful subject of
" contemplation that we should continue to pour
" this black and envenomed poison into the sources
^^ of human happiness. The misery and demorali-
" zation occasioned by it are almost beyond belief.
^^ Any man who has witnessed its frightful ravages
" and demoralizing effects in China, must feel deeply
^^ on this subject/'

Mr. Bruce, too, the Superintendent of the tea
plantation in Assam, was quoted in 1840, and has
several times been quoted since, in proof of the evils
that opium has inflicted upon Assam. Amongst
other statements on the subject he makes the fol-
lowing : —

^^Few but those who have resided long in this
" unhappy country know the dreadful and immoral
" effects which the use of opium produces on the
^^ native. He will steal, sell his property, his chil-
^^ dren, the mother of his. children, and, finally, eyen
" commit murder for it '/^ also, ^^ That dreadful
" plague (opium) which has depopulated this beau-
" tiful country . » . . And has degenerated
^^ the Assamese from a fine race of people, to the
*^ most abject, servile, crafty, and demoralized race in
'' India.''

" T^^ The author of a pamphlet published in the course

?^3

of the present je^Vy for the express purpose of sup-^^enue ^^
porting the opium monopoly, says : — p. a. '

^^ The condition of the Rojpoots of Central India
^ is universally held up as an evidence of the demo*
^ ralizing, enervating, life-destroying effect of this
^ drug/'

These extracts have been given as bearing: most^pj^ions

4 1 • 4. 41. r • X. in favour

strongly against the use or opium as a narcotic ; of the use
and it is <Jnly right to add, on the other side, that L a^nar^
Mr. Meadows, Dr. Burnes, Dr. Eatwell, and others ^^^
who have seen much of those who use opium, re-
present that it does not produce such bad effects
as have been attributed to it, and that it appears to
be used without much ill effect by great numbers of
people* Mr. Meadows, however, who is our latest
authority, admits that the ^^ daily whiff,'' must be
obtained when the habit has been once contracted;
and that the Chinese Court, the Opium merchants,
and the Tae Ping* rebels, equally discourag'e the use M«adowv

n . 1.1 11 1 "Ohinese

Of Opium amongst their own people ; as well as that and their
he ^^ never heard opium smokers, themselves, justify iTons/'p,
the practice.'' ^^^^

The bad effects nmy have been exaggerated by^^^^^""-

t7 ^ oo J sions

many who have written on the subject ; but few from th#
who take the trouble to study the evidence on both
«ides of the question, and seriously to consider it,
will have any doubt that the use of opium as a
narcotic, is an ensnaring, a seductive, and a dele*
terious habit ] and most Englishmen would deeply
regret to hear that there was a prospect of its being

broug^it into constant use amongst any clasd of
their own countrjnien. The right-thinker and the
true Christian, also, of whatever nation^ must deeply
lament the spread of such a vice, either in his own^
or in any other country, and must regard with but
little respect those who, for the sake of pecuniary
profit, promote, and, still more, are employed in in-
creasing the evils which it occasions.

Th« But, w hat are fve doing ? For more than fifty.

war. years our fellow-countrymen have been engaged
in smuggling this pernicious drug into China, in
direct opposition to the wishes and utmost efibrts of
the Chinese Government. Ever since the year ]80^
the trade has been contraband; but the annual
importations from British India into China have
gradually increased from 2000 up to 80,000 chests.
By the j^ear 1834 the trade had assumed a regular
character, and the Chinese Government had bejcome
much alarmed, both on account of the increased
consumption of the drug, and in consequence of
the drain of silver which it occasioned. They there-
fore made strenuous efforts to put a stop to it j and
the violent measures which they adopted— in pub-
licly strangling one of their own subjects in front
of the Canton foreign factories for participation
in the trade ; in virtually imprisoning the British
merchants, as well as the Chief Superintendent of
Trade, who hastened to their rescue j and in destroy-
ing 20,000 chests of opium which they induced him
to deliver up to them ;— were the principal causes
that led to the Chinese war of 1841-2.

5S

We were successful in that war; we upheld our lu result.
smug*gler8 with a strong hand ; we made the Chi*
nese pay for the opium that they had destroyed ; and
we still furnish them with the same ^^hlack dirt/^
as they call it, in continually increasing quantities.

Since the termination of that war the Chinese state of
authorities have made no great effort against the trade
opium traffic. Torn by internal dissensions, and in "^^0?*
want of mone}^, they are powerless to prevent, and i®^^-^- '
are even compelled to allow their mandarins to
profit by encouraging it ; and the result is, that it
has acquired more than three times the dimensions
it had at the time of that war, and has almost as*
sumed the appearance of a regular authorised trade.
British merchants of great respectability are en* Matthe-
gaged in it, and we are even told that if the}'^ did ' ' '
not join in it they would be unable to compete with
their neighbours, and would be compelled to leave
China altogether. This helplessness on the part of
the Chinese cannot, however, be brought forward as
any excuse for ourselves* On the contrary, the
greater their inability to carry out their just prohibi-
tion against an injurious trade, the more blameable
and the less worthy of the British nation is our
infringement of it.

The Chinese have been accused of insincerity in Bisinte-
their attempts to put down this traffic ; and it has 'onduct
been alleged against them that they cared not so ?f *^^
much for the opium that was imported, as for the
silver that went out of the country to pay for it ; as

S6

well as that^ after having ooce prohibited it^. their

pride alone has prevented them from retracting that

prohibition. But the ai^um^its that have been

teought forward in reply to this accusation are of

an overpowering nature. It is stated^ on the other

hand, that if the Chinese Government had chosen

' to legalise the admission of opium upon payment of

a fixed duty, they might all along have made a

Vide Nar- large revenue out of it ; that if they had not most

Rev^^G. materially checked the growth of the poppy in their

^^sent ^^^ country, enough opium might have been pro-

Bishop of (Juced there, at one-fifth of the price they now pay

quoted by for it, for internal consumption ; and that the drain

ander, of silver that they so lamented might thus have

P* ^' been effectually stopped. Looking at their conduct

in this lig'ht, it would really appear that their efforts

have been most disinterested, and that they have

patriotically and persistingly striven, to their own

detriment, and solely for the good of their people,

to check a national evil of vital importance. The

well known reply of the Chinese Emperor is deeply

striking : — ^^ It is true, I cannot prevent the intro-

^^ duction of the flowing poison ; gain-seddng and

^^ corrupt men will, for profit and sensuality, defeat

^^my wishes; but nothing will induce me to derive

^^ a revenue from the vice and misery of my people."

Dr. Morrison says, too, on this subject : —

Quoted in ^^ It is a principle of the Chinese Government not

''Davis's .

Chinese," ^^ to licence what they condemn as immoral. I
Vo^. 1. p. c< tnow they glory in the superiority, as to principle,

J^7

^f of their owu Government, and scorn the Christian
^^ Governments tiiat tolerate these vices, and convert
^^them into a source of pecuniary advantage, or
^^ public revenue/^

How different our own conduct ! While the Our dif-
Chinese Emperor has been so largely sacrificing pe-iicy and
cuniary interests to his people's welfare, our Indian ^^^ "^*'
Goveniment has been involving our countrymen in,
and inciting them to, a smuggling trade ; has been
sacrificing its native subjects, and has been itself "^^^^ ^?*®
flavouring the pernicious substance, so as to make it 5, et \eq.
^ tempting as po^ible to its wretched customers.
How great, too, our ingratitude ! The Chinese fur-
nish us with the most harmless, the most refreshing,
the most pleasant, for constant use, of all beverages
— with a beverage which is equally appreciated by
our young sportsmen in distant countries, and om*
old women at home — which is in almost universal
use amongst us, which we designate proverbially as
the " cup that cheers but not inebriates,^' and the
loss of which to our poorer classes would be one of
the greatest evils that a general war could produce :
they thus contribute largely to our comforts, and
even to our daily necessities, and we smuggle into
their country, in return, a drug which is poisoning
more or less slowly vast numbers of their people^

It is, of course, impossible to determine the exact The
number of regular opium smokers in China, or the t^^nju^
number of smokers of Indian opium. But an ap- ^^^^
proximation to these numbers has been already given

28

at pag^ 11, where it appears that, allowing 20 gfrains
a day for an average smoker, the Bengal monopoly
of the Indian Government would supply 3,800,000
victims, and the Bombay opium 1,600,000 more. It
may therefore be estimated that the Indian opium is
continually in process of poisoning 4,700,000 Chi-
nese. The average life of an opium smoker is stated
at 10 3^ears, after he has contracted the habit; but,
if twice that term of life be allowed him, it may
even then be further estimated that the Indian Go-
vernment, with the Bengal monopoly alone, kills its
customers at the rate of 160,000 a year, and derives
a net profit of £14 from each victim during his
20 3^ears of opium smoking existence. But this
is not all, for the evil is an increasing one. It
has increased fort3'^-fold in the last half century,
four-fold in the last 20 3'ears, and two-fold in the
last 10 years ; and the production of the Govern-
ment monopol3' has been more than doubled in the
last four years. If the evil be not now checked, it
is impossible to estimate to what further extent it
may be made to grow.

This, then, is the Christian forbearance that has
Profes- g-uided for a series of years the policy of those

8ion and ° , •' r j

practice who have administered our Indian Government,
Govern- and this the respect that they have shown for the
™^"*- rights and liberties of the Chinese nation. They
Matthe- expressly stated in 1834 that the3' retained the
^°'^' * opium monopoly, not so much for the purpose of
revenue, as to restrain the use of this pernicious

29

dfUg*. They said, " Were it possible to prevent the Aiextn-
" use of the drug altogether, except strictly for the ®'»P®^"
" purpose of medicine, we would gladly do it in com-
" passion to mankind ;" but between 1834 and 1867
they have nearly quadrupled their exportation.

In spite of the struggles that the Chinese autho- Thei>
rities formerly made to avoid the ruin thus brought poUcy.
upon their country, and fifteen years after the ter-
mination of the war which was mainly caused by their
violent efforts to stop the contraband importation of
opium, the Indian Government still persists— not
merely in winking at, or tacitly permitting, but ah- ^
solutely in conducting the manufacture of this drug,
for the express purpose of selling it to those who.
. import it into their helpless country. There can be
no question about this fact, no dispute about it. The
opium thus manufactured by the Indian Govern-
ment is quite different from that which is prepared
for medicine. In this case^ let it be repeated, they
flavour the drug in the most tempting manner^ and
make it as attractive as possible ; they prepare it in
the most approved form for smugglings that it may
elude what little vigilance and opposition the Chi-
nese Government is yet able to exercise ; they thus
encourage and enable those to whom they sell it to
carry on an illegal, a hurtful, and an iniquitous
trade, little l^ss demoralizing to those employed in it
^than it is destructive txy their Chinese victims ^ and
they depend upon opium receipts for a sixth part of
their whole revenue.

so

itoten- Could Commissioner Yeh disgrace the British

dcncy*

Empire, or dishonotrr the British Flag*, to the same
extent, by any means within his power ? Does not
the Indian Government, by persisting in, increas-
ing, and profiting by, this wretched traffic, do more
to dishonour the British name, to demoralize British
commerce, and to injure Christ's rehgion, than all
that the Chinese Commissioner has done, or can do ?
Does it not do more real permanent injury to the
British nation, than all the insults that all the
nations of the world could offer us?
Official The Noble Lord now at the head of Her Majesty's

opinion. • •'

Government once wrote as follows on the subject of
. the opium trade : — ^^ No protection can be afforded to
^^ enable British subjects to violate the laws of the
Aiexan- ^ country to which they trade/' That principle has
der, p. 86. gj^^^ ^^qj^ departed from ; let it now be returned to ;
let us no longer permit our Indian Govemment to
act in oppomtion to it, or promote its violation.
Captain Elliot, who was Her Majesty's Superinten-
dent of Trade at Canton, said in a despatch to his
Ibid. own Government, " No man entertains a deeper de-
^* * ^^ testation of the disg*race and sin of this forced
*^ traffic on the coast of China than the humble indi-
^^ wdual who signs this despatch. I see little to
^^ choose between it and piracy/' But since this des-
patch was written the traffic referred to has more
than trebled in amount, and it has become, there-
fore, the more important that some steps should be
taken in regard to it.

81

• The Spaniards have prohibited the export of opium Conduct
to China from Manilla, the Dutch from Batavia. counteiL.
The Americans, who are, in common with ourselves,
under treaty to prohibit the smuggling of opium into
China, do not employ their clipperis in this trade...*
It is the British flag — the flag that ought to be the Aiexan-
sign of civilization, honour, and Christianity— the ^^'^'
flag that we all love— the flag that we wish others
to respect, which is thus dishonoured. We ai'e
right to love our flag, we are right to cause it to be
respected 3 but we should also be particular about
what it covers and protects. The Chinese now fear
not opimn from other countries, nor under other co^
lours* The ^^ Union Jack '^ is its protector in the
waters of Canton, the British ensign its emblem on
the coasts of China. Every vessel under British
colours is associated by the Chinese with the demo^
ralization and ruin of their country ; every British
subject reminds them of the drug which he repre-
sents. All good Chinese, Imperialists as well aa Chinese
Insurrectionists, dislike the British, who bring ruin towa^»
to so many of their counti'ymen ; and all bad ones ^® ,
hate the British, by whom they are ruined. The
merchant is cursed for it, the man is detested for it,
the missionary is reproached for it, and applied to for
remedies to counteract it. Xet Englishmen reflect
on these things, and approve them if they can.

