William H. Brereton

In my last lecture I dealt with the fallacy that the poppy is not indigenous to China, but has recently been introduced there presumably by British agency, and that opium smoking in China was confined to a small percentage of the people, which had been steadily increasing since the introduction into China of Indian opium.

I now proceed to discuss fallacy number 3, which is, that “opium smoking is injurious to the system, more so than spirit drinking.” I think I shall be able to show most clearly that exactly the reverse is the case. With this it will be convenient to take fallacy number 5, which is a kindred one, namely, that “opium smoking and opium eating are equally hurtful.” This fallacy lies at the root of the opium controversy, for it alone has enabled the Anti-Opium agitators to give plausibility to their teaching and to obtain some hold, as they lately had, upon the public mind. There is, in truth, about as much difference in the two practices as there is between drinking, say, a pint of ardent spirits and bathing the surface of one’s body with the same stimulant. Before proceeding further, it may be stated that opium is admitted by physicians in all countries to be an invaluable medicine, for which there is no known substitute. Mr. Storrs Turner says that from the time of Hippocrates to the present day it has been the physician’s invaluable ally in his struggles against disease and death.

Pereira thus describes the drug:—

Opium is undoubtedly the most important and valuable remedy of the whole Materia Medica. For other medicines we have one or more substitutes, but for opium none,—at least in the large majority of cases in which its peculiar and beneficial influence is required. Its good effects are not, as is the case with some valuable medicines, remote and contingent, but they are immediate, direct, and obvious, and its operation is not attended with pain or discomfort. Furthermore it is applied, and with the greatest success, to the relief of maladies of everyday occurrence, some of which are attended with acute human suffering.

This is the description given of opium in Dr. Quain’s Dictionary of Medicine recently published:—

Opium and morphia naturally stand first and still hold their place as our most potent and reliable narcotics, all the more valuable because almost alone in their class they are also endowed with powerful anodyne action, in virtue of which they may relieve pain without causing sleep. Valuable as it is in all forms of insomnia, opium is especially indicated in typhus fever and other acute disorders, when delirium and prolonged wakefulness seem to endanger life. The principal drawback to opium is the digestive disturbance following its use, and the fact that, as toleration is very rapidly established, gradually increasing doses are needed to check the counteracting influence of habit.

The Anti-Opium Society and their followers allege that dram-drinking is not only less baneful than opium-smoking, but they say that the latter practice so injures the constitution, and has such extraordinary attractions for those who indulge in it, that it is impossible to get rid of the habit, and that, in effect, whilst drunkards can be reformed, opium smokers cannot. This is absolutely untrue. The reverse is much nearer the mark. The effect upon the system of constant spirit drinking, leaving actual drunkenness and its consequences aside, is that it produces organic changes in the system, by acting upon what medical men call the “microscopic tissues,” of which the whole human frame is made up; also poisoning the blood, which then, instead of being a healthy fluid coursing freely through the frame and invigorating the entire system, flows sluggishly, producing organic changes in the blood vessels, inducing various diseases according to the constitution and tendencies of the individual. Three of the most usual diseases to which the habitual dram drinker is subject are liver disease, fatty degeneration of the heart, and paralysis. There is not a medical student of three months’ experience who could not, if you entered a dissecting-room, point you out a “drunkard’s liver.” The moment he sees that object he knows at once that the wretched being to whom it belonged had, by continued indulgence in alcohol, ruined his constitution and health, and brought himself to an untimely end. There is another serious consequence arising from habitual drinking. Not only does the habit irreparably ruin the general health so that cure is impossible, but it induces insanity, and I believe I am not beyond the mark in stating that fifty per cent. at the least of the lunatics in our various asylums throughout the country have become insane from over-indulgence in alcohol. Dr. Pereira, in his celebrated Materia Medica, states that out of one hundred and ten cases occurring in male patients admitted into the Hanwell Lunatic Asylum in 1840, no fewer than thirty-one were ascribed to intemperance, while thirty-four were referred to combined causes of which intemperance was stated to be one; and yet Mr. Turner and his disciples say that spirit drinking is a lesser vice than opium smoking!

I need not remind you of the consequences to others besides the actual victims to spirit drinking, for that is unfortunately told too eloquently and but too vividly brought before us every day in the public newspapers. You will find that those acts of violence, those unfortunate cases that make one shudder to read, happening daily in this country—kicking wives, sometimes to death, beating and otherwise ill-using helpless children, violently attacking unoffending people in the streets—all are the results, more or less, of spirit drinking. Even the missionaries admit that opium smoking does not produce any of these evils. As I have said before, truth is natural to the human mind, and will reveal itself, even where it is not directly relevant to the purpose. Mr. Turner does not venture to dispute this in his book, and I would call your attention to the passage. He says on page 33:—

Even between drunkenness and opium smoking there are perceptible distinctions. We must allow that opium smoking is a much more pacific and polite vice. The opium sot does not quarrel with his mate nor kick his wife to death; he is quiet and harmless enough while the spirit of the drug possesses him.

That is all true so far as the fact goes, but if an insinuation is intended that the Chinaman gets violent after the effect of the drug has passed away, there is no foundation for it in fact. The Chinaman takes opium just because he likes it, and knowing it will act at once as a pleasing sedative and a harmless stimulant. A man who is working hard all day in a tropical climate, whether at bodily or mental work, finds, towards the close of the day, his nervous system in an unsettled state, and looks for a stimulant, and the most harmless and most effectual one he can find is the opium pipe. When opium and opium smoking are better understood—and I believe the subject is now but imperfectly known by most medical men in this country—I feel convinced that the faculty will largely prescribe opium smoking, not merely as a substitute for dram drinking, but as a curative agency, that in many cases will be found invaluable. In this I am borne out by an eminent medical authority, to whom I shall refer by-and-by. The regular and habitual opium smoker is seldom or never found to indulge in spirits at all. Stimulants of all kinds are so freely taken here that people never look upon them as a poison; but in point of fact they are a terrible poison, and a very active one, too. Another medical work of very great authority is that by Dr. Taylor.[7] It has always received the greatest attention in courts of law; and it is also held in the highest estimation by the medical profession. At page 315, under the head of “Poisoning by Alcohol,” he says:—

The stomach has been found intensely congested or inflamed, the mucous membrane presenting in one case a bright red, and in another a dark red-brown colour. When death has taken place rapidly, there may be a peculiar odour of spirits in the contents; but this will not be perceived if the quantity taken was small, or many hours have elapsed before the inspection is made. The brain and its membranes are found congested, and in some instances there is effusion of blood or serum beneath the inner membrane. In a case observed by Dr. Geoghegan, in which a pint of spirits had been taken and proved fatal in eight hours, black extravasation was found on the mucous membrane of the stomach; but no trace of alcohol could be detected in the contents. The action of a strong alcoholic liquid on the mucous membrane of the stomach so closely resembles the effect produced by arsenic and other irritants, as easily to give rise to the suspicion of mineral irritant poisoning. A drawing in the museum collection of Guy’s Hospital furnishes a good illustration of the local action of alcohol. The whole of the mucous membrane of the stomach is highly corrugated and is of a deep brownish-red colour. Of all the liquids affecting the brain this has the most powerful action on the stomach. A case of alcoholic poisoning of a child, Æt. seven, referred to me by Mr. Jackaman, coroner for Ipswich, in July 1863, will serve to show the correctness of this remark. A girl was found at four o’clock in the morning lying perfectly insensible on the floor. She had had access to some brandy, which she had swallowed from a quartern measure, found near her empty. She had spoken to her mother only ten minutes before, so that the symptoms must have come on very rapidly. She was seen by Mr. Adams four hours afterwards. She was then quite insensible, in a state of profound coma, the skin cold, and covered with a clammy perspiration. There had been slight vomiting. The child died in twelve hours, without recovering consciousness, from the time at which she was first found.

So far Dr. Taylor, a most competent authority on the subject, as showing what a poison alcohol is. Now alcohol, as I have before mentioned, effects an organic change in the system, which opium, if smoked, or even if eaten does not; and when spirits are indulged in to a very considerable extent, the disease produced is absolutely incurable, because it is impossible for any medical skill to give a man new tissues, new blood, a new stomach, or a new liver, where the whole substance and material of all has undergone a complete and ruinous change. Now, the case as regards opium is totally different, because, no matter how much one may indulge in opium, whether in eating or smoking, the effects produced are always curable. This is so as regards opium eating; in respect to the infinitely less exciting practice of opium smoking, the rule applies with very much greater force. A man may smoke opium inordinately until, from want of appetite and impaired digestion, he seems sinking into the grave; he is, however, only labouring under functional derangement, which is always curable. The use of opium in any form produces no organic change in the system whatever. Excessive eating or smoking opium may impair the appetite and digestion, but that will be all. I have very competent medical authority for saying this. This fact places opium and alcohol in two entirely different categories. The one, if eaten in moderation, is, I believe, harmless, if not beneficial; while, as to the smoking of the drug, it is absolutely innocuous;—but if alcohol be freely though not inordinately used, it will prove, sooner or later, destructive to the system, acting upon the frame as a slow poison, which must eventually end, as experience shows, in ruin and death. De Quincey tells us in his Confessions that he ate opium with impunity for eighteen years, and that it was only after eight years abuse of opium eating that he suffered in any way from the practice.

I will now give you another extract from Dr. Pereira’s book. At page 446, under the heading “Consequences of Habitual Drunkenness,” he says:—

The continued use of spirituous liquors gives rise to various morbid conditions of system, a few only of the most remarkable of which can be here referred to. One of these is the disease known by the various names of delirium tremens, d. potatorum, oinomapria, &c., and which is characterized by delirium, tremor of the extremities, wakefulness, and great frequency of pulse. The delirium is of a peculiar kind. It usually consists in the imagined presence of objects which the patient is anxious to seize or avoid. Its pathology is not understood. It is sometimes, but not constantly, connected with or dependent on an inflammatory condition of the brain, or its membranes. Sometimes it is more allied to nervous fever. Opium has been found an important agent in relieving it. Insanity is another disease produced by the immoderate and habitual use of spirituous liquors.

Now I do not think that, much as they have abused opium smoking, any of the Anti-Opium writers have ever alleged insanity to be an effect or concomitant of opium smoking. It must therefore be taken as generally admitted that opium smoking, or even opium eating, does not produce insanity. We have, then, this undisputed fact, viz. that insanity and acts of violence do not result from opium smoking, whilst they are unquestionably produced by spirit drinking.

I had recently some conversation on the subject of opium with a medical friend who has been in large practice in London, for twenty years. I had previously spoken to him frequently on the same subject, and he has been kind enough to give me his views in a very interesting and concise manner. This opinion, I may tell you, is not paid for, or prepared merely to support a particular purpose, as in the case of trials in the law courts. It is purely spontaneous. We all know that professional men, whether doctors, lawyers, surveyors, and others, are all more or less prone to take the views of the party requiring their services, and they, accordingly, will give opinions more or less coinciding with those views. It does not, however, follow that the persons doing so are guilty of any moral wrong, or that they write or state what they do not believe to be true; on the contrary, they have a complete faith in the statements they make. The natural bent of the mind is to lean towards the views urged by one’s patient or client; and thus two physicians or lawyers of the highest standing and character will be found to hold different opinions. But this statement with which I have been furnished stands on an entirely different footing. There can have been no bias in the mind of the writer; it is simply the result of study and experience. I have the most perfect confidence in this gentleman’s opinions. He is Mr. William Brend, M.R.C.S. He says:—

There is no organic disease traceable to the use of opium, either directly or indirectly, and whether used in moderate quantities or even in great excess. In other words, there is no special disease associated with opium. Functional disorder, more or less, may be, and no doubt is, induced by the improper or unnecessary use of opium; but this is only what may be said of any other cause of deranged health, such as gluttony, bad air, mental anxiety....

However great the functional disorder produced by opium, even when carried to great excess, may be, the whole effect passes off, and the bodily system is restored in a little while to a state of complete health, if the habit be discontinued. Alcohol, when taken in moderation, unquestionably benefits a certain number of individuals, but there are others whose systems will not tolerate the smallest quantities; it acts upon them like a poison. But in the case of all persons when alcohol is taken in excess disease is sooner or later produced; that disease consists of organic changes induced in the blood-vessels of the entire system, more especially the minute blood-vessels called the capillaries; these become dilated, and consequently weakened in their coats, and eventually paralyzed, so that they cannot contract upon the blood. The result of this is stagnation, leading to further changes still, such as fatty degeneration of all the organs; for it must be remembered that alcohol circulates with the blood, and thus finds its way into the remotest tissues. The special diseases referrable to alcohol, besides this general fatty degeneration, are the disease of the liver called “cirrhosis,” and very frequently “Bright’s disease of the kidneys.” Here, then, we have a great and important difference between opium and alcohol. The second great difference grows out of the first. It is this:—I have said that if alcohol be taken in excess for a certain length of time, depending to some extent upon the susceptibility of the individual, organic change, that is disease, is inevitable; but the saddest part of it is that it is real disease, not merely functional disorder; so that if those who have yielded to that excess can be persuaded to abandon alcohol entirely the mischief induced must remain. The progress of further evil may be staved off, but the system can never again be restored to perfect health. The demon has taken a grip which can never be entirely unloosed. Herein there is the second great difference between the use of opium and of alcohol in excess.