The British and Chinese empires contain together Our Mer-
more than half the population of the whole world } andour
the former possessing 200,000,000, and the latter Jj^^''^*^

39

from 360 to 400,000,000 inhabitants ; an eig^hth part*
of the former being Protestants, and hardly any of
the latter Christians. To the nation which has given
its name to the former, has been entrusted the privi-
lege, the responsibility, the duty, of extending civili-
zation, and promoting Christianity. The people of
the latter, ignorant, though highly educated, and
barbarous, though old in civilization, vast in number,,
and capable of great utilities and mighty improve-
ments, present the largest, the most unoccupied, the
most fertile field for the exercise of these duties,,
responsibilities, and privileges. In obedience to
their destiny, our countrymen visit China either as
merchants or missionaries ; either in the cause of
commerce, or in that of Christianity ; either for their
own pecuniary profits, or for the religious benefit of
their fellow- creatures. In the capacity of merchants,
they are engaged in a most useful and highly
honourable calling, so long as they obey the just laws
of the country with which they trade, promote
friendly intercourse with it, and tend to improve the
condition of its inhabitants ; but they bring discredit
on their profession, and disgrace on their nation,
when they infringe those just laws, and injure those
inhabitants. As zealous missionaries, they receive
but little of this world's goods, but they are ho-
noured by all good men, and they look for a higher
reward.
Their It is of the greatest importance to ourselves as a

doings, nation to consider well the proceedings of our coun-

33

Irjrmen in this distant part of the glob^. Our
merchants' are amassing^ wealth there: — are they
doingf so with advantage to themselves and their
customers ? Our missionaries are engaged in their
holier calling : — ^what are the principal difficulties
in their path? Let us answer these questions
fairly, and without exaggeration. The merchants
are amongst the most respectable of their class, and
they rank high in our commercial nation ; but they
carry on a trade, half of which is illegal j they pro-
cure from the Chinese that which is most beneficial,
and has become a necessity to us ; and they supply
to them, in return, in large and increasing quan-
tities, a substance which is hurtful, and even
destructive to them as individuals, and demo-
ralizins: to them as a nation. The missionaries
complain, and apparently with great justice, not
that the Chinese will not hear them, not that their
task is rendered impossible by the laws, customs, or
insensibility of the Chinese themselves ; but that
the almost overwhelming difficulties which they en-
counter, are placed before them by their own
countrymen ; that the opium manufactured by the
Indian Government, carried to the coasts of China
in British vessels, and supplied by British mer*
chants, has so awful an effect upon the minds and
bodies of those to whom they preach, and prejudices
the minds of their would-be-converts so strongly
against everything coming from their country, that
their task becomes nearly an impossible one. Dr.

c

34

"China, Medhurst tells us, that " almost the first word ut-

its Stdt6

and Pros- ^^ tered by a native, when urged to believe in Christ,
Med* "" ^^ is, ^ Why do Christians brings us opium, and bring
buret, ii i it directly in defiance of our own laws ? That
^^ ^ vile drug has poisoned my son, has ruined my
" ^ brother, and well nigh led me to beggar my wife
'^ ^ and children. Surely those who import such a
" ' deleterious substance, and injure me for the sake
^^ ^ of gain, cannot wish me well, or be in possession
^^ ^ of a religion that is better than my own. Go,
" ^ first, and persuade your own countrymen to re-
'^ ^ linquish this nefarious traffic ; and give me a
'^ ^ prescription to correct this vile habit, and then I
" ^ will listen to your exhortations on the subject of
" ^ Christianity.' '^ The statement of the Amoy
missionary, who provided for the necessary expenses
Videp.20. of his missiou by the sale of pills which he manu-
factured, which somewhat assisted the attempt to
Quoted at &i^® up opium smoking, has already been quoted.
Vo\M\\. '^^® ^^^- W. Welton, also, writing in Feb. 1856,
of Church savs, " When recommending Gospel truth to this

Mifission- " .

apy Intel- " people, wc are constantly taunted with being the
igencer. ^^ Jntroduccrs of this noxious drug ; and when we
^^ endeavour to dissuade them from the use of it,
" they say, ^ You bring it to us, and yet tell us
^ * not to use it,' venting their indignation at our
^' apparent hypocrisy in so doing j and it is very
'^ difficult to convince them of the contrary.'' The
same gentleman, alluding to the evils and effi^cts
of opium smoking, and the physic which he also
employed to assist the victims to break them*

35

calves of it, says, ^^ This has given me more m-
^^ fluenee among* the Chinese than all my other
^^ practice comhined. The natives themselves areibid.p.8i.
^^ most anxious to devise means to relinquish the
^^ hahit, without suffering the dreadful and distress-
^^ ing bodily ailments and symptoms already detailed.
^^ In proof of this, at the time I write this, nu-
^^ merous handbills are posted in every direction in
'^ the streets, pretending to have discovered some
^^ such precious antidotes to the evil effects of the
^^ drug. Empirics, as in England and America,
^^ avail themselves of the credulity and urgent ne-
" cessities of their countrymen, by advertising a
^^ nostrum for the evils of this vice, pretending to be
'^ derived fi'oni America, Spain, India, the Red
^ Haired Country, Western Ocean Country, &c.
^^ Handbills for six of these different nostrums are
^^ now to be seen in the streets and suburbs of this
^^ city ; and the natives tell us missionaries how
" anxious they are to be rid of this appalling vice,
'^ and ask whether these pretended nostrums, with
^^ our country's name and letters attached, are
'^ genuine. I have had the anxious, solicitous wife
^^ accompany the husband, enfeebled by the practice
^^ of opium smoking to my house^ to see him deposit
^^ the opium pipe with me, and obtain the remedy j
^' and then leave with joy at the prospect of being
^^ freed from the greatest of all curses. I have seen
^^ the husband dying with incurable diarrhoea, in-
^^ duced by the inability to obtain the drug any

c 2

36

" longer, the poor surviving* wife left to earn a scanty^
^' pittance by making baskets. Missionaries never
" commend themselves nor their work to the Chines^
^* in so favourable a light as when they denouncer
^^ the evil of opium smoking, and exhort them to
^^ desist from it. The interest upon such occasions
" is genuine, and accompanied by earnest requests
^^ whether the missionary has medicine to aid in
*^ breaking off the habit. Missionaries find, as the
" Chinese declare and fully know, that those who
^^ smoke opium are useless as servants, or in busi-
'^ ness, or in any responsible situation, and cannot
^* be trusted or depended upon. A person engaged
^^ in the sale of opium at this port, an Englishman,
^^ lately told me that he would not keep a servant,
^^ i.e. a native, whom he knew to smoke opium, as
^^ one quite unworthy of credit and confidence.^'
Heiigious Unfortunately, there can be no manner of doubt
of the that our merchants are spreading vice in China, by

question. i* • r. -ji j

^ means of opmm, much more rapidly and more ex-

tensively than our missionaries can introduce anti-
dotes to it, either physical or moral. Our country-
men at present go to China ^^ with their Bible in
one hand and their opium in the other.'' They
teach the Chinese, amongst the other command-
ments, ^^ Thou shalt do no murder," but they pro-
vide them with a drug which, as Dr. Medhurst
says, and as all other testimony goes to prove,

Medhuptt, ^^ annual!}^ destroys myriads of individuals." They
teach them to say, ^^ Lead us not into temptation,"

87

while they are pandering* to their vices. They , preach
to them^ ^^ Thou shalt lovo thy neighbour as thyself/' Matt,
while they shew to them that they care much for
their money and little for their lives. They proclaim
to them, ^^ Woe unto him that giveth his neigh- Hab. ii.
hour drink/' while they present to them the means
of intoxication. They tell them not to ^^ do evil that Rom. m.
good may come/* while they themselves do evil that
money may come. They echo to them the memor-
able* words, ^^ It must needs be that offences come, Matt.
but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh f ^^"''
and at the same time they appear before them in
the character of gross, unmistakable, persevering
public offenders, against principles human and di-
vine. Trul}'', the individuals who persist in this
course will receive their rewards : the missionaries,
for the good they have preached; the manufac-
turers, the merchants, and the speculators, for the
evil they have practised; and the nation, itself,
which knowingly allows this course to be continued,
and neglects to employ the constitutional means
within its power for stopping it, must not expect to
escape the just vengeance of an avenging Provi-
dence.

It will be seen by the following paragraph that Opium at
opium smuggling is believed to have been the im- ^^^
mediate cause of the horrible transactions at Sara-
wak, of which the news has just reached us : —

^^ The immediate cause of this frightful attempt ^.^^® „
^^ to destroy the. whole of the Government European 29 April,

bourne.

88

quoted << authorities at Sarawak^ is stated to be the string^ift
"'s^aits' ^^ measures which Sir James Brook has found i%
T^mes" ^^ expedient to adopt, to prevent opium smuggling.
March, (( gome heavy fines have been levied on the smug^
^^ glers, the amount being paid by the Kungsi, and
^^atterly some of the offenders have been impri-
^^ soned ; but these seem scarcely sufficient to ac-
^^ count for such ruthless slaughter and destructi(»i,
^^ not sparing age or sex/'
and Mel- And the latest accounts from Australia bring
news of an '' opium question *' there also* The Al-
lowing letter on the subject appears in the ^^ lllel-
bourne Argus '* of the 20th December, 1856 : —

^^ Sir, — There has been a great deal written and
^^ said about the propriety of imposing a heavy duty
^^on opium imported into this colony, and there
^^ seems to be a certainty that Government contem-
^ plates a measure of this kind, I should be sorry
^^ to see opium taxed merely because its chief, and
^^ almost only, consumers are Chinaman, but I would
'^ heartily applaud the total prohibition of this ener-
" vating drug, on account of its demoralizing infla«^
^^ ence both on mind and body.

^^ Is it in the delicious swoons produced by this
^^ infe.m(ms drug that our missionaries and advocates
^* of the Gospel expect to convert to Christianity th^
^^ infidel hordes now squatted on our shores ?

" Mauritius, with her numerous M^lay and Chi-
^^nese population, might add considerably to her
^^ revenue by admitting duty-paid opium : hut, con-

8»

^^ 8(}ious of the evil produced by its use, she strictly
^^ prohibits its introduction.

^^The punishment for smuggling*, as you are
^' aware, is very severe there; and any captain
^^ caught in the act not only forfeits his ship, but is
^^ sei;it on the roads for several years.

^^Is there no one here who would agfitate this
^^ mosi^ important question ? It seems to me that a
^^ law to this effect could meet with no opposition,
^^ either on the part of our Legislature or the public.

^^ Feeling confident that by mooting this question
^^ you will confer a lasting benefit, not only on the
^^ colony generally, but also on the well disposed
'^ portion of our Chinese population, I trust that the
^^ suggestion may find a place in your valuable
^' columns — I remain. Sir, &c. &c.

^^ Vox POPULI.

'* Melbourne, Dec 13th, 1856.*'

As no accountof opium admitted into the Mauritius Govern-
appears in the statistical returns of that colony, the ^nsL-*'^
above statement in regard to it would appear to be *®°^y-
true. Shall we deny tp the Chinese that privilege of
prohibiting the importation of opium which we exer-
cise ourselves, through the Colonial Government of
the Mauritius, for the good of our subjects there ? Is
it not a strange anomaly that one branch of our Im-
perial Government should be occupied in excluding
from one portion of our empire, on account of its
burtfulness, a substance which is manufactured for
the sake of profit by another branch of our Imperial
Government ?

40

Speech to The noble words of our noble Premier still ring*
tuents, in the ears of the country, ^^I also/' said he^
.4 Times,'' " ^^^t Peace, but I want Peace with honour and
1867*^^^' *^ safety, Peace with the maintenance of national
*^ rights, Peace with security to our fellow-country-
^^ men in foreign lands/' England wants all this,
and even more than this. England wants also
Our duty peace with m^^rnational honour, peace with inter-
the* Chi- ^^*^^^^^1 justice. All her good patriots wish Eng-
"^■®- land to fulfil her highest destinies, and not to be con- '
tent with providing for her national rights, while
she persists in her national wrongs. No, let her by
all means secure her national rig'hts — there is for-
tunately little fear at present of her not doing* so —
but let her also avoid all wrong* to other nations.
She does so in the case of the strong, let her do so
also in the case of the weak. Lord Clarendon
judiciously refrained from doing* all that he mig'ht
have done, in order to avoid the risk of giving offence
to the Government of the United States, when re-
cruits were required for the Russian war j let him now
adopt a similar policy when it becomes his duty to
conclude a Chinese peace. Let him declare to the
Chinese victims of the Indian Government, that their
case has at length been favourably considered ; that
from this time forth, the importation of opium into
China from British India will gradually cease. Our
Ambassador will otherwise be placed in a false posi-
tion, when it becomes his duty to enter upon terms
of peace : for thus, and thus only, can we have
peace with honour to our countrj^.

41
The first step that should be taken is an obvious Course to

be adop-

one. As the Government monopoly for the manu- ted.
facture of opium in India is a disgi*ace to us as
a nation^ so we should as a nation unite for its
suppression. No question of revenue, no question of
policy, should be allowed to influence us in the
matter. The monopoly is a grievous national sin, Monopoly
and a grievous international wrong: therefore it abolished,
should be put down : therefore a limit should be
assigned to it : therefore it should be decreed, that
in— say five years time, it should be no more. The
Indian Government has no just claim to compensa^
tion. It has inflicted a grievous injury upon its own Videp.ii.
subjects, and upon the Chinese, for a number of
years, and it should be compelled to refrain from
such a course for the future. If any compensation
be due in the matter, it is from the Indian Govern-
ment itself, for the wrong it has so long perse-
vered in.

Not a poppy can be grown in British India with- Cuitiva-
out the permission of the Indian Government; and the checked,
next object, as well for the sake of our Indian popu-
lation, as for their Chinese customers, is to prevent
all cultivation of the poppy, and manufacture of
opium, for other than medicinal purposes.