If what I have said of opium eating be true, common sense will draw the inference that opium smoking must be comparatively innocuous, for used in this way, a very small quantity indeed of the active constituents find their entrance into the system. Its influence, like tobacco, is exerted entirely upon the nervous system, and when that influence has passed off it leaves (as also in the case of tobacco) a greater or less craving for its repetition; but as organic disease is not the result, I see no reason why opium smoking in moderation necessarily degrades the individual more than does the smoking of tobacco.

Here I will give you another extract from Mr. Storrs Turner’s book, which tells against his case very strongly indeed. How he came to insert it I can only understand on the principle I have already mentioned, that truth is inherent to the human mind and will reveal itself occasionally even though it has to struggle through a mountain of prejudice and of warped understanding. This is it, from the evidence of Dr. Eatwell, First Assistant Opium Examiner in the Bengal service; it will be found on page 233:—

Having passed three years in China, I may be allowed to state the results of my observation, and I can affirm thus far, that the effects of the abuse of the drug do not come very frequently under observation, and that when cases do occur, the habit is frequently found to have been induced by the presence of some painful chronic disease, to escape from the sufferings of which the patient has fled to this resource. That this is not always the case, however, I am perfectly ready to admit, and there are doubtless many who indulge in the habit to a pernicious extent, led by the same morbid impulses which induce men to become drunkards in even the most civilised countries; but these cases do not, at all events, come before the public eye. It requires no laborious search in civilized England to discover evidences of the pernicious effects of the abuse of alcoholic liquors; our open and thronged gin-palaces, and our streets afford abundant testimony on the subject; but in China this open evidence of the evil effects of opium is at least wanting. As regards the effects of the habitual use of the drug on the mass of the people, I must affirm that no injurious results are visible. The people generally are a muscular and well-formed race, the labouring portion being capable of great and prolonged exertion under a fierce sun, in an unhealthy climate. Their disposition is cheerful and peaceable, and quarrels and brawls are rarely heard amongst even the lower orders; whilst in general intelligence they rank deservedly high amongst Orientals. I will, therefore, conclude with observing, that the proofs are still wanting to show that the moderate use of opium produces more pernicious effects upon the constitution than does the moderate use of spirituous liquors; whilst, at the same time, it is certain that the consequences of the abuse of the former are less appalling in their effect upon the victim, and less disastrous to society at large, than are consequences of the abuse of the latter.

Could any evidence against the allegations of the Anti-Opium Society be stronger than this? Have I not now a right to say, “Out of the mouth of thine own witness I convict thee!”

My own observation goes to show that opium smoking is far more fascinating than opium eating, and that the opium smoker never relapses into the opium eater. Opium eating, as I think I have already stated, is unknown in China. I think these statements put the question as regards opium smoking, opium eating, and spirit drinking in a very different light to what the advocates of the Anti-Opium Society throw upon the subject. The latter talk of the importation of Indian opium into China as the origin of the custom of smoking the drug, or, at the least, that it has made the natives smoke more than they otherwise would have done. There is no truth in such representations. Let us take the year 1880, for instance, and adopting the figures given by Sir Robert Hart, and concurred in by the British merchants, which I take to be quite correct, that the amount of opium imported into China from India was in that year one hundred thousand chests, each chest weighing a pikul, which would amount to about six thousand tons. Distribute those six thousand tons over the whole of China, which, as I have before so often said, is as large as Europe, and with a population amounting to three hundred and sixty millions, and you will find it gives such a trifling annual amount to each person, that Sir Robert Hart cannot mark from its use any damage to the finances of the State, the wealth of its people, or the growth of its population. In the United Kingdom, where we have less than a tenth of the population of China, there were two hundred thousand tons of alcohol—whisky, gin, brandy—and one thousand and ninety millions four hundred and forty-four thousand seven hundred and sixteen gallons of wine and beer consumed in that year. If all these spirits, wine, and beer were mixed up so as to form one vast lake—one huge “devil’s punch-bowl”—there would be sufficient liquor for the whole population of the United Kingdom to swim in at one time. But if the tears of all the broken-hearted wives, widows, and orphans that flowed from the use of the accursed mixture were collected, they would produce such a sea of sorrow, such an ocean of misery as never before was presented to the world. Yet philanthropists and Christian people in this country give all their time, energies, and a great deal of their money to put down this purely sentimental grievance in China, and shut their eyes to the terrible evils thundering at their own doors!

The whole purpose of Mr. Storrs Turner’s book, and of the Anti-Opium Society, is to write down opium smoking in China, with the ultimate view of suppressing the Indo-China opium trade; and no man living is better aware than Mr. Turner that opium eating is not a practice with the Chinese; indeed, I doubt if it is known in China at all. Yet, knowing all this, he puts forward the outrageous theory that opium smoking and opium eating are equally injurious; it therefore becomes a matter of the first importance that the great difference between these two practices should be clearly shown. In the appendix to Mr. Turner’s book there is a mass of evidence, of which a large portion is quite beside the question, for it applies exclusively to opium eating—a practice, I assert and will clearly show, is totally different from, and a thousand times more trying to the constitution than opium smoking. Dr. Ayres says that opium smokers can smoke in one day as much opium as would, if eaten, poison one hundred men, and Dr. Ayres is a very great authority on the subject; for not only has he a large practice among the better classes of Chinese, all of whom are, more or less, opium smokers, but his daily duties bring him into contact with the criminal classes, who are most prone to excessive sensual indulgence of this kind.