The exportation of Malwa opium from Bombay, Exporta-
is also under the control of the Indian Government ; cease.
and the third step to be taken, is gradually to put a
stop to this branch of traffic. It should be limited
to, — say 10 years, after which time all exportation of

Minute,

4»

opkim from Britkh India should cease. The
^,350,000 6f net revenue that the Bast India
Company would thus lose, should be made up,
partly by more honest means, and better employ-
quoteiT' ment of the 400,000 acres which are now under
British poppy Cultivation J and, for the rest. Lord Dal-
Feb!i^V housie's advice should be adopted, loans of British
p. 637. capital should be properly invited and freely obtained,
and it should no longer be attempted to defray out
of the income of the Indian Empire the expense of
^ the innumerable and ^gantic works which are ne-
*^cessary to its due improvement.^ The opium
monopoly, the opium cultivation, and the opium ex-
portation, are a sin and a wrong. They should cease.
Probable Yhe Chinese are well aware that the manufacture

effect on

the of opium in Central India is a Gova^nment mono-

poly, and a large source of revenue. Such know-
ledge is intensely aggravating to them; and it
would be the greatest satisfaction to them to be
informed that the monopoly was about to cease, and
the exportation from British India to be checked.
If, therefore, they were informed of these facts, it is
by no means improbable that they would gladly
avail themselves of the opportunity that would be
thus afforded them, of saving their pride, and bene-
fiting their people ; and that they might be induced
to admit, upon payment of dntjy for the next few
years, the opium that they cannot keep out of their
country. If such duty were not fixed at too high
a rate, smuggling would be no longer advantageous.

Bad irotild necessarily eeMe ; and a great obstacle td
amicable intercoms would be removed. But^ even
if the Chinese should refuse to consent to such an
arrangement^ the duty of gradually putting a stop
to the opium monopoly^ and gradually suppressing
the growth of the poppy, and the exportation of
opium, is not a whit the less imperative upon the
British nation. The first step to be taken, there-
fore, is the abolition of the Government monopoly ;
the second, the gradual cessation and final prohibi*
tion of the cultivation of the poppy ; and the third,
the prevention, by degrees, of the exportation of
opium from British territory.

It would appear, then, that an occasion has arrived, Summary
on which this opium question may be most appro-
priately re-discussed. Hostihties having broken
out, a new treaty with China will be required. The
British nation has, through its Indian Government,
been manufacturing opium, for a series of years,
for Chinese smoking; and its subjects have been
conveying it to the Chinese coast, for the supply of
a contraband trade. It has thus been inflicting a
grievous wrong, and an illegal injury upon the
helpless Chinese people. It has supplied the means
for breaking, and the temptation to evade the
Chinese laws, and it has pandered to the vices which
consume great numbers of the Chinese inhabitentst
It will now be afforded an oppwtunity of gracefully
declaring, in the plenitude of poww, and in the
hour of victory, that such a course shall no longer

Bion.

44

be pursued. It would thus act in 6 mauner credit-
able to itself, and extricate itself from the false land
unworthy position which it at present occupies ; jaiid
it would thus, also, in all probability, conciliate the
Chinese, and form relations with them more amicable
than any which it has hitherto been found possible
to establish.
Conciu- So long" as the opium stumbling'-block remains,
the Chinese cannot but look upon us with deep
feelings of animosity : they must regard us as their
bitterest enemies, individually and nationally. It
can never be otherwise, whether the reign of the
present dynasty be continued, or whether the insur-
rectionists gain the upper hand. For every genuine
reason of state policy, for the sake of humanity, for
the cause of legitimate commerce, for the honour of
the country, for consistency of religious profession,
on every other account but that of temporary pecu-
niary profit, this offence should be discontinued.
Unite, then, my countrymen, as a nation, for its
suppression ! You, who have done so much towards
abolishing the trade in negro bodies, let it be your
object and your pleasure, as it is your duty, to put
an end to a traffic which has such pernicious effects,
mentally and physically, on a considerable propor-
tion of the vast Chinese nation. Employ all the
constitutional means that are placed within your
reach, for this great object; and you cannot but
succeed. If your voice be lifted up, it will at once
be heard. Tou will thus have the satisfaction of

46

promoting amicable intercourse between the two
nations which together form half the population of
the world ; of extending commerce between them ;
and of assisting, more than by any other means in
your power, in the spread of the Gospel from the
25,000,000 Protestants, that your own empire now
contains, to the 360,000,000 subjects of the empire
with which you are at war.

The following recent publications on the subject
of the Opium Trade are recommended for perusal.

^^ The Rise and Progress of British Opium Smug-
gling,*' by Major-General Alexander, Judd and
Glass, Paternoster Row,

^^ Contraband Opium Smuggling,^' by the same,
Seeley, Jackson and Haliday,

^^ What is the Opium Trade/' by Donald Matthe-
8on, Esq, Hamilton, Adams and Co,

^^ The Trade in Opium,'' article in the North Bri-
tish Review, No, LII.

^^The Opium Question," article in the Church
Missionary Intelligencer for April 1867,

And particularly,

^^ The Opium Revenue of India," published by
Wm. Allen and Co. Leadenhall Street, with the
replies to it which have been published by Major-
General Alexander and Mr, Lewin,

THE END.

IMPORTANT PAMPHLETS

RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY

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1. DESCRIPTION OF SOME OP THE PRINCIPAL HA»-

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2. DESCRIPTION OF THE SEAT OF WAR IN EURO-

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OPIUM REVENUE OF INDIA.

THE QUE|TION ANSWERED,

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OPIUM REVENUE.

In a pamphlet on the Opium Revenue of India^ the anonymous
author commences with a somewhat energetic outburst against that
ignorant impatience of taxation which characterises the people of
Great Britain. He tells us that direct taxation has been found
worse than indirect^ and gives us the comforting assurance^ that
" no ministry will dare to propose a new tax of either class/'
Had such an harbinger given us his name^ it might have inspired
more confidence; but if even his susceptibility should have been
imposed upon in this instance^ he will find many tax- payers who
will think that when they have brought the Chancellor of the
Exchequer to that point in which ^' it will be as much as he can do
to maintain a suflSciency of existing resources to meet existing
wants, without adding to debt/' they will have accomplished the
great economic desideratum of providing for the necessary expenses
of the State^ and allowing no scope for waste or superfluities. So
far then there will be much agreement as to his conclusions, though
not improbably some difference regarding the way in which they
are arrived at.

Turning from British finance we find our Anonymous less tole-
rant towards a party which, according to his description, is composed
of most heterogeneous minds ; not only devoted to inquiries affecting
their own welfare within the encircling seas of our native isles, but
venturing to expose the errors of principle and demoralising ten •

B

4 OPIUM REVENUE.

dency of taxes levied on our Indian fellow-sabjects^ thousands of
miles off, with which neither these agitators nor the Parliament
and public whom they address have any direct concern. To this,
I believe, we may demur. Principles for good and evil are the same
in ail lands, and are but differently expressed in various languages \
the discordance which he deprecates is the evidence of incremental
error, and constitutes the cry or groan of violated harmony for a
restitution of its rights. India has been by no exaggerated
metaphor termed the brightest colonial jewel in the British crown,
and whatever affects the spiritual and temporal wetfare of its
150,000,000 people, is not only a legitimate object of interest to
our higher qualities and feelings, but is most intimately inter;
woven with our whole system of national advancement and pros-
perity. Our author may be as right in his denunciation of tyros
in political economy, and unfledged statesmen, as he is delicate
and refined in his allusions to those whom he would instruct by
his wisdom and warn by his experience ; but after all, it is rather
with their arguments than their personalities that the public has
to deal ; and gladly would I borrow from the plumage of his know-
ledge a feather with which to endorse the words that he some-
what hypothetically utters, viz. '^ that monopoly of production is
"opposed to free-trade principles; that opium is noxious; that
" the Government of China has condemned and prohibited its use ;
" and that the Government of India, by increasing the supply, is
" helping to poison the population of a nation,*^ with which we
profess a friendly alliance.

The question that our author propounds is, "Is it right to
take three millions sterling from the Chinese beyond the cost
price of the drug, as the condition of their enjoying the forbidden
indulgence of opium smoking ^iUJo which I unhesitatingly answer,
No, it is not right ; and proceed to prove the wrong.

A generation of the human race has hardly passed away since
there was so small an opium trade between India and China, that
200 chests, admitted through the Chinese custom-house at a mode-
rate duty, constituted the whole. In the latter part of last century,
when the East India Company was a trading corporation of mer-

ITS ANTAGONISM IN INDIA AND CHINA.

chants^ entrusted also with something more than viceregal power,
they established for their own profit a monopoly of the drug.
Avarice suggested, and despotism enabled that suggestion to be
carried into eflfect, that a rigid monopoly of production and capa-
bility of supplying demand to any extent to which it might be
stimulated, would afford a more certain income than could be relied
upon from the ordinary course of commercial export on account of
the East India Company.

In a few years, the result more than bore out the most sanguine
expectations that bad been formed; the monopoly, as shown in
evidence before Parliament by the servants of the East India Com-
pany, extended over all India; and Lord W, Bentinck when
Governor-General, informed the Court of Directors that " the final
effect of an increase, beyond assignable limit, in the quantity of the
drug exported to China from both sides of India, is a result beyond
the power of our foresight to discover, or even at present to hazard
any speculation upon.''

But while this progress was contemplated with such compla-
cency in India and the councils of Leadenhall Street, there was a
very different view taken of it by the Imperial authority and states-
men of China. The demoralisation of the people became alarmingly
rapid, and its ratio might be estimated by that of the increased
importation of opium, prepared, not as formerly for medicinal
purposes, but expressly for the indulgence of a vicious propensity.
The drug was declared to be contraband by law ; penalties were
enacted against its importation and deleterious use; and in the
course of diplomatic intercourse between friendly nations, ev^ry
law, edict, and proclamation promulgated by the Chinese, was
communicated to the authorised representatives of Great Britain^
with strong remonstrances against the traffic, and earnest entreaties
that it might be suppressed.

In order to keep before my readers the simplicity of the great
principles at issue, I shall put aside as much as possible all details,
and avoid entering into particulars regarding the manner in which
the opium traffic has been conducted in China for more than half
a century. It dates no further back than I have intimated, and is

b2

6 OPIUM BEVENUE.

not one of those sources of revenue which our instructor on this
occasion describes to be " as old as the hills."

We have two great nations that ought to be reciprocally bene-
ficial to each other^ in direct autagonism upon one point. Great
Britain having caused, stimulated, and supplied the demand for
what is injurious to the moral and commercial prosperity of China,
derives in one branch of her many sources of revenue and to the
detriment of others, an annual income stated by our author to be
3,000,000/. sterling. China, too weak to oflFer successfully an
armed resistance to our armies and navy, and incapacitated by the
demoralisation of her people from presenting such an opposition to
unjust measures as was exhibited by the fathers of American in-
dependence, when they made virtuous self-denial the means of
counteracting arbitrary taxation, has hitherto pleaded in vain for
pity or relief. England and the world are unhappily too familiar with
the blood-stained atrocities of the Opium war, and circumstances
are now forcing upon public attention the question, whether the
measures that caused that war, and continue to disturb the even
course of commercial intercourse, are to be abolished or continued.

In the debates in Parliament, in the many publications on the
subject, in all that has been alleged by those interested in or
opposed to opium-smuggling in China, I do not remember to have
met with one instance in which there has been such an attempt as
this to deny its immorality, or prove that the monopoly and its
consequences are sound in principle, and, like all legitimate com-
merce, beneficial to mankind. The small number of merchants
who are more or less engaged, either on their own account or as
almost involuntary agents for others, palliate as they best may
what none can justify, and which several would most gladly be
emancipated from. The East India Company — or, more properly
speaking in the present day, the President of the Board of Control
— pleads nothing but a miserable and short-sighted expediency
and 3,000,000/. sterling of income, in answer to the overwhelming
proofs that the income is illegal and precarious; that it is derived
from a source injurious not only to Great Britain, but to India and
China, and bearing on its front the certain condemnation that what

IMMORAL AND FBECABIOUS. 7

is religiously and morally wrong never can be politically right,
honourable, nor eventually advantageous.

I concede at once that the opium revenue has increased, is
increasing, and while affairs continue as at present, will for a time
increase still more. I admit that it is an important — far too
important — source of Indian revenue. I am .quite of opinion that
an equal revenue cannot, while circumstances remain as they now
are in India and China, be realised with such facile readiness. But
thus admitting all that its advocates plead for as expedient, I say
at once that the degrading immorality of the whole system cries to
Gk)d and man for its condemnation, and the merest dictates of
prudent foresight and common sense imperatively require that the
stability of the finances of our Indian empire shall be placed on a
sounder basis.

The advocates of the system urge that monopoly is in its nature
restrictive, and therefore operates as some check to extended use.
Lord Cornwallis argued thus when he stated that maximum taxa-
tion would ensure minimum consumption. Now, instead of
bewildering ourselves with theories, look to results. Lord W.
Bentinck has shown us the object and anticipations which Lord
Dalhousie, in his celebrated minute on his own administration,
proves to have been so largely realised. The East India Company's
monopoly is used, not for restriction^ but for obtaining the largest
profit on the largest quantity of opium for which the largest demand
can be excited. Opium agents are allowed a per-centage upon
what they can sell, or cause to be sold, in India ; and if Lord Dal-
housie's estimate is to be reached, there ought now to be an impor-
tation of not less than 120,000 chests annually into China.

It is as impossible to calculate the amount of opium used by
each individual in China as it would be to know from the aggre-
gate Excise returns the quantity of gin drunk by single persons
here. If the opponents to opium smuggling mention large quan-
tities, and count consumers by millions, they are accused of igno-
rance and exaggeration ; while, on the other hand, such reasoners
as our unknown author, plead for the harmlessness of moderation.
Some of them have argued that this is evinced in the common use

Vr^

8 OPIUM REVENUE.

of the drug by all classes, and that cases have been known where
three hundred grains a-day have been smoked and the man still
lived. From what has been published on the subject, it seems that
six grains a-day may be taken as the quantity used by a beginner or
a very moderate smoker. The same authorities tell us almost unani-
mously that moderation in opium-smoking* is, as a general rule,
• an impossibility. Some of them have thought that from seventeen
to twenty grains a-day will represent a fair average. Now this, at
the rate of importation in 1855-6, would give, in round numbers,
about 8,000,000 of smokers of the pure drug in China ; but, from
the same sources of information, we learn that very few — and those
only among the richest of the people — can afford to smoke the
drug as it arrives with the brand of the East India Company. As
soon as it gets into the hands of the native dealers, it is adulte-
rated ; and thus calculation of the number of smokers from this
data is baffled. The melancholy experience of hospital practice,
however, affords a nearer approximation to accuracy in the statistics
of mortality. There is a very general accordance, that though
some men have smoked opium for more than thirty years, yet the
general duration of life from the time that a person commences the
habit, does not average more than ten years. Some writers set it
down at less.

There is a charge of inconsistency brought against those who
would abolish the monopoly and retain restriction upon growth and
production. The author under consideration points to the baneful

♦ Perhaps few instances of roundabout reasoning can exceed that of Mr.
Meadows', quoted approvingly by oui* author as authority for the harmlessness of
opium smoking. I will put his facts in juxta-position : — " Smoking a little opium
daily is like taking a pint or two of ale, or a few glasses of wine daily ; smoking
more opium is like taking brandy as well as beer and wine ; smoking very much
opium is like excessive brandy and gin drinking, leading to delirium tremens and
premature death. When once the habit of opium-smoking is taken up [the Italics are
mine], the discontinuance of the daily whiff thus habitually taken as a luxury,
produces discomfort in the extreme ; so that, howsoever the price of the article
may be raised, the opium-smoker will still not deny himself the luxury, so long as
hy any means he can purchase the drug : " and so Mr, Meadows recommends that
the price may be lowered, and the drug rendered more generally and easily acces-
sible. Out* author says, that " this is the most unexceptionable and best testimony
of an official personage;" and there I leave it.

■A'-

INJURIOUS TO THB BESOUBCES OF INDIA. 9

effects of unrestricted produce in Rajpootana and Assam^ and asks^
"If more opium were grown in India^ is enlarged consumption
a good?^' No, I reply; it is because I would not inflict or
allow these evils that I would abolish monopoly and maintain
restriction ; and if I may be permitted an analogy, I would point
to what is done in a country where no Minister of the Crown dare
propose a monopoly, and in which the people would not bear with .
the milder application of the system that existed under the disguise
of Corn-laws. In England the restriction is imposed for fiscal
reasons ; I claim it for India and China, on the higher grounds of
religious principle and moral right.

In Ireland, and in many parts of England and Scotland,
tobacco might be grown to any extent, and yet the laws of Britain
prohibit the cultivation of a single plant. Moreover, they impose
a duty of, I believe, about 300 per tent on the imported leaves.
Now let what is here legally and on justifiable principle done to
assist the revenue, be applied to the moral benefit of the East; —
prohibit the growth of poppies, and put any duty you please upon
foreign opium.

Our author asks, at page 7, what is to be substituted for the
existing system with its machinery? I have already elsewhere
said, the cultivation of cotton, tea, sugar, indigo, and other com-
mercial reproductives, without any such machinery or government
interference as now exists. Let me show what this last is, from the
select records of the Bengal Government.

An Indian having a certain number of cultivators under him,
obtains from the Government an advance of money, for which he is
bound, under severe penalties, to give at a fixed price a certain
quantity, and all other opium above that quantity, produced on his
lands. To encourage the extension of poppy cultivation, larger
advances are given to those who bring new lands under the crop,
and themselves under the privileges of that peculiar legislation,
which I have indicated in a pamphlet " On the Rise and Progress
of Opium Smuggling ;^^ and which (the legislation, not the
pamphlet) seems to find no disfavour in my critic^s eyes.

In the Benares district alone, in 1849-50, there were 107,823

10 OPI0M REVENUE.

beegahs of land under poppy ctdtivation. The first officer in what
our author calls the machinery is the opium agent. The agency is
marked out into eight divisions^ each under a sub-agent. In every
district in which there is a sub-agency, the Government collector
of revenue (and I hope my readers know what his powers are) is
eX'Offido a deputy agent, charged with a supervision of the sub-
agent, and with the investigation of all suits that may arise in re
Opium. — Vide Regulation XIII. of J 816, Bengal Code of Regu-
lations, for the law upon the subject.

Every division is again partitioned out under Gomashtas, under
each of whom is a treasurer and suitable establishment. The
Gomashta pays the advances to the Ryots or farmers, measures
their lands, receives and weighs their produce, and is responsible
for its delivery. To assist in this department he has under him
Jemadars and Zillahdars, ifhose duty it is to watch the ryots.
Apart from these, there is in each division, custos custodium, a
Mohotonim, who exerts a general supervision of every thing trans-
acting therein, making frequent reports of every event that occurs.
In short, this machinery presents to us the agricultural popula-
tion of a district amounting to about 128,000 farmers and labourers,
watched over in their daily occupations by 150 native officers of
the first class, and about 1200 officials and paid servants in con-
stant employ, besides the superior European officers. During the
manufacturing season there are often upwards of 600 extra hands
employed in the Ghazeepoor factory alone, including from fifteen to
twenty European assistants and boys.

We are told, on the high authority from which I have taken the
above, that all connected with the opium monopoly is "most
wise/^ and all "works smoothly and well;'^ if so, this wisdom is
still far east of Great Britain, and the well-working would be more
easily accepted if it did not " aflford the pabulum,^^ upon which,
according to our Unknown, " spare ingenuity will occupy itself,*'
and which furnishes food for meditation on such a passage as the
following. Writing of the arrears into which the cultivators fall,
the official selector from the records of Bengal lets this incident
crop out from the rich field of happiness enjoyed in opium districts.

RAISED UNDER TYRANNICAL LAWS. 11

Government being the creditor in the case: — "It is clear that, when
such balances become so large that the cultivator cannot discharge
them, he is no longer a free agent, but is perfectly subservient to
the will of his creditor, for whom he must cultivate whether he de-
sire it or not. Such burdens may even be handed down from
father to son/' And yet our author asserts that " the poppy cul-
tivation is not, and never has been compulsory/*

The advocates of opium monopoly and traffic delight in a com-
parison of the intoxication caused by the drug and by gin. I
rather incline, if we must select a prefference in such miserable
degAidation, to agree with them that opium smoking, though more
destructive to its victims, is less dangerous to bystanders ; under its
effects the unhappy wretch sinks into helpless insensibility to all
external objects, until waking from his sensual dream he needs the
nursing that abates the horrors of delirium tremens. Those who
have read or seen what running a ^^rnuck'' is, or a Mahomedan
Soonee population during the last three days of a Moharum, know
well what are the effects of opium eating. My object, however, now
is to suggest that the admirers of our laws of bankruptcy, chancery,
&c., may contemplate hereditary insolvency and perpetual debt
with its consequences, and institute as reasonable a comparison as
between the results of gin-drinking and the use of opium. Taking
these things also into consideration, I am constrained to repeat my
"No** to the* aiithor*s question, and plead for India and the
Chinese.

At pp. 8 and 9 of his pamphlet, the Anonymous admits an
agreement with what I have stated regarding the unrestricted
growth and sale of opium in Rajpootana and Assam. His own
words are : — " The condition of the Rajpoots of Central India,
where the growth of the poppy is free, is universally held up as an
evidence of the demoralising, enervating, life-destroying effect of
this drug.** I only ask to apply this description to the 300,000,000
millions of China j and again, as a Christian and an Englishman,
to answer his question with sorrowful indignation — No — No —
No!

Our author is perfectly correct in saying, at page 9, that it is

12 OPIUM REYBNtnS.

not free production and free sale of opium in India that is advocated
by the opponents of monopoly. There is evidently a confusion in
his mind on the subject of free-trade principles. They are only
applicable to what is just, right, and reciprocally beneficial : they
cannot be brought in accordance with African slave-trade or opium
smuggling in China, both being so irremediably unclean, that a
clean commercial system can neither be brought out of, nor inter-
woven with them. Most truly does he state a fact and principle,
neither of which, I fear, he either fully comprehends or appreciates :
•— " Free production benefits are secondary with them (myself and
such-like) to high moral considerations/* But only free produc-
tions of evil are so deemed secondary, because we hold that the
freest production of what is unquestionably and reproductively
beneficial to mankind, is not only compatible, but absolutely iden-
tical, with the highest principles of our nature, whether developed
in the duties of religion or the legitimate pursuits of legislation,
science, political economy, and commercial intercourse. Is not
our author aware, that in this country where trade principles are,
according to his view, *' running upon wild freedom,** there is no
such unrestricted traffic in intoxication as he and others would
impose as the alternative for abolition of a monopoly ? No one
can sell beer, wine, or spirits except under permission of a restrictive
license, which magistrates may withhold from an immoral cha-
racter j or refuse, if they think that the shops within their juris-
diction are too numerous for the general good of the inhabitants.
Nay, more : there is even a restriction upon the evil freedom of
the subject in this freest of all lands, and if my vis-d-vis should
unhappily indulge too freely in what demoralises our population,
he would render himself amenable to restrictive law, and liable to
a penalty for an enjoyment correlative with that which he would
sell so largely to the Chinese.

At pages 10, 11, I find a mystification about the opium mono-
poly and free trade, which I will endeavour to clear up in a few
words. The science of political economy, like all other sciences,
proceeds upon sound data and just principles. Introduce an error
or incongruity, and you can never arrive at correct results. If you

SELF-DESTBUCTIVE IN^ ITS CONSEQUBNCES. 13

try to compound from the dicta of arbitrary power, the selfishness
of monopolised trade^ and the violation of the laws of two nations,
a system of commerce such as we have by these means established
against^ not with, China; then I say that you have but to leave
these elements to work out their inevitable results, and the de-
struction of the compound is as certain as the analytic solution of
substances in whose properties there is neither chemical affinity
nor cohesion. There is a question of time, none of eventuality.

It is not, as our author would lead us to believe, a plain matter
of demanfl and supply, the one healthily and reproductively ali-
menting the other ; but the whole thing is false and artificial. It
is a vicious demand, originated and supplied by a government whose
connexion with trade at all is an illegal intromission, and would be,
even under better circumstances, an improper and unseemly com-
petition with its subjects : it furnishes another opportunity to
reply to the Unknown, No — No — No.

The best answer I can give to what, according to our author, is
not "twaddle,^' (vide page 12,) is this: — Go down to some den of
drunken debauchery and degradation ; select which you will of the
miserable objects before you, of whom there are thousands in this
coimtry more or less wretched than the millions of opium victims in
China ; and learn the practical lesson in political economy which our
author suggests. Why is that poor creature, hatless, shoeless,
shirtless, sunk from the high dignity of a being created to hold
communion with his God, to a sad spectacle of humanity bru-
talised below the protective instinct of beasts ? There is the very
climax in a man, to which the opium trade is rapidly bringing
China. As he gave his money for gin instead of wholesome food
and clothes, so China gives her bullion for opium instead of British
manufactures. And as the drunkard sinks into a dishonourable
grave, no longer capable of consuming that which caused his ruin,
so must China in her present course become impoverished and
unable to pay for the opium which is now destroying her vitality.
I need but refer my readers to the admirable argument on this
head which is to be found in the just-published number of the
"North British Review.''

14 OPIUM REYBNUE.

The author asserts that it is a fallacy to suppose that the pay-
ment for opium in silver deranges the monetary system of China.
A select committee of the House of Commons^ Mr. Montgomery
Martin, and numerous authorities, mercantile and other, English,
American, and Chinese, assert the contrary, and there I leave the
question. The monetary system of China, however, is deranged;
and if not by opium, then by what other cause ?

As regards the Government being the very head and front of
the system of smuggling, I must again borrow a feather from the
author's plumage to record his own words, and then lea^ them to
the support of his own vindication. **Now the Government is a
contrabandist, because the article cannot reach the consumers
except through the smuggler's intervention ;'' and, '^ the smuggler
cannot get the opium except from the Government/' That the
Government provides and sells opium for the sake of the profit
are the Unknown's ipsissima verba.

Our author adduces Napoleon's Milan decree in support of
his argument. There is, however; one trifling diflference which he
overlooks. Napoleon's Milan and Berlin decrees were issued to
shut out the manufactures of a nation with which he was at war. His
object was to ensure his own success, and, if possible, to bring about
a peace by means intended to be more efficacious and which were
less dreadful than bloodshed and devastation. Britain's opium
smuggling is carried on to intrude a contraband drug upon
a people with whom she is at peace : against the laws of both
countries, and enforced by those vindictive horrors which Napo-
leon's measures were meant to bring to a speedier termination. I
confess that I cannot see any objection, moral, commercial, or poli-
tical, to the open lawful sale of English manufactures in Heligoland,
or any British colony or possession, under any circumstances, or
at any time. The articles alluded to were those of sound legiti-
mate commerce, and so far from being injurious were, wherever
they found sale and use, beneficial to mankind. Let us deal as
honestly with China, and leave her emperor as we left the first
Napoleon, and still leave the third, to regulate his tariffs, and pro-
tect his coasts against invading contrabandists. We simply dare

INJURIOUS TO BRITISH COMMERCfi. 15

not deal with France^ nor any European or American power^ as we
have dealt^ and still continne to deal^ with the Chinese.

The author, at page 25, argues that the endeavour to get rid of
the salt monopoly, " in deference to the known prejudices of the
British public, will fail,^* because a considerable capital is required
to prepare works for independent manufacture, or to make advances
for produce. But at page 27 he urges, that if the monopoly of
opium were abolished, and a duty levied on its export, so much
capital would be embarked that we should have the poppy growing
everywhere. Now it requires much more capital for the more
precarious cultivation of the poppy than for the certainly profitable
manufacture of salt j and from whence is the capital to come for
that?