This is what Dr. Ayres says upon the subject in his article in the Friend of China:—

As regards opium smoking, no prisoner who confessed to be an opium smoker has been allowed a single grain in the gaol. Neither has he had any stimulant as a substitute, and I do not find there has been any evil consequence in breaking off this habit at once, nor that any precaution has been necessary, further than a closer attention to the general health. Several very good specimens of opium smokers have come under observation; one was the case of a man whose daily consumption had been two ounces a day for nineteen years, and who was allowed neither opium nor gin, nor was he given any narcotic or stimulant. For the first few days he suffered from want of sleep, but soon was in fair health, and expressed himself much pleased at having got rid of the habit.... In my experience, the habit does no physical harm in moderation. In the greatest case of excess just mentioned at the gaol, a better-nourished or developed man for his size it would be difficult to see.

So far as regards opium eating, the best medical authorities are divided as to whether opium eating or drinking in moderation is injurious to the system at all. In any case, opium eating is not the question before us, nor the subject of these lectures, which is opium smoking in China. Mr. Storrs Turner gives, in his appendix, at page 240, extracts from some statements of Lieut.-Col. James Todd, who says:—

This pernicious plant (the poppy) has robbed the Rajpoot of half his virtues, and while it obscures these it heightens his vices, giving to his natural bravery a character of insane ferocity, and to the countenance which would otherwise beam with intelligence an air of imbecility.

That entirely relates to the eating of the drug by the Rajpoots of India, and has no connection or analogy to opium smoking by the Chinese. There is another quotation on the same page from Dr. Oppenheim, given in Pereira’s Materia Medica as follows:—

The habitual opium eater is instantly recognised by his appearance: a total attenuation of body, a withered, yellow countenance, a lame gait, &c.

And so on. This, as you see, applies to opium eating only. There are many other instances of the effects of such use of opium given in the appendix, which, after these two quotations, it is useless to further repeat. Indeed, so far as relevancy to his subject goes, Mr. Storrs Turner might just as well have introduced into his book medical or other testimony as to the effects of gluttony or spirit drinking. It suits his purpose, however, to mix up the two practices, so as to confuse and mislead his readers. Dr. Oppenheim’s statement, by the way, is completely refuted by Dr. Sir George Birdwood, a distinguished physician, whose long residence in Bombay,—where there is a Chinese colony, most, if not all, of whom are habitual smokers of the drug,—and whose thorough acquaintance with the effects of opium eating and opium smoking, entitle his testimony to the very highest consideration. Again, at p. 8 of Mr. Turner’s volume, reference is made to De Quincey’s book on opium eating, intituled, “The Confessions of an English Opium Eater.” Could anything be more disingenuous than this? De Quincey was an opium eater, not an opium smoker. Here is the passage from Mr. Turner’s book to which I have referred:—

Those “Confessions,” which are not confessions, but an apologia pro vit suÂ, an elaborate essay to whitewash his reputation and varnish over the smirching blot of a self-indulgent habit by a glitter of a fascinating literary style.

Now did anyone ever hear of such an extraordinary explanation of De Quincey’s motives in publishing that volume? De Quincey, he says, in effect, was ashamed of the practice of opium eating, and wrote the book as an excuse for his conduct, so horrible, disgraceful, and debasing, according to Mr. Storrs Turner, is—not opium eating, observe you, but—opium smoking. How fallacious are such arguments I think I shall make apparent to the most simple mind. If a man has the misfortune to have contracted a disgraceful habit, such, for instance, as over-indulgence in spirit drinking, the very last thing he would think of doing is to publish a book upon the subject, and thus acquaint the whole world with his infirmity. Yet this is what Mr. Turner alleges against De Quincey. But, in point of fact, he is altogether wrong in supposing that De Quincey was ashamed of opium eating; if he had been, he unquestionably would not have written his book, which, by the way, is one of the most fascinating volumes in our literature. Previous to the publication of it, probably there were not half a dozen people who knew that he, De Quincey, was an opium eater, and in the preface to the work, he says, “that his self-accusation does not amount to a confession of guilt.” I know Mr. Turner to be a gentleman utterly incapable of wilfully acting disingenuously, much less of stating intentionally what he knew to be untrue; but he is so blinded by prejudice, his naturally clear intellect is so warped and distorted, and his faculties and reasoning powers are so perverted, by this opium question, and his duties towards the Anti-Opium Society, that he either does not see the difference between the two things,—opium smoking and opium eating,—or, aware of that difference, thinks himself justified in classing them together, as they both proceed from opium, and thus he would persuade himself and his readers that they are equally baneful. But in this book of his he takes De Quincey, the opium eater, who confesses to having eaten three hundred and twenty grains a day, and compares him with an opium-smoking Chinaman who smoked one hundred and eighty grains a day; the difference between eating three hundred and twenty grains and smoking one hundred and eighty grains a day being about as a thousand is to one, in fact, in such case it would be simply the difference between life and death; and yet Mr. Storrs Turner would strive to mix up the two practices, so that the incautious reader might infer that the effects of the one were as injurious as those of the other. Such is the class of arguments with which the Anti-Opium Society and its credulous supporters have been satisfied, and upon which the whole religious world, the country, and the legislature are called upon to come to the rescue of injured humanity, and abolish this Indo-China opium trade.Now, as De Quincey is on the tapis, I cannot refrain from exposing a very disgraceful piece of deception which has been practised upon the public by some of the agents or supporters of the Anti-Opium Society since the first edition of my Lectures appeared. This work of De Quincey, as I have intimated, is a very entertaining book; it is the first of a series of fourteen volumes by the same author, published in 1880 by the eminent firm of Adam and Charles Black, of Edinburgh; the price of each volume is two shillings, which is very moderate indeed, taking the character and quality of the letterpress, the paper, and general “get up” into account, for, as for the copyright, it has expired. Although Mr. Storrs Turner has mis-described the book as a penitential effort on the part of De Quincey, I am afraid that the effect of its perusal on most readers would be to induce them rather to become opium eaters than repel them from the practice, as will be manifest from an extract which I shall shortly give the reader. The truth is, De Quincey, who knew human nature very well, lived by his pen, and was actuated more by the desire to amuse than reform his readers—for, say as you will, a well presented comedy will be always more popular with the multitude than a tragedy, however skilfully performed. Now, I am far from impugning the main features of our author’s “confessions,” but in saying that in writing this very fascinating and original book he went extensively into the picturesque, and drew largely on his imagination, no person who will afford himself the pleasure of reading the book can, I think, deny. Now, some very zealous agent or advocate of the Anti-Opium Society, fearing that the effect of this work of De Quincey’s—brought as it has been into notice in connection with this controversy by Mr. Turner’s and my own book—might be to induce the reading public to think that opium, after all, was not so terrible a drug as the Anti-Opium agitators represent, has set himself to the ignoble task of so garbling the work, and importing into it other matter of his own, as to represent opium eating as the most terrible, fearful, and demoralizing practice in the world, and then printing the concoction and flooding the country with the impudent travesty at the very moderate charge of one penny. All the entertaining and diverting passages have been suppressed, and some wretched stuff inserted. It is called on the title page “The Confessions of an Opium Eater; the famous work by Thomas De Quincey. Copyright edition.” The whole is nothing more than a burlesque—and a very bad one indeed—of the real volume. In the first place, there is a lie upon the face of it, as the copyright has expired, and it is not in any respect a copy of the original; and secondly, it barely contains one-sixth of the matter of the actual volume, and has “counterfeit” stamped upon every page. It was exposed at the various book-stalls of Messrs. W. H. Smith and Son, in London, and, I believe, also throughout the country. I myself bought two copies at the Charing Cross station a few months ago, but I believe the delectable piece of literary forgery has since been withdrawn. I daresay, however, it has, to a great extent, answered its purpose, i.e. to poison the minds of its readers on the Opium question, by making it appear that opium is a terrible poison, and that the smoking of it is more injurious than the excessive indulgence in alcohol. This “pious fraud” has done a grievous wrong to the memory of a great English author, Thomas De Quincey—whose pure and classic English adorns our language—and also an injury to the general public who have advanced their money for the penny lie upon false pretences. The whole affair is just as defensible a proceeding as that of some tenth-rate dauber who, having copied (?) a masterpiece of Sir Joshua Reynolds, or some other great master of the English school, had the miserable caricature oleographed, and flooded the country with the imposture, in the hope of inducing the public to believe that true copies of the originals were offered to them. But these Anti-Opium fanatics do not stick at trifles, and, in their insane desire to make right appear wrong, do not hesitate to defame the dead and vilify the living. I have mentioned this incident to show my readers the unscrupulous efforts these people will resort to in order to impose their fictions upon the public.