Notwithstanding the diflFerence of our views, I feel no inclina-
tion to retract what my opponent calls "the summing up of my
pamphlet,'* nor to withhold my acknowledgment of the perhaps too
flattering designation which he gives it. I am glad that it is con-
sidered in any degree oracular ; and as it is little else than a com-
pilation of arranged facts, presented to the public for consideration
and discussion, so far is it from my desire that when I speak no
dog should bark, that I will hail with pleasure the music of the
cry that shall hunt down even my own errors. Only let me ob-
serve, however, that the meaning which the Unknown puts upon
my expression at pp. 35 and 36 of his book is his, not mine. So far
from thinking that the suppression of the opium monopoly and
smuggling will take one rupee from every five of the population
of India, I do most firmly believe that it would be the means not
only of enriching them to a much larger amount, but of aflFording
increased wealth to Great Britain through her merchants and
manufacturers. In this I am not singular, inasmuch as a Com-
mittee of the House of Commons reported, in ] 847, that, unless
we can look forward to an increased consumption of those pro-
ducts in which China has the means of paying England for her
manufactures, the adjustment of the balance of trade can only be
made at the cost of largely-diminished exports and of restricted
employment to every branch of industry connected with them;

16 OPIUM RSYBNUB.

or^ in other words^ unless we take from China the products of her
industry in exchange for our linens^ woollens^ hardware^ &c. &c.,
instead of her current silver for East India Company's non-repro-
ductive opium^ our mills^ factories^ and operatives must be re-
stricted in their employment. As this is the recorded opinion of
the Parliament, I believe we may both respectfully subscribe
Q. E. D.

There is an attempt to excite alarm, that if the East India Com-
pany, or President of the Board of Control, is forced into obedience
to the Act of Parliament for the government of India, there must
be a cessation of public works and improvement, that the progress
of education will be stopped, and a doubt will remain whether the
armies can be paid. Do not occurring events give a significant
refutation to this fear ? We have money enough to undertake two
transmarine wars, unless the moral dignity of the country arises to
prevent that in China which is neither politically expedient nor
morally just.

If capital is wanted for legitimate purposes, look at the Indian
railway companies, from whom money to any amount can be ob-
tained on interest guaranteed at lower rates than is usual in India,
and whose shares are at premium. The money paid into the
Leadenhall Street treasury by those companies tends in some
degree to relieve the extraordinary efflux of specie to the East, as
it defrays the home expenses, for which funds would otherwise
have to be remitted from India and enlarge the vacuum there.
We have English capital in Indian banks, and vested in under-
takings to navigate her rivers and irrigate her lands. We have a
demand for English capital and enterprise to turn her waste and
unimproved — and worse than either — her poppy fields into cotton
grounds, tea gardens, and sugar plantations ; to extract from the
beegah of 27,225 square feet of Indians richest soil, something
more and better than about 141bs. of opium, worth about 4/.
sterling, per annum, cost of production included, which is the
present outturn.

If a reduction of 20 or 25 per cent is made on the advances
to opium-ryots, and the amount of opium thus annually iliminished,

MUST EVENTUALLY FAIL. 17

while the restrictive laws are maintained, the price of the drug
will be enhanced as it is gradually being withdrawn from use.
This will facilitate the transition of the East India Company's
finances from a vicious to a sound state; and as the ryots will, in
all probability, require assistance in turning to other pursuits,
let the Government for a limited, but sufficient time, make them
advances for the cultivation of cotton and other products of raw
material, tobe exchanged for English goods in due course of trade.

But if this or some better course is not adopted, what must
soon be the result ? Already the poppy is largely grown in China,
wherever the Imperial authority is so weakened by rebellion within,
and British aggression from without, that its laws can no longer
be enforced. The native opium sells at about one-fifth of the price
of the imported drug, and its manufacture is rapidly extending.

Again, the rebels, or patriots, or whatever they may be, under
Tae Ping Wang, most rigidly prohibit the use and admission of
opium wherever they have rule. These circumstances place our
smuggling and revenue on two stools, between which we must
eventually come to the ground. If cultivation goes on, we shall
be beaten out of the market by a cheaper drug; if either the
Imperial authority, or that of its rival, Tae Ping Wang, should be
enabled to enforce a law con^mon to both, then our revenue must
be destroyed on that alternative. Sooner or later the Indian
revenue must, if left in its present iniquitous and insecure state,
collapse; and when that takes place, it may be too late to find
the remedy which is now so plainly before us.

There is another plea for opium smuggling, in itself so curious
that I must just touch upon it. Its advocates reply to Chinese
remonstrances, and advance in the House of Commons, that if
England did not carry on this wretched trade, other nations would.
Then, why do they not ? We cannot prevent them. In Southern
America, and many other genial climes and soils, the papaver som-
niferum could be cultivated to any desired extent. The Americans
know something about the traffic ; they have capital and enterprise
for any undertaking that promises to turn out well ; and we find
them, not raising a competition, but availing themselves — princi-

18 OPIUM REVENUE.

pally, I believe, for the purposes of exchange — of such facilities as
the British system aflfords of enriching a few speculators in con-
traband, and I believe I may say almost necessitates, for the con-
venience of remittances in the general course of trade. If this
argument of our opponents is good for anything, it only indicates
another danger to our Indian revenue, whenever the Americans,
French, Spaniards, or Dutch, in their countries or colonies, choose
to encourage or allow their subjects to emulate, and thereby
destroy our iniquitous policy and unsound basis of finance.

I believe I have now touched upon all that is necessary to
reply to in the question propounded — all that is essential to the
subject, though not all that is irrelevant to it in the book.

It may be inferred that the author has been in India ; and with
a laudable desire to render himself useful to his country has, like
Lord Stanley, Mr. Danby Seymour, and others, sought information
in the East. We are not the less indebted to his public spirit for
the readiness with which he imparts the knowledge he has acquired,
though we may observe that it is not so accurate as on the subject
of British taxation, with which he is evidently more familiar.

After the controversial courtesy with which he has noticed my
endeavours on a subject of interest to us both, I would in con-
clusion assure him, and all to whom he has addressed himself, that
neither I, nor those with whom I associate, look upon the system
by which " India has been won, and by which it is held and pre-
served, as one of unmitigated evil.^^ So far from thinking "the
civil functionaries of India overpaid, pampered, and corrupt extor-
tioners,^* it is my happiness after much opportunity of witnessing
their conduct, and forming the friendship of many, to believe,
that as a body they are, for accomplished ability, selft-denying,
and I may add often self-destructive zeal, and the strictest integrity,
unsurpassed, if not unequalled in the world; in my humble opinion
to which the author refers, it is to be regretted that more of them
do not return to this country rich enough to enter public life on
their own accounts, nor sufficiently well known to be brought
forward by others. I do believe, that among them, those with
corrupt hearts and minds of inferior order have oppressed the

IMPEDES IMPROVEMENT. 19

natives, and impeded the development of the resources of the
country. I do believe that there is much sound principle in some
of the many systems of Indian taxation ; and if my opponent will
make himself master of what Lord Harris has done at Madras, he
will perceive how that which is defective can easily be remedied.
He will see the beautiful problem worked out, that relief from
oppressive taxation and legislation emancipates and gives elasticity
to the energies and industry of the people, and increases the riches
of the kingdom and the revenues of the State.

London .—Printed by G. Barclay, Castle St. Leicester Sq.

i

r^

CONTRABAND OPIUM TRAFFIC,

DISTURBING ELEMENT IN ALL OUR POLICY AND
DIPLOMATIC INTERCOURSE WITH CHINA.

BY

MAJOR-GENERAL ALEXANDER.

LONDON:

SEELEY, JACKSON, AND HALLIDAY, FLEET STREET;

BENTON SEELEY, HANOVER STREET.

1867.

The following Letters were all written and sent to the
Newspaper to which they are addressed before the
meeting of Parliament. The Editor could only publish
them as Parliamentary and other intelligence afforded
opportunity and space in his columns. The debates
that have taken place in both Houses do not in any
way alter or weaken the important question that is at
issue, regarding the Opium Monopoly and its conse-
quences; which are substantive evils, to be dealt with
according to their own demerits.

It would be manifest injustice to impute the sole
blame for the iniquity and impolicy of the opium traJKc
to any particular individual, or set of statesmen, who
have been in power during the present century. Whig
or Tory, Liberal or Conservative, Free-Trader or Pro-
tectionist, each in succession has received the system as
it was before them ; and the same may be said of the
Directors of the East India Company. I believe that
I can trace in the Blue Books and other authentic
sources of information, an outline of policy indicated
by Lord Palmerston, which, had it not been for the
continually disturbing influence of the opium contra-
bandism, would have maintained a peaceful and highly
beneficial intercourse with China. Of Members of the

Court of Directors, and Officers of the East India Com-
pany, with whom I have had conversations, and to
whom I am indebted for information, I can but say
that, whatever may be their views on this subject,
whether they agree with me in part, altogether, or not
at all, — so far as the best years of a life spent in a
country and among a people to whom I am gratefully
and sincerely attached, enables me to form a judg-
ment — England has never had a body of gentlemen
sitting in Leadenhall Street, among whom there were
individuals more capable of administering the aflTairs of
our Eastern Empire, were they entrusted with sufficient
power and responsibility for such an important duty.

CONTRABAND OPIUM TRAFFIC.

No. I.

To the Editor of the Morning Advertiser,

Sir, — As this country is, or is about to be, engaged in another
war with China, the moral guilt and material expense of which
must fall upon the professedly Christian and most really tax-
paying population of Great Britain, it may be well to review the
policy that led to the former, which is generally known as the
opium war, in order that the community may be enabled to bring
the powerful influence of sound public opinion to bear upon
their representatives in Parliament on the present occasion.

There are already before the public proofs taken, not only
from Parliamentary Blue Books and official documents, but from
the most unquestionable personal authorities, that the East India
Company maintains an illegal monopoly of opium in India^ for
the sole purpose of indolently raising a smaller revenue where
larger might be obtained ; and that this revenue is principally
derived from the opium sold for the notorious purpose of being
smuggled into China, contrary to the laws of that empire.

Additional evidence that the East India Company is illegally
engaged in trade will help to bring the subject more clearly
before your readers. By an Act of Parliament, 3 and 4
Wm. IV. cap. 85, it was distinctly decreed that the East India
Company of Merchants, trading to the East Indies, shall close
their commercial affairs, sell all their merchandise and ware-
houses, and abstain from all commercial business. The charter

\- "»^

6

under which they had hitherto been privileged to trade was
taken from them ; and, ceasing to be merchants, they became
what now the East India Company is — a Board of Adminis-
tration for carrying on the government of India, as directed or
permitted by the Board of Control. With only a semblance of
power for good or evil, the East India Company, as now consti-
tuted, is little else than a buffer to bear the odium which shoilld
fall upon the Ministers of the Crown for the continuance of
monopolies and the cause of unjust war.

Not only is the proof of the East India Company being
engaged in trade palpable in the notoriety of the illegal salt and
opium monopolies, but it is irrefutably borne out by the evidence
of its own ofl&cers. Mr. W. Prideaux, holding high and re-
sponsible oflSce in the India House, was examined before a
Select Committee of the House of Commons on the 3rd of June,
1847; and speaking with reference to a return that had been
laid before the House in the preceding session, he stated, " The
return is not the value of opium exported, btU of opium sold by
the East India Company in Bengal" He then shows that of
the opium exported from India, roughly estimated at the amount
of five or six milUons sterling, the quantity " sold by the East
India Company'' amounted to about 2,577,500/. ; the remainder
of the revenue must, therefore, have been derived from the opium
grown in independent native states, upon which the East India
Company levies a duty of about 40/. a chest, in order to keep up
the price of their own drug in Bengal. Mr. Prideaux was asked
by Mr. Moffatt, M.P., (q. 4670), '' Is it your belief that that
quantity of opium goes exclusively to China ?'^ and his reply
was, '^It is all exported; and by far the greater part goes to
China.^'

Mr. Prideaux was questioned by Mr. Harcourt, M.P.,
(q. 4679), '^ Is the amount realised from the opium sold by the
Company to be considered as revenue derived by the Company,
or does that include the cost?" Answer— "It includes the
cost.^' And the next question in the Blue Book elicits the cost
and sale prices in the East India Company^s illegal traffic; it
shows also the amount of revenue derived from the measure of
imposing a duty, which, taken separately, may be justified. The
simple fact is, that the Indian Government under the East India

7

Company derives a fiscal revenue from a duty on opium grown
in foreign states, and 9i profit from the illegal monopoly of^ and
trade in^ the drug produced in its own territories.

Hugh Stark^ Esq., Chief of the Revenue department of the
India Board, shows the nature of the East India Company^s
connexion with opium in the following words : — " The opium
monopoly exists all over India ; the cultivation has been largely
extended, with a view of competing in Eastern markets with
the opium of Malwa and Turkey. The Company have relaxed
in their price of opium j their object is now to s.ell at a low
price, to enable merchants, who buy at the Calcutta sales, to
compete with the merchants who procure supplies from Malwa
and Turkey, for the China markets ;^^ and Lord W. Bentinck,
in a letter to the Court of Directors, dated 21st September, 1830,
which was produced before the Parliamentary Committee, in
1840, writes : — " The final effect of an increase beyond assign-
able limit in the quantity of the drug exported to China, from
both sides of India, is a result beyond the power of our foresight
to discover, or even at present to hazard any speculation upon/'
That of which Lord W. Bentinck could not foresee the final
effect, has been borne onward by monopoly, until, as Lord
Dalhousie shows in his celebrated minute on his administration
in India, the revenue in 1856 was anticipated to realise
5,000,000/. sterling, which would require an importation, into
China, of not less than 120,000 chests of opium.

To put the question still farther beyond dispute, we have
the evidence of Mr. Jardine, one of the principal merchants in
China, who, when examined before a committee of the House
of Commons, in 1840, stated, ^* In Calcutta the Company's
sales are recorded, and there is no difficulty in getting the price-
currents ; the highest and lowest prices are given, and the ave-
rage struck by their own servants.'' Mr. Colquhoun, a mem-
ber of the committee, asked him, ^* Have you ever had any
communication with the Board of Salt and Opium in Calcutta
on the subject?" Answer —^ *^ Yes, we have had musters
(samples) of opium sent on to us in small quantities, packed iu
different ways, with a request that we would sell it, ascertain
the kind of package that suited the Chinese market best, and
report on the same to the board." The correspondence was

8

oSdtl, " signed hy the secretary bj aatbority <rf the board/'
and, as Mr. Jardine believed, emanating from the Supreme
Goremment of India. There was also hiid before the Honse
of Commons that same year extracts from a letter fit>m W. H.
Fleming, Esq., formerly a jndge of drcoit and inspector of
optnm, in which that gentleman states, '' that the system o(
monopoly, eren in a commercial pcmit of yiew, appears to me
beneficial, as being perhaps the only means of ensuring a sup-
ply of the pure drug of a uniform quality, and prepared in a
particular manner to suit the Chinese, which, if not attended
to, would, I apprehend, greatly injure the trade.''

Having thus established the fans et origo maban in the &ct
of the East India Companjr's iU^al exercise of monopoly, I
shall proceed in other letters to show the consequences that
led to the crisis of the first opium war, and give an insight into
British diplomatic relations with the Chinese.
I am. Sir, yours, &c.

R. A.

No. II.

Sib, — In the latter years of the last century opium was a
legal import to China on payment of a moderate duty, and the
drug used for medicinal purposes did not exceed in quantity
about 200 chests a-year.

About the year 1773 the East India Company of Merchants
entered upon this trade, and, exercising delegated sovereignty
in India, they instituted a monopoly of the drug. So rapidly
did the importation increase, and so fatal was the use of opium
to the morality and prosperity of the Chinese, that in a few
years the Emperor made it contraband, and published laws to
restrain his subjects from the deleterious use of it. As it has
always been a principle of Chinese policy to avoid and forego
every claim of jurisdiction over foreigners, even in Chinese
territory, while the Emperor and his officers legislated for and
punished his own subjects, remonstrances and admonitions only

9

were addressed to the English authorities, through the channels
of communication recognised by both nations. In those days
the only British authorities in China were the factors and
agents of the East India Company ; and as the Company was
determined^ in spite of remonstrances and expostulations^ to push
on the contraband trade^ the difficulty soon arose of reconciling
this with the political good faith to be observed towards a
friendly power. The diplomatic course followed by the Com-
pany was to ignore and disclaim the trade which their monopoly
had so suddenly increased^ and by which alone it was sustained.
Not a grain of opium was allowed to be taken to China in their
own ships; the captains and officers were prohibited, under
heavy penalties, from engaging in the traffic ; and when they
petitioned to be allowed to participate in what afforded such
large profits, they received a peremptory refusal of their request.
This sufficiently indicates the policy of the East India Company
of Merchants, and that they acted under a perfect knowledge of
the illegal nature of the 0|Hum trade, and of the political em-
barrassments which were always to be apprehended. The
excuses made by the East India Company have been and are,
that they do not export opium, nor smuggle it into China, and
that the profit upon their illegal monopoly comes in aid of the
revenue, and affords relief to their finances. But, qui facit
per alium, facit per se ; and the subterfuges to which I shall
show that our diplomatists have been driven, brands our nation
with the indelible stigmas of false policy, immorality, cruelty,
and deceit.

In order to arrive at subsequent facts, I sketch but an
outline of what has been perpetrated in defiance of Chinese
laws, and is now carried on in continuous violation of our own
Acts of Parliament. In 1840, a Select Commktee appointed
by the House of Commons to inquire into the trade with China,
and report thereupon, concluded that important duty with these
words: — '^ Your Committee feel that they shall best discharge
their duty by laying before the House, without any observation
on their part, the evidence which they have taken on the sub-
ject;^' such evidence having gone largely into the opium
question, and the political embarrassments in which it had
embroiled us.

10

In 1847 another Select Committee^ appointed to take into
consideration the state of our commercial relations with China^
did furnish the House with a report upon the subject, from
which I extract these passages : — " The diflSculties of the trade
do not arise from any want of demand in China for articles of
British manufacture, or from increasing competition of other
nations/^ " The payment for opium^ from the inordinate desire
for it which prevails, and from the unrecognised nature of the
transaction, absorbs the silver, to the great inconvenience of
the general traffic of the Chinese/^

*^ Unless we can look forward to an increased consumption of
those products in which China has the means of paying, the
adjustment (of the balance of trade) can only be made at the cost
of largely diminished exports, and of restricted employment to
every branch of industry connected with them/'

With regard to Ningpo and Foo-chow-foo, the Committee
reports that " the. British trade has hitherto proved but trifling.
The opium trade, however, flourishes at Foo-chow-foo, with its
usual demoralising influences on the population, and embar-
rassing efiects upon the monetary condition of the place ; the
latter would be diminished by the legalisation of the traffic;
the former, we are afraid, are incontestible and inseparable from
its existence/' Opposed to the suggested diminution, not entire
removal, of a monetary inconvenience, and the continuance of a
demoralising traffic, we have the noble declaration of him whom
the opium smugglers call the barbarian Emperor of a barbarous
nation, that " nothing will induce him to derive a revenue from
the vice and misery of his people/'

The expressions of Lords W. Bentinck and Dalhousie do but
ill accord with the intentions of Lord Cornwallis, about the time
that the monopoly was instituted. That benevolent, but often
much mistaken, nobleman, justified the measure on the grounds
of a maximum taxation restricting to a minimum the consump-
tion of the drug. Lord Cornwallis seemed to have been as un-
conscious as many economists of the present day are, of the
fallacy that vice will not bear any amount of taxation, so long as
you invest it with the sanction of a legal recognition. Licensed
gaming-houses on the Continent of Europe, and many places of
public entertainment in England, afibrd a practical illustration

11

of what is common to every immorality which finds impunity in
the protection that is paid for it in taxes or for license.

The vigilance with which the East India Company and its
Government watched over the strictness of their monopoly, is
exemplified in the following extract of a despatch from the
Grovemor-General of India to the Court of Directors: — ^'We
had anticipated the suggestion contained in the seventh para-
graph of your despatch, having already, on the occasion of the
importation of a large quantity of Turkish opium, given direc-
tions for inserting in the licenses to trade to China a condition
that such license shall be void in case any foreign, or other
opium than opium sold by the Company at their public sales in
Bengal, be laden on board the ship in any part of the voyage,
or imported into China on board of it/^

In the licenses granted for thus smuggling opium into
China there was this clause : — The East India Company " do
hereby require and command all persons within or belonging to
this Government, under our jurisdiction, and we do desire all
persons that are subjects, friends, and allies to his Majesty, to
sufier the said ship to pass,^^ &c. &c.

In my next letter I will enter upon Anglo-Chinese diplo-
macy.

Yours, &c. R. A.

No. III.

Sir, — In the year 1833 a Royal Commission was issued to
Lord Napier and others, in which were these words : — "And we
do further declare our pleasure to be, that one of you the said
Superintendants shall be specially charged with the duty of
ascertaining, by all practicable ways and means, and with the
utmost attainable precision, the state of the trade carried on
between our subjects, or the subjects of any other foreign power,
with the inhabitants of China, and especially the number of
vessels annually arriving . . . from the territories of the said

12

Ccmpany in India^ and the tonnage of such vessels . . . and
the amount and nature of the goods from time to time imported
in such vessels into China . . . together with all material facts
illustrative of the course and nature of such trade^ and of the
difficulties by which the same may be impeded.'^ Again^ in
section 19 : — " And we do require you constantly to bear in
mind and impress^ as occasion may offer, upon our subjects resi-
dent in or resorting to China, the duty of conforming to the
laws and usages of the Chinese empire, so long as such laws
shall be administered in justice and good faith, and in the same
manner in which the laws are or shall be administered towards
the subjects of China/' &c. In announcing his arrival to the
Governor of Canton, Lord Napier, on the 26th of August, ISS^r,
informed that functionary that, " as bearer of a Royal Commis-
sion, he was empowered to promote and protect British trade.
.... The exclusive privileges and trade hitherto enjoyed by
the East India Company having ceased and determined by the
will and power of his Majesty the King and Parliament of Great
Britain.'^ Here let me beg that particular attention may be
paid to the above extracts, and that they may be carefully re-
membered as I proceed with my subject.

The short period of Lord Napier's administration in China
may be described as of that professional diplomacy which is only
admirable in naval officers in times of war, when civil negociation
having ceased, the simplest alternatives are offered, and shortest
periods for deliberation allowed. Veni, vidi, and Lord Napier
summarily proposed, with the help of some frigates and a few
hundred British soldiers, to wage a triumphant war with China,
and add the vici. The Chinese, however, adhered to their laws
and usages, to which Lord Napier was instructed to conform,
and the British representative, baffled in his endeavours to
enforce a change of Chinese policy, and having caused a sus-
pension of all intercourse, was obliged to succumb, and leave
Canton before the Chinese would allow legal trade to be resumed.

On the death of Lord Napier, Sir George Robinson assumed
the direction of affairs, and he thus described the conduct of our
countrymen, in the following extract from a despatch to Lord
Palmerston, dated 13th of April, 1835: — "It now becomes a
painful but imperative duty to express unfeigned regret at the

13

dissensions and violent party spirit that has so fatally prevailed^
and even now exists to a fearful extent, amongst the commercial
community at Canton. Your Lordship will, I feel certain,
acquit me of any other feeling save a sense of duty, when I call
your attention to the dangerous state of society, and express my
conviction that the untoward reception at, and disastrous re-
moval of his Majesty^s commission from Canton, was mainly
attributable to the bitter party feeling which, I am sorry to
assert, reigned at the very moment when general unanimity and
cordial co-operation should have aided and strengthened the
efforts of its officers/^

Sir George Robinson^s despatches show that during the time
he held office, between the time of Lord Napier's death and the
arrival of his successor. Captain Elliott, opium smuggling was
the insuperable disturbing element in all our intercourse with
China. In writing to Lord Palmerston, from Lintin, on the
10th of December, 1835, about the embarrassment caused by
the lawless conduct of British subjects, of whom Sir George says
the Chinese ^'are ever in dread,'^ and with allusion to "in-
numerable causes of dispute and altercation,'* he observes, " to
one point alone it is possible that their (the Chinese) attention
may be attracted, and that is the circumstance of my being in
the neighbourhood of the great and increasing emporium of the
outside {i.e. the contraband opium) trade. In the event of their
remarking on this part of the measure, I conceive it will be easy
to remove their objections, simply by changing my position to
Chuen-pee, the legd and usual anchorage to which the resort of
our men-of-war has usually been sanctioned.'^

Here we have the British representative marking his own
position as illegal. He informs Lord Palmerston that he will
still remain there, '^ should no great opposition occur," and
informs him that " he has seen upwards of fifty ships assembled
here on one occasion," and that there were " between twenty-
five and thirty ships, constantly lying here in full and active
employment," smuggling opium, for which Lintin was the grand
d^p6t !

Much as the East India Company and Ministers of the
Crown wish to keep the opium traffic out of sight, as the cause
of our troubles in China, the truth will intrude. Sir George

14

Bobinson, in another despatch^ emphatically points out the bane
and antidote of Britain^s commerce : — " Whenever his Majesty's
Government direct us to prevent British vessels engaging in the
traflSc, we can enforce any order to that effect ; but a more
certain method would be to prohibit the growth of the poppy
and the manufacture of the opium in British India/' — ^Despatch
to Lord Palmerston, dated Lintin^ Feb. 5th} 1886.

Sir G. Robinson was succeeded by Captain Elliott, who, on
the 2nd of February, 1837, wrote thus to the Governor-General
of India regarding the opium and general trade at Canton : —
'' It must be quite unnecessary to press upon your lordship's
attention the many extremely important considerations con-
nected with this subject; and I trust I shall be excused for
submitting the most hopeful means which suggest themselves
to me to draw to a close so disquieting a state of things." The
Captain then suggests means very similar to those which his
bellicose predecessor had recommended, and in asking for a
man-of-war and some Company's cruisers to be sent to his aid,
he informs Lord Auckland that ^^ he had solicited the Com-
mander-in-Chief to send a man-of-war to these seas, with in-
structions to afford such countenance to the general trade as
may be practicable without inconveniently committing his Majesty's
Government upon any delicate question'' or, in plain, undiplo-
matic English, the very indelicate question of opium smuggling.