Now, leaving De Quincey and his book for the present, let us see what Dr. Ayres says upon the difference between opium eating and opium smoking. In his article in The Friend of China, from which I have already quoted, he says:—

I have conducted my observations with much interest, as the effects of opium eating are well known to me by many years’ experience in India, and I have been surprised to find the opium smoker differs so much from the opium eater. I am inclined to the belief that in the popular mind the two have got confused together. Opium smoking bears no comparison with opium eating. The latter is a terrible vice, most difficult to cure, and showing rapidly very marked constitutional effects in the consumer.

Dr. Ayres was quite right, the two have got mixed up together, thanks to Mr. Storrs Turner and his confrÈres. To further explain the difference between opium eating and opium smoking, let us take the familiar instance of tobacco smoking. It is not, I think, generally known that tobacco, taken internally, is a violent and almost instantaneous poison. A very small quantity of it admitted into the stomach produces speedy death, and it is a wonder to some medical men that its use has not been made available by assassins for their foul and deadly purposes. Tobacco has no medicinal properties; it is simply known to chemists and physicians as a poison. Its alkaloid, or active principle, is nicotine, a poison of so deadly and instantaneous a nature as to rank with aconite, strychnine, and prussic acid. Of the four, indeed, it takes the lead. In Taylor’s “Medical Jurisprudence,” to which I have already referred, it is laid down at page 321, under the head of “Poisoning by Tobacco”:—

The effects which this substance produces when taken in a large dose, either in the form of powder or infusion, are well marked. The symptoms are faintness, nausea, vomiting, giddiness, delirium, loss of power in the limbs, general relaxation of the muscular system, trembling, complete prostration of strength, coldness of the surface with cold clammy perspiration, convulsive movements, paralysis and death. In some cases there is purging, with violent pain in the abdomen; in others there is rather a sense of sinking or depression in the region of the heart, passing into syncope, or creating a sense of impending dissolution. With the above-mentioned symptoms there is dilatation of the pupils, dimness of sight with confusion of ideas, a small, weak, and scarcely-perceptible pulse, and difficulty of breathing. Poisoning by tobacco has not often risen to medico-legal discussion. This is the more remarkable as it is an easily accessible substance, and the possession of it would not, as in the case of other poisons, excite surprise or suspicion. In June, 1854, a man was charged with the death of an infant, of ten weeks, by poisoning it with tobacco. He placed a quantity of tobacco in the mouth of the infant, with the view, as he stated, of making it sleep. The infant was completely narcotized, and died on the second day.... Tobacco owes its poisonous properties to the presence of a liquid volatile alkaloid, nicotina.

Whilst under the head “Nicotine,” on the same page, he says:—

This is a deadly poison, and, like prussic acid, it destroys life in small doses with great rapidity. I found that a rabbit was killed by a single drop in three minutes and a half. In fifteen seconds the animal lost all power of standing, was violently convulsed in its fore and hind legs, and its back was arched convulsively.

In Dr. Ure’s “Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines,” it is laid down, at page 250, under the head of “Nicotine”:—

This alkaloid is the active principle of the tobacco plant.... Nicotine is a most powerful poison, one drop put on the tongue of a large dog being sufficient to kill it in two or three minutes.

So much for tobacco and its alkaloid as deadly poisons; yet we all know that, unless indulged in to an inordinate extent, tobacco smoking is a perfectly harmless practice, almost universally indulged in; the exception now being to find a man, young or old, gentle or simple, who is not a tobacco smoker. Most of our greatest thinkers, philosophers, poets, statesmen, and mathematicians smoke it, and in most cases, I believe, with advantage. Indulged in moderately, it does no injury to the constitution, but I should rather say its effects are curative and beneficial; you will rarely find a heavy tobacco smoker a drunkard or even a spirit drinker. Yet this plant, which gives comfort and delight to millions of people, is a deadly poison if taken internally in even a minute quantity in its natural or manufactured state. So it is with opium; the habitual eating of it may be injurious, but the smoking is not only innocuous, but positively beneficial to the system. It is a complete preservative against dram drinking and drunkenness, for whilst it produces similar but far more agreeable effects on the nervous system than wine, it does not, like alcohol, poison the blood, destroy the health, and lead to ruin, disgrace, and death. Of course, opium-smoking, like every other luxury—tea, wine, spirits, beer, tobacco—may be abused, but the few who indulge excessively are infinitesimally small as compared with the many who abuse the use of alcoholic liquors. As to opium eating, an overdose produces death, but the opium smoker can indulge in his luxury from, morning till night without any apparent injury. It is plain, therefore, that opium smoking and opium eating cannot be classed in the same category at all, but stand apart quite separately and distinctly.