In his letter to the Admiral on this occasion, the represent-
ative of the Majesty and people of Great Britain is driven to
the humiliating necessity of providing an excuse for the appear-
ance of a naval force ; so he trumps up the case of a brig that
had been plundered two years before by some pirates, out of
sight of the roads to which European vessels resorted, '^ as a plea
that I can have no doubt the provincial Government would find
itself obliged to accept /"

In the fir^t year of his administration. Captain Elliott in-
formed the Minister of the Crown that there was some hope
that the importation of opium to China might be legalized, as
formerly, for medical purposes, under strict rules and severe
penalties; and, though he could not but think that this would
afford his Majesty's Gk)vernment much satisfaction, yet the
'' fact that such an article should have grown to be by far the

15

most important part of our import trade is of itself a source of
painful reflection ; and the wide-spreading public mischief which
the manner of its pursuit has entailed^ so ably and faithfully
represented in some of the papers I have had the honour to
transmit to your lordship^ aggravates the discomfort of the
whole subject." The papers alluded to as having been trans-
mitted to the Minister of State, were written by the Chinese
authorities ; and, so far as they have been published by order
of Parliament, they, by the superiority of their commercial,
political, and moral arguments, put to shame and confusion the
short-sighted policy, shuffling diplomacy, and eventually suicidal
expediency by which our national character is so lowered in
comparison with the conduct of the Chinese so-called Barba-
rians. Take an incident in illustration of this : Fifteen British
subjects were landed on the coast of China by some mutineers,
and abandoned to what might be their fate ; in despatching a
man-of-war to their rescue, Captain Elliott feeling, it is to be
presumed, the twitches of political conscience, instructs Captain
Quin of the Royal Navy : — " But upon this topic I will pre-
sume to say that it would be well to avoid those parts of the
coast upon which the opium ships are usually anchored." Here
there is an ample, though indirect, confession of the guilt of
smuggling, of its possibly evil influence even in the cause of
common humanity, and of another of its embarrassing effects in
our intercourse with the Chinese. Now, mark the contrast be-
tween this caution to the captain of a British man-of-war and
the report made to Lord Palmerston of the result of the expedi-
tion : — " The fifteen people belonging to the late brig Fairy
were despatched to Canton by the Governor of Fuh-kein, and
they were all safely delivered over to my hands by the autho-
rities of this province. Their generous treatment by the Chinese
authorities has been in the highest degree honourable to the
humanity of this Government, and I have not failed to convey
my respectful sense of such conduct to his Excellency the
(Jovemor." — Captain Elliott to Viscount Palmerston, August
29th, 1837. At the very time that the Chinese were thus
acting, they were addressing remonstrances against the opium-
smuggling on the coast of Fuh-kein, and urging Captain Elliott
to apply to his Sovereign to prevent it !

16

In November, 1837, we find, with shame and sorrow, a
palpable falsehood addressed to the Chinese, in th^e words,
sent in reply to an edict dated in September: — '^He (Captain
Elliott) has already signified to your Excellency, with truth and
plainness, that his commission extends only to the regular trade
with this empire ; and further, that the existence of any other
than this trade has never yet been submitted to his gracious
Sovereign." This paper was written on the 17th of November,
and on the 19th of that month Captain Elliott commences
a long despatch to Lord Falmerston on the opium trade, com-
mencing thus : — " I now beg leave to resume ihe subject of my
despatch of yesterday's date." He enters fully into details of
the opium trade; and after informing Lord Falmerston that
" We have now arrived at a stage in the passage of circum-
stances when it appears necessary that the subject should once
more be drawn under your lordship's serious attention," he
adds, " Setting aside the interference of the mandarins, it is not
to be questioned that the passage of this valuable article in
small and insignificantly armed vessels afibrds an intense
temptation to piratical attack by the many desperate smug-
glers out of employment, and by the needy inhabitants of the
neighbouring islands. And another Ladrone war directed
against Europeans, as well as Chinese, is a perfectly probable
event. That the main body of the inward trade (about three-
fifths of the amount) should be carried on in so hazardous a
manner to the safety of the whole commerce and intercourse
with the empire, is a very disquieting subject of reflectk)n« But
I have a strong conviction that it is an evil susceptible of easy
removal." Both Sir G. Robinson and Captain Elliott had, as
we have seen, already indicated this easy removal to be the
abolition of the East India Company's illegal monopoly of
opium.

Painful as it is to contemplate the above departure from
truth, it is remarkable that, however fully the distant represent-
atives of the British Crown enter into the details and circum^
stances of the opium trade, our more astute diplomatists in this
country do not, in any of their replies that have been published,
commit themselves to either knowledge or recognition of the
fact. In July, 1836, Captain Elliott had warned Lord Palmer-

17

ston, *^ Sooner or later, the feeling of independence which the
peculiar mode of conducting this branch of the trade has created
upon the part of our countrymen in China, will lead to grave
diflSculties. A long course of impunity will beget hardihood,
and at last some gross insult will be perpetrated that the
Chinese authorities will be constrained to resent — they will be
terrified and irritated, and will probably commit some act of
cruel violence that will make any choice but armed interference
impossible to our Government/' Outrages by the English are
smoothed off under the term "gross insult;" but the legal
acts of Chinese self-defence, not so cruel as were the laws of
this country less than half a century ago, are described as " acts "^
of cruel violence, necessitating the horrors of vindictive war/'
I am. Sir, yours, &c. R. A.

No. IV.

Sir, — On the 20th April, 1838, Captain Elliott addressed
the following Report to our Minister for Foreign Affairs : — "In
the course of the last two months the number of English boats
employed in the illicit traffic between Lintin and Canton has
vastly increased, and the deliveries of opium have frequently been
accompanied by conflict of fire-arms between these vessels and
the Government preventive craft. It is plain that British sub-
jects and property engaged in these pursuits are within easy
grasp of the provincial authorities, whenever it may suit their
purpose, or they may be driven by the Court to act with vigour.
In the edicts forwarded to your lordship in my despatch of
November 18, 1837, the Governor had already charged me with
countenancing the outside trade ; and in the event of disaster
there can be no doubt he would immediately connect the growth
of these last irregularities with uiy own departure from Canton."

Bear in mind that the English are the aggressors, and that

^^

18

their Government has always had the power of putting an end
to the smuggling, as now carried on on such a gigantic scale,
by the simple abolition of the opium monopoly by which the
trade is supplied.

I will continue Captain Elliott^s instructive despatch. For,
as he writes, ^' the purpose of being prepared for such devices,'^
as the above, he turns from the subject of trade and smuggling,
and enters upon a long-pending controversy about the Chinese
word *^ pin ^ being written on the envelopes of official letters.
Having informed Lord Palmerston of this stroke of diplomacy,
he reverts to his ever-present difficulty, the opium smuggling,
and proceeds : — " Should any serious disaster ensue, threatening
the lives of her Majesty^s subjects engaged in these pursuits
(and in my judgment this result is perfectly probable), I shall
not fail to found the strongest remonstrances against such ex-
treme measures upon the Governor^ s rejection of these last pro-
posals'/' that is, upon the use of the monosyllable "pin,'' and
other points of red-tapery, about which there had been discus-
sion for many years, in which the Chinese were not inclined to
make changes, and regarding which Lord Palmerston at last
directed Captain Elliott " to avail himself of any proper oppor-
tunity to press for the substitution of a less objectionable
character on the superscription of communications which you may
have to address to the Viceroy.'' This, therefore, did not involve
a casiis belli, and we learn from a subsequent report that the
mighty events which hung upon a "pin" were satisfactorily
disposed of, when the British representative reported " that, in
return for a substantial concession, I have agreed to incur
the responsibility of communicating with his Excellency under
the character ' pin.' " And this grand coup winds up with a
consignment of it to the department of rites, buttons, peacocks'
feathers, and points of etiquette.

Now, will it be believed in Great Britain, that up to the out-
break of the opium war there was no authority granted for the
control of British subjects in China ? no British tribunal or
magistracy to which they were amenable, or by which they could
be restrained ? nor any jurisdiction recognised, but that which
was indicated by the Royal Commission, quoted in my last
letter ? The consequences of this will be apparent as I carry

19

on my narrative in the historical language, which I take from
Parliamentary Blue Books and Reports.

Again, referring to Captain Elliott's despatches, and passing
on from the episodical " pin/' our diplomatist, forgetful of an
old proverb regarding honour, threatens to peach or split upon
the Governor of Canton, for taking the bribes, which our
smugglers had so systematically given that they haVe actually
argued that their receipt by corrupted oflScers is equivalent to a
duty paid to the State — another of the many proofs of Chinese
barbarism and British integrity in our intercourse with that
people.

Ireland was a trifling difficulty to Sir Robert Peel compared
with opium smuggling to our representative to the Chinese.
Captain Elliott having to contend with such disheartening ano-
malies, without legal power to act summarily, or organise either
judicial, fiscal, or commercial administration, thus touchingly
depicts the embarrassments in which he is involved. He had
been warned by the Minister of the Crown against assuming
authority in criminal cases, and he w^ll knew the storm of vitu-
peration that was ready to crush him if he should allow the
most flagrant crime to be adjudicated upon by the Chinese tri-
bunals. On the 2nd of January, 1839, he writes: — '^ I would
with great deference take the liberty to observe, that when I
assumed this office, recent Imperial commands were in existence
(specially pointed at the British nation) to the efifect that no
foreign officers should reside in this empire. That chief obstacle
has been removed, and .... it involves a principle of great
and comprehensive importance ; namely, a permanent and direct
official intercourse between the two countries. I shall ofl*er no
further excuse for the moderate manner in which I have been
content in the present emergency to accept this concession,
because I am sure your lordship will make every allowance for
the difficulty of peacefully extracting any formal relaxation from
this watchful Government.

" These observations, my Lord, may perhaps serve to excuse
the respectful request I have now the honour to prefer. I
humbly hope that her Majesty's Government (taking into con-
sideration the novel, responsible, and undefined situation I fill,

20

and casting a thought upon the many embarrassing circum*
stances which have beset me) would be pleased to determine
whether I have a claim to such an expression of support as I
I J ay be permitted to publish to the Queen *s subjects in this
country.

" There is certainly a spirit in active force among British
subjects in* this country, which makes it necessary for the safety
of momentous concernments that the officer on the spot should
be known to stand without blame in the estimation of her Ma-
jesty's Government ; and it is not less needful that he should
be forthwith vested with defined and adequate powers for the
reasonable control of men whose rash conduct cannot be left to
the operation of Chinese laws, without the utmost inconvenience
and risk, and whose impunity is alike injurious to British cha-
racter, and dangerous to British interests.

" It is my deliberate conviction, that the security of the
Chinese trade, and the maintenance of our peaceful intercourse
with this empire, depend upon the early attention of her Ma-
jesty^s Government to this subject ; and I take this occasion to
repeat, that the assent of the Chinese Government to institutions
of this kind is beyond all doubt; indeed, your lordship will
perceive from the Governor's answer to my note of the 23rd
ultimo, that he supposes they either are actually in existence,
or, at all events, that they ought to he"

Captain Elliott, after remarking that it would be difficult to
make the Chinese understand that their permission was neces-
sary for British officers and courts to exercise authority over
Britisji subjects, which authority they actually thought to be in
existence, informs Lord Palmerston — ''Your lordship maybe
assured that the theory is, even when they demand a homicide,
that we have already tried and convicted him by our laws/' He
then recounts a conversation with one of the Chinese authorities,
How Qua, who '* referred me with earnestness to the requests
which had been made before the Company's monopoly was abo-
lished, to make provision for the government of her Majesty's
subjects ; and he asked me what more was wanted, and how it
was possible to preserve the peace, if all the English people who
came to this country were to be left without control. He fur-

21

thermore entreated me to remind my nation^s great Ministers,
that this Government never interposed, except in cases of ex-
treme urgency, upon the principle that they were ignorant of
our laws and customs, and that it was unjust to subject us to
rules made for people of totally diflFerent habits, and brought up
under a totally different discipUne. I must confess, my Lord,
that this reasoning seems to me to be marked by wisdom and
great moderation -/' a confession in which most men will agree
with Captain Elliott, whatever hi« superiors may have felt on
the question.

But that estimable ofl&cer^s words in conclusion are very
emphatic. " In fact, my Lord, if her Majesty's officer is to be
of any use for the purposes of just protection — if the well-
founded hope of improving things honourable and established is
not to be sacrificed to the chances which may cast up by goading
this Government into some sudden and violent assertion of its
own authority, there is certainly no time to be lost in providing
for the reasonable and defined control of her Majesty's subjects
in China. I could not have concealed these opinions without
betraying my duty to her Majesty's Government and the British
.public."

In another despatch on the subject of an important dispute
which had arisen between the Chinese and English are the fol-
lowing passages : — " The establishment of some simple but
efficacious civil jurisdiction would no doubt be a necessary
accompanio^nt of thia change of system, and your lordship
may, I think, rely, that the Chinese would refer all contested
points with her Majesty's subjects to this tribunal, either placing
the disputed sum in deposit, or at least giving security that it
should be paid, if the decision were adverse to them. I offer
these opinions because I am sure the Chinese have great con-
fidence in the good faith of Europeans, and because, too, I
believe they are, in many important respects, the most moderate
and reasonaole people on the face of the earth." Thirteen days
after these words were written, Captain Elliott informs Lord
Palmerston, by a " hurried opportunity," that *^ in the mean-
time, Wwever, there has been no relaxation in the vigour of the
Government, directed not only against the introduction of opium,
but in a far more remarkable manner against the consumers. A

22

corresponding degree of desperate adventure on the part of the
smugglers is only a necessary consequence ; and in this situation
of things serious accidents^ and sudden and indefinite inter-
ruptions to the regular trade, must always be probable events/'
I am. Sir, yours, &c.

R. A.

No. V.

SiE, — Enough has, I think, been written to show the true
nature of our conduct and diplomacy towards the Chinese. I
must hasten to a catastrophe and to a conclusion. For further
information, and for facts not stated in these letters, I must refer
your readers to a pamphlet published by Judd and Glass, of
Paternoster Row, entitled, ^^The Rise and Progress of British
Opium Smuggling,^' &c.