I may here again appropriately refer to Sir Wilfrid Lawson’s speech at the Anti-Opium meeting at Newcastle. In the course of his remarks, the speaker referred with some humour to an Anti-Tobacco-smoking Society, a once active organization. At a meeting of this body held at Carlisle, it appears that the chief orator,—an energetic person, with wonderful powers of imagination and a fluent tongue, quite another Mr. Storrs Turner—having exhausted his power of vituperation in denouncing the Virginian weed and its terrible effects upon its votaries, alleged in particular that tobacco smoking tended to shorten human life, but here he was interrupted by one of the audience, a jovial middle-aged north countryman, who said, “I don’t know that Mr. Lecturer, for my father smoked till he was eighty!” “Ah!” exclaimed the other, quite equal, as he thought, to the occasion, “your father’s case was an exceptional one; he was an unusually strong, healthy man. Anyone who sees you, his hale, hearty son, must know that. Had he not been a tobacco smoker he would have lived much longer.” “I don’t know that either,” returned the countryman, “for he is alive and well and still smokes tobacco.” Now had Sir Wilfrid delivered that speech at a meeting formed to protest against the theories of the Anti-Tobacco Society, he would assuredly have scored; but, as matters stood, I must claim his speech as one made in favour of my views upon the opium question; for, to use a famous formula, I would say to the honourable baronet, “Would you be surprised to hear that I can produce to you, not only an aged father and son who are opium smokers, but a father, son, and grandson all living who follow that practice, and have done so all their lives without injury to health?”

But enjoyable as tobacco smoking may be, I contend that, to the Asiatic at least, opium smoking is not only a more agreeable but also a far more beneficial practice. Tobacco has no curative properties, but is simply a poison; opium is the most valuable medicine known; where all other sedatives fail its powers are prominent. As an anodyne no other medicine can equal it. There is one property peculiar to opium, that is that it is non-volatilizable, or nearly so. If a piece of opium is put on a red-hot plate, it will not volatilize; that is, it will not disappear in the form of vapour, which by chemical means can be preserved in order to resume or retain its original character. But it will be destroyed by combustion; the heat will consume it in the same manner as it would destroy a piece of sugar or any other non-volatilizable body; whereas a substance that is volatilizable, like sulphur, on being subjected to the same process, instead of being destroyed, is simply given out in vapour, and by proper means may be caught again and reformed in the shape of sulphur. So when you place opium into a pipe and put the pellet to the lamp, the effect of the combustion is to destroy the active property of the opium; the smoker takes the smoke thrown off into his mouth, which he expels either through the mouth or nostrils. The only way, therefore, he can get any of the active property of the opium into his system is by smoking it like tobacco. Now tobacco, on the contrary, is volatilizable, but the poison is so volatile, and escapes so freely through the bowl of the pipe in the shape of vapour, and is so rapidly expelled from the mouth, that no harm is produced by the process of smoking the deadly poison, the natural recuperative power of the frame neutralizing the effects of the noisome vapour. The difference between opium and tobacco smoking appears to be this:—In the one case you take into your mouth the mere smoke of a valuable aromatic drug, which, when passed into the stomach in proper quantities as a medicine, has powerful curative properties, the smoke when expelled leaving no substance behind it, but in its passage exerting a pleasant and perfectly harmless stimulating effect upon the nerves.

In the case of tobacco, the fumes with the volatilized substance of a foul and poisonous weed having no curative properties whatever, and having the most loathsome and offensive smell to those who have not gone through the pain and misery necessary to accustom themselves to them, is taken into the mouth. Nicotine, the alkaloid of tobacco, is simply a deadly and rapid poison, useful only to the assassin. Morphia, the alkaloid of opium, is only poisonous when taken in an excessive quantity; whether used internally or injected under the skin, it is the most wonderful anodyne and sedative known. I fully believe that, when medical men come to study opium and opium smoking more fully, it will become the established opinion of the faculty that opium smoking is not only perfectly harmless, but that it is most beneficial, so that it may ultimately not only put down spirit drinking, but perhaps supersede, to a great extent, tobacco. But few medical men in this country have as yet made opium a special study. They only know its use and properties as described in the British Pharmacopeia; many even of those who have practised in the parts of India where the drug is eaten do not, it seems, as yet fully understand all its properties. Dr. Ayres himself admits that he was astonished after his arrival in Hong Kong to find the great difference between the effects of smoking and eating the drug. I may here remind my readers that we have, or had once, an Anti-Tobacco-smoking Society, just as there is now an Anti-Opium-smoking Society. The former had so many living evidences of the absurdities alleged by its supporters against the use of tobacco, that the agitation was laughed down and has either died a natural death or has only a moribund and spasmodic existence; but had the place where the alleged enormity of tobacco smoking was practised been Africa, I think the Society would have died a much harder death, or at all events shown more vitality. The Anti-Opium Society would have shared the same fate long ago were it not that the scene of all the alleged evils is China, ten thousand miles away, and the witnesses against their absurd allegations live the same distance from us. But still, believe me, the Anti-Opium Society’s days are numbered: it is doomed, and, like the Anti-Tobacco craze, will be numbered soon amongst the things that were. I flatter myself that in the delivery and publication of these lectures I have given the agitation a heavy blow and great discouragement.

I had some time ago the advantage of reading a very interesting and remarkable letter in the “Times” by Sir George Birdwood, to whom I have already referred; he has had more than fourteen years’ experience in India as a medical man, and has made the opium question a special study. I think his testimony is worth a great deal more than that of any layman, however learned or talented; the one has both theoretical and practical knowledge of his subject, the other at best is only a theorist. Believe me, the Roman poet knew human nature well when he said, “Trust the man who has experience of facts.” The paper, which is a learned and interesting one, is too long to read, but here is an extract from it:—

My readers can judge for themselves from the authorities I have indicated; but the opinion I have come to from them and my own experience is, that opium is used in Asia in a similar way to alcohol in Europe, and that, considering the natural craving and popular inclination for, and the ecclesiastical toleration of it and its general beneficial effects, and the absence of any resulting evil, there is just as much justification for the habitual use of opium in moderation as for the moderate use of alcohol, and indeed far more.

Sir Benjamin Brodie is always quoted as the most distinguished professional opponent of the dietetical use of opium; but what are his words (Psychological Enquiries, p. 248):—“The effect of opium when taken into the stomach is not to stimulate, but to soothe the nervous system. It may be otherwise in some instances, but these are rare exceptions to the general rule. The opium eater is in a passive state, satisfied with his own dreamy condition while under the influence of the drug. He is useless but not mischievous. It is quite otherwise with alcoholic liquors.” Opium smoking, which is the Chinese form of using the drug—for which the Indian Government is specially held responsible—is, to say the least in its favour, an infinitely milder indulgence. As already mentioned, I hold it to be absolutely harmless. I do not place it simply in the same category with even tobacco smoking, for tobacco smoking may, in itself, if carried into excess, be injurious, particularly to young people under twenty-five; but I mean that opium smoking in itself is as harmless as smoking willow-bark or inhaling the smoke of a peat-fire or vapour of boiling water.... I have not seen Surgeon-General Moore’s recent paper on opium in the Indian Medical Gazette, but I gather from a notice of it quoted from the Calcutta Englishman, in the Homeward Mail of the 14th of November last, that it supplies a most exhaustive and able vindication of the perfect morality of the revenue derived by the Indian Government from the manufacture and sale of opium to the Chinese. He quotes from Dr. Ayres, of Hong Kong: “No China resident believes in the terrible frequency of the dull, sodden-witted, debilitated opium smoker met with in print;” and from Consul Lay:—“In China the spendthrift, the man of lewd habits, the drunkard, and a large assortment of bad characters, slide into the opium smoker; hence the drug seems chargeable with all the vices of the country.” Mr. Gregory, Her Majesty’s Consul at Swatow, says Dr. Moore never saw a single case of opium intoxication, though living for months and travelling for hundreds of miles among opium smokers. Dr. Moore directly confirms my own statement of the Chinese having been great drunkards of alcohol before they took to smoking opium. I find also a remarkable collection of folk-lore (Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, by Herbert A. Giles), evidence in almost every chapter of the universal drinking habits of the Chinese before the introduction of opium among them, notwithstanding that the use of alcohol is opposed to the cardinal precepts of Buddhism. What Dr. Moore says of the freedom of opium smokers from bronchial thoracic diseases is deserving of the deepest consideration. I find that, on the other hand, the Chinese converts to Christianity suffer greatly from consumption. The missionaries will not allow them to smoke, and, as they also forbid their marrying while young, after the wise custom, founded on an experience of thousands of years of their country, they fall into those depraved, filthy habits, of which consumption is everywhere the inexorable witness and scourge. When spitting of blood comes on, the opium pipe is its sole alleviation.

Now Dr. Birdwood is not only well informed upon the opium question, but is certainly one of the ablest opponents of the Anti-Opium agitation who has yet appeared. His letters in the “Times” created quite a sensation, and so alarmed Mr. Storrs Turner that he left no means untried to neutralize their effects. At this point a bright idea occurred to him. Finding that there was a general consensus of opinion against him amongst English medical men and other competent authorities that the outcry against opium was groundless, he hit upon the brilliant expedient of discrediting them all, by the assertion that Englishmen are so prejudiced that they are not to be believed. This is what he says on the subject in his famous article in the Nineteenth Century having in a previous passage imagined a case in which China was the plaintiff and Great Britain the defendant:—

The baneful effects of the opium vice are established by universal experience. One may apply to it the theological maxim Quod semper quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. Two considerations will show that the opposition of a few dissentient voices does not detract from the general conclusion. Most of these are quite clear on the point that opium is bad for everybody but Chinese. They would be horrified at the suggestion that opium should be freely used in England and approve the efforts or supposed efforts of the Indian Government to keep it out of the way of the natives of India. On another point these dissentients are all alike; every one of them is prejudiced in favour of the defendant in the case before us. They are all Englishmen. No French or German medical man, no single Chinese authority has been quoted to testify to the innocence of opium. Some of these apologists are opium merchants, who aver that the drug by which they make their wealth is a boon and a blessing to China; or it is a gentleman employed in the India Office who considers opium smoking as safe as “twiddling one’s thumbs.”

Could the force of folly or fanaticism go further than that? All Englishmen are prejudiced. I wonder, did it ever occur to Mr. Storrs Turner that he, being an Englishman, might be a little prejudiced also—on the other side of the question. Yes; Dr. Ayres, Dr. Eatwell, Surgeon-General Moore, Dr. Birdwood, and a host of other eminent medical men standing in the front rank of their profession, Sir Rutherford Alcock, Mr. Colborne Baber, Mr. W. Donald Spence, and others are not to be believed—because they are Englishmen! Were they Germans or Frenchmen, they would, of course, be entitled to the fullest credence. Like the priest and prophet of Crete, Mr. Storrs Turner holds that all his countrymen are liars.[8] But, stay, do I not remember that gentleman’s holding a select conference of English medical men, about October 1882, when certain resolutions were drawn up condemnatory of opium? Surely, yes. The invitations were issued by the Earl of Shaftesbury. I should like to ask Mr. Storrs Turner were the medical and other gentlemen then present Englishmen or foreigners? If I do not greatly err they were all Englishmen. Does Mr. Storrs Turner consider those gentlemen worthy of credit? I rather think he does: so that Mr. Turner’s creed runs thus: “Englishmen are to be believed so long as they agree with me on the opium question. When they differ from me on that subject they are not to be believed at all.” Mr. Turner is fond of treating his readers to theological maxims. I will now give him a legal one which, I think, is applicable to his case. It runs thus, translated into plain English: “He is not to be heard who alleges things contrary to each other.” Of course, the reader has seen that Mr. Turner’s sneer at “the gentleman employed in the India Office,” is at Sir George Birdwood, whose pungent articles in the Times have inflicted such damage on his cause, and whose efforts in the interests of common sense and truth he would wish to suppress.