On the 22d of March, 1839, Captain Elliott reported to the
Secretary of State that he had received edicts from High Com-
missioner Lin, who had been invested with extraordinary powers
by the Emperor, for the especial purpose of putting down the
opium contraband traflSc, and that he, Captain Elliott, having a
man-of-war at Macao, " would take the most prompt measures
for meeting the unjust and menacing dispositions of the High
Commissioner/^ He had also forwarded a note to know,
*^ whether it was the purpose of the Chinese Government to
wage war on the ships and men of my country.^'

Commissioner Lin^s edicts are to be found from pp. 350 to
355 of the correspondence relating to China, laid before Par-
liament in a Blue Book of 1840, and ought to be read by every
Englishman who takes a patriotic interest in the pending crisis.
He commences by reminding of the length of time and extent to
which legal trade had been carried on, and of the benefits of
reciprocity in commerce. He points out the illegality and evil
effects of opium smuggling, and proclaims, that as every other
measure had failed, as the laws of China were violated, and

23

edicts, remonstrances, and requests had all been disregarded, lie,
by order of the Emperor, had come to demand that the opium
actually in the dominions of the Emperor, stored at Lintin and
other ports, should be delivered up, in order that it might be
destroyed, and that the foreigners should give a bond '^that
their vesseb which shall hereafter resort hither will never again
dare to bring opium with them," under penalty of amenability
to the law and confiscation of the drug. ^

'^I have heard," writes the Commissioner, ''that you fo-
reigners are used to attach great importance to the words ^ good
faith;'" and, notwithstanding the object of his mission, he pro-
ceeds with us as if it was a reality, and promises " that if the
English will deliver up the contraband drug, and relinquish for
ever the unlawful traffic, he will implore the Emperor to vouch-
safe extraordinary favour, and not alone to remit the punishment
due to past errors, but also we will further request to devise some
method of bestowing on you his Imperial rewards. After this
you will continue to enjoy the advantages of commercial inter-
course ; and as you will not lose the character of being ' good
foreigners/ and be enabled to acquire profits, and gain wealth by
an honest trade, will you not stand in a most honourable posi-
tion ?" Lin informs the foreigners that he has an exact account
of all the contraband opium, knows the names of its owners and
where it is stored, and that he is prepared to discriminate be-
tween the foreigners who deal in it and those who trade lawfully.
Such was the conduct of a so-called barbarian, and the evidence
before Parliament shows that some of the merchants in Canton
inferred from the above proclamation, that it was the Commis-
sioner's intention to have petitioned the Emperor to restore the
drug after it had been given up, on condition that it should be
taken out of the country, and the trade put an end to for ever.

Captain Elliott, in a despatch dated 30th March, 1839,
reports: — "Resolved, in any pressure of emergency actually
threatening the continued peaceful intercourse of this empii*e, to
incur most heavy responsibilities regarding the ships engaged in
this illicit traffic, 1 had also determined to resist sudden aggres-
sion upon British life and British property at all hazards."
Captain Elliott, then, without one iota of authority, called upon
the smugglers to give up their opium to him, and pledged his

Government to indeimiify their loss* ' To carry this out he had
come up from Macao to Canton, and having placed himself under
the embargo placed upon his countrymen for violating the laws
of the empire, he addressed to them these words : — " The justi-
fication of this immense responsibility will need more full develop-
ment than it would be desirable, or indeed practicable, to make
in my present condition. I am without doubt, however, that a
great mass of human life hung upon my determination ; for if I
had commenced with a denial of my control over the subjects of
Great Britain, the High Commissioner would have seized that
pretext for reverting to his measures of intimidation against indi-
vidual merchants, obviously the original intention, but which my
sudden appearance had disturbed/'

If tenacity to rank and emoluments is considered justifica-
tory of all the degradation through which a member of our diplo-
matic disservice must struggle, it may seem hard to hold the
Captain too strictly responsible for the particular plank to which
he might cling amidst such a shipwreck of national honour,, com-
mercial interests and honesty, and Christian morality. The
representative of our country chose his diflSculty, though warned
by a friend that he was acting without authority. He stepped
between the Chinese and their just dealings with the smugglers,
and engaged to indemnify the latter for the loss that Lord Pal-
merston had before warned them they would have to bear if
ever it should occur. Vide his lordship^s despatch, dated 18th
June, 1838.

When the news of these events reached England, so great
was the doubt that the Government would recognise Captain
Elliott's assumed responsibility, that his bills for payment of the
opium fell to a heavy discount, and their holders were driven to
great exertions to insure their being honoured. In an ably
written anonymous pamphlet, the author, who was evidently a
merchant in or connected with China, thus argues with much
apparent justice: — ^'On the other hand, it is not asserted that
no moral responsibility attaches to a participation in a traffic of
evil consequences to the morals of the people among whom it is
carried on. This is a question into which the present claimants
have no occasion to enter, great as are the prejudices existing
against them on no other grounds. The parties primarily conf-

25

cemed m keeping such a traffic alive are the consumer and the
producer, and upon them^ if conscious agents in the matter, the
higher degree of responsibility may well be supposed to rest/^
And Mr. Jardine informed the House of Commons^ " when the
East India Company were growing and selling it^ and there was
a declaration of the Houses of Parliament^ with all the bench of
bishops at their back^ that it was inexpedient to do it away, I
think our moral scruples need not have been very great."
I am. Sir, yours, &c.

R. A.

No. VI.

Sir, — Sir John Bowring is, though more concise, hardly more
clear in exposing the injustice of battering down Canton and
slaughtering its unwarlike inhabitants, because the police had
taken Chinese pirates out of a Chinese vessel, lying in a Chinese
river, than is Captain Elliott in his history of our national pro-
ceedings, which has been laid before your readers in his own words.

I shall make but one more quotation, which will be a fitting
pendent to the instructions to Capt. Quin, R.N. ; to the Pin
controversy ; to the denial of the existence of opium smuggling
being known to the sovereign power of England; and to the
bullying note demanding to know whether Commissioner Lin,
when he, in terms as friendly as could well be used, demanded
the contraband drug to be quietly given up, '' intended to make
war upon the ships and people of his country?" Finding that
Lin was not to be frightened, we have the representative of the
majesty, honour, and dignity of Great Britain, eating the words
of one of his own haughty, overbearing communications in the
following very edifying specimen of Ancient Pistol-ism :—

"Elliott, &c. sincerely anxious to fulfil the pleasure of the
Great Emperor, as far as it may be in his power, and as soon as
may be authentically made known to him, requests that your
Excellency will be pleased to depute an officer to visit him this

26

day, to tbe end that all matters may be peaceably adjusted. And
if Elliott is left at liberty to communicate with the men and ships
of his nation at Whampoa, he will solemnly pledge himself, that
he will take care that they do not repair to the provincial city,
under the apprehension that he and all the people of his nation
are prisoners and without food, thus producing conflict and dis-
turbance.

" Elliott, therefore, moves your Excellency to let the native
servants return to their occupations, to permit the supply of pro-
visions, and to remove all the barriers from before the factories.
By such means, confidence and tranquillity will be restored in the
minds of all men, both native and foreign.

" Elliott has, in all respects, since he filled the station of super-
intendent, manifested his earnest desire to keep the peace, and
fulfil the pleasure of your Excellency ; and, as an officer of his
country, he now asks for reasonable treatment for himself and all
the men of his nation, and claims your Excellency's confidence in
his peaceful dispositions on this occasion of perilous jeopardy.

"It may sometimes happen, when Elliott addresses your
Excellency concerning afiairs, that unsuitable terms find place
in his communications; and whenever that be the case, he entreat?
your Excellency to believe that the circumstance is attributable
to the want of perfect familiarity with the native language, and
never to any intention to manifest disrespect to the high officers of
his Government, which would expose him to the severe displeasure
of his own Sovereign.

** And he has now to request that your Excellency will be
pleased to return him the address he submitted this morning.
" With highest consideration, &c.

(Signed) "CHARLES ELLIOTT."

Now, would it be believed if unseen, that by the last paragraph
the British representative withdrew a note of the same date,
demanding that passports should be given for al} English ships
and persons to leave Canton, and that if in three days that was
not done, this same respectful Elliott, without consideration for
the pleasure of the Great Emperor, or for the high officers of his
Government, "would be reluctantly driven to the conclusiou
that the men and ships of his nation are forcibly detained, and
would act accordingly V*

27

I have thus endeavoured to bring before the public facts from
our parliamentary records which are of importance at the present
crisis, and may assist in the formation of sound opinion regard-
ing our intercourse with China, and the butchery and devastation
with which its inhabitants are threatened.

The Chinese have faithfully carried out their part of the
treaty, by the cession of Hong-Kong, and by opening four ports
fully to legal trade, in every one of which our smugglers are im-
porting opium, contrary to the treaty ; there is an imperfect
fulfilment of the treaty at Canton, where we have free opportunity
to trade, but not access to the city, outside of which our factories
and dwellings are conveniently situated. This state of things
arises from the hatred which the inhabitants bear to the English,
the cause of which is, I think, made evident by Captain Elliott
and other diplomatists. For peace sake, and to avoid any inter-
ruption to legal commerce. Sir George Bonham had amicably
condoned with the Governor of Canton, that that part of the
treaty should remain in abeyance ; and there most certainly is
now no reason why we make a pretext, as frivolous and unjust
in itself as it is dreadful in its consequences, to carry by force of
arms what is open to friendly negociation and justifiable pressure.
China has its faults, and its exclusive system is far behind Euro-
pean ideas of international intercourse; but on a fair comparison
with the passport regulations of the Continent, that empire is
hardly more behind Russia, France, Austria, and Italy, than
those countries fall short of our free ingress and egress ; and
yet we do not dream of destroying Cronstadt, Cherbourg, Trieste,
or Civita Vecchia, because the policy of their sovereigns is less
liberal than our own.

I am. Sir, your obedient servant,

R. A.

London :^Printed by G. Babclat, €aitle St. Leioetter 8q.

August 10, 1969 , Cfironlefe Sunday Punch PAGE 7

A Ruined Treasure

~U'

- J

L tm ] LaJ Lii fcij I ,^

By Colin McCuUough
\ Toronto Globe and Mail

Peking

THERE IS not much left to see: a few
sculptured columns, a solitary carved
arch still upright but introducing nothing,
some fragments of gi-aceful friezes, and
hundreds of large stone blocks tumbled
among the weeds.

Yet with little imagination one can see
something of what Lord Elgin described in a
letter written on an October evening more
than 100 years ago.

*'I have just returned from the Summer
Palace/* he wrote. *lt really is a fine thing,
like an English park — numberless buildings
with handsome rooms, and filled with
Chinese curios and handsome clocks, bronzes,
etc."

The buildings were not quite number-
less, for it is recorded that the Summer Pal-
ace or Yuan Ming Yuan (Garden of Perfec-
tion find Light) In fact considered of more
than 200 pavilions and other buildings care-
fully arranged over 60,000 acres of man-
made hills, Jakes, gardens and fountains that
reminded Europeans of Versailles.

"But alas," continued Lord Elgin, "such
a scene of desolation . . . There was not a
room that I saw in which half the things had
not been taken away or broken Into pieces
. . . Plundering juid devastating a place like
this is bad enough, but what is much worse is
the waste and bi'eakage . . . War is a hateful
business."

• • •

THE MEN who were looting and destroy-
ing the beautiful Summer Palace were

English and French sole
under the command of
And a few days later, il
dered that Yuan Ming
torch in retaliation for k
English envoys who hat
flag of truce to negotiat
cials.

**It was the Emp(
dence," wrcte Elgin,"
could not fail to be a blo\
as to his feelings,"

The French, incidei
involved in the burning (
English did the job thei
days just to set the fires.

• •

THIS WANTON act,
signing of treaties ii
**war" really a series c
1857 to 1860 — whi(
French had started in o
and trade concessioi
Court. At the same t
seized the opportunity
vantages from the weab
ment. The Russians als
and managed to secure
by which the Chinese (
the Amur and Ussuri Rj
area where sporadic fig
on between China and
recent months.

In any case, little x
mer Palace.

Most of the omatf
pavilions were burned t(
just 19 yeai-s later, a h]

' '(3(3©

Idiers in a joint force
f Lord Elgin himself,
it was Elgin who or-
j Yuan be put to the
killing of a number of
ad been sent under a
ate with Chinese offi-

ration was abandoned for financial reasons
and the few structures that were left began
to disappear as the mai'ble sculpture was
torn apart for the iron rods which held it
together, the trees were cut for firewood and
bricks and glazed tiles were sold.

peror's favorite resi-
' and its destruction
ow to his pride as well

entally, refused to be
; of the palace and the
emselves. It took two
s.

;, and the subsequent
in Peking, ended the
of short fights from
ich the English and
order to gain political
) n s from the Manchu
time, the Americans
to win the same ad-
kened Chinese govem-
Iso were on the scene
? a number of treaties
ceded territory along
Livers; this is the same
ghting has been going
I the Soviet Union in

remained of the Sum-

e wood buildings and
:o the ground. In 1879,
)rief attempt at resto-

TODAY ALL that can be seen of Yuan
Ming Yuan are the last traced of the "Eu-
ropean palaces,** the set of buildings which
the Chien Lung Emperor had built between
1740 and 1747 under the direction of Jesuits
then in Peking. There was a pavilion with
music rooms and ornamental pools, a laby-
rinth, an aviary, a gazebo, kiosks inlaid with
glass and shells, and the Palace of the Calm
Seas with its numerous fountains. The gaze-
bo was made into a mosque in 1760 for a
lovely girl from Sinkiang who had become a
favorite of the emperor.

This is how the Jesuits described one
part of the palaces,

"Beautiful pieces of water .adorn the sec-
ond European building in the emperor's gar-
den. Some of them are in very good taste, and*
the large one could stand up to comparison
with the ones at Versailles and St Cloud.
When the emperor is on his throne he sees on
each side of him a large pyramid of water
standing in the center of a group, and in
front of him, several fountains arranged vritli
the utmost skill so that when playing they
represent the war supposed to be waged by
the fish, birds and different kinds of animals
in, the pool, round the edge, and amongst the
rocks, placed with seeming carelessness, and
formin"^ a hemicycle which is all the more
delightful because it is rustic and wild."

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