As Mr. Turner’s tastes are exotic, I will furnish him now with some foreign testimony that may perhaps astonish him. For many years previous to 1858, Don Sinibaldo de Mas had been the Envoy-Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the Court of Spain at Pekin. That nobleman had travelled much in China, India, Java, Borneo, and Malacca, having learned the Chinese language the better to enable him to utilize his travels in those places. In 1858 he published a book[9] in the French language on China and the Chinese, making special reference to the opium question, to which he has devoted one very interesting chapter exclusively. The book was brought out in Paris, and has never, that I am aware of, been translated into English. Now about the last person from whom one would expect to obtain testimony of the kind is a Spaniard. Yet so it is. This book of Don Sinibaldo de Mas is, indeed, one of the most powerful vindications of British policy in India and China that has yet been written. I hardly think even Mr. Storrs Turner can accuse this gentleman of partiality, or object to his testimony as being influenced by personal motives. This is part of what he says on the subject:—

I may say, in the first instance, that personally neither as a private individual nor as a public functionary have I ever been in the slightest degree interested in this (opium) trade, for be it noted that Spanish vessels have never imported into China a single chest of opium. I consequently approach this subject with complete impartiality. I have known the Chinese at Calcutta, Singapore, Penang, Malacca, Manila, and in many parts of their own country, where I acquired a sufficient knowlege of the Chinese language to enable me to converse with the natives and make myself fully acquainted with the opium question, which I believe I understand, and may be considered thoroughly unbiassed in my opinions.

Opium has been preached against and denounced as a veritable poison, and it has been looked upon as a crime in those who have made the drug an object of commerce or gain. A memorial embodying those views, signed by many missionaries and supported by the Earl of Chichester, was presented to Queen Victoria. A meeting was also held in London, composed of philanthropic gentlemen, presided over by the Earl of Shaftesbury, when a petition to the Queen embodying the same object was drawn up; this document I shall refer to more particularly later on. Lastly, some members of the House of Lords and Commons spoke against the sale of opium. On the other hand, Christian merchants established in China, many men of eminence, such as Sir J. F. Davis and others of the highest respectability, have maintained that the smoking of this drug has less deletorious effects than the use of fermented liquors. I will endeavour to explain this question in all good faith and impartiality. In the maritime towns of India, Malacca, Java, the Philippines, Borneo, and Sooloo the Chinese are at liberty to smoke opium where and when they please, and can buy it cheaper than they can in Canton or Shanghai, not to mention the inland towns: yet it is a well-known fact that in all these countries, notwithstanding their unwholesome climates, the opium-smoking Chinese are remarkably healthy and strong. These very opium smokers are employed as farm labourers, masons, and porters, enduring great fatigue and performing the most arduous labours; they have acquired such an excellent reputation as colonists that efforts have been made during the last few years to induce them to settle in Lima and Cuba. The percentage of deaths amongst these people does not exceed the usual rate, and I must confess that having known numbers of Chinese emigrants in the various countries I have mentioned, I have never heard of a single death or of any serious illness having been caused by opium smoking.

It was only on my first arrival in China that I was made aware of the dire effects this narcotic is said to produce, and that the vapour inhaled by opium smokers was designated a poison; I must add that in none of the different parts of China which I have visited has it come to my knowledge that death has resulted from opium smoking. Having asked several natives whom I thought worthy of credence whether they had ever heard of a death having occurred from the habit, they answered me that it might have happened to a very inordinate smoker, but only in the event of his being suddenly deprived of the indulgence. One Chinaman related how he had witnessed such a case. He had known an inveterate opium smoker who had become extremely poor, and was found insensible and almost lifeless; some good-natured person passing by puffed some fumes of opium into his mouth, which immediately seemed to revive him, and enabled him shortly to smoke a pipe himself, which most effectually recalled him to life. I admit that opium is in itself a poison, but let me ask what changes does not fire produce in the various substances which it consumes?

I should like to know what does Mr. Storrs Turner think of that. Here is a highly-educated Spanish gentleman, speaking Chinese well, living amongst the natives, studying their habits, especially as regards their use of the opium pipe, declaring that the practice is innocuous. Now, supposing that instead of smoking opium these Chinese in Malacca, Java, Borneo, and the Philippines were addicted to the habitual use of spirits, wine, or even beer, instead of opium, can any intelligent being suppose for a moment that they would be the patient, strong, healthy, hard-working people that Don Sinibaldo De Mas found them, and which they still are?

Let us refer to Mr. W. Donald Spence’s testimony as to the effects of opium. I quote again from his Report of the trade of Ichang for 1881:—

As to the effect of this habit on the people, amongst whom it is so widespread, there is but one opinion. Baron Richthofen, the most experienced traveller who ever visited Szechuan, after noticing the extraordinary prevalence of the habit, says:—“In no other province except Hunan did I find the effects of the use of opium so little perceptible as in Szechuan.” Mr. Colborne Baber, who knows more of the province and its people than any living Englishman, says: Nowhere in China are the people so well off, or so hardy, and nowhere do they smoke so much opium. To these names of weight I add my own short experience. I found the people of Szechuan stout, able-bodied men, better housed, clad, and fed, and healthier looking than the Chinese of the Lower Yang-tsze. I did not see amongst them more emaciated faces and wasted forms than disease causes in all lands. People with slow wasting diseases such as consumption are, if they smoke opium, apt to be classed amongst the “ruined victims” of hasty observers, and amongst the cases of combined debility and opium smoking I saw, some were, by their own account, pseudo-victims of this type. There were some, too, whose health was completely sapped by smoking combined with other forms of sensual excess. And no doubt there were others weakened by excessive smoking simply, for excess in all things has its penalty. But the general health and well-being of the Szechuan community is remarkable; to their capacity for work and endurance of hardship, as well as to the material comforts of life they surround themselves with, all travellers bear enthusiastic testimony.

Now, allow me to ask the reader, can he suppose for a moment that if the people of Szechuan were prone to spirits, or even to beer drinking, in the same way as they are given to opium smoking, should we have the same results? Would those people be “so well off and so hardy,” so stout, able-bodied, and so much “better housed, clad, and fed, and healthier looking than the Chinese of the Lower Yang-tsze?” I think not. What, then, is the fair conclusion to draw from such a state of things? Why, only that opium smoking is a harmless if not a beneficial practice, unless when indulged in to an inordinate extent, which, it is now plain, is entirely exceptional. I think I am not far from the truth in saying that for one excessive opium smoker to be met with in China you will find in this country a hundred cases, at the least, of excessive indulgence in alcohol—the effects of this being incurable, whilst it is quite otherwise as regards excessive indulgence in opium. The inference, then, I think, is that so far as regards any evil effects from opium smoking, they are out of the range of practical politics and should be relegated to the region of sentiment alone.

I will now give you a passage from a valuable work by the learned Dr. J. L. W. Thudichum, Lecturer to St. George’s Hospital,[10] which will throw a good deal of light upon this part of my subject. At pp. 88 and 89 of the second volume he says:—

The medical uses of opium have been so well known through all historical times that it is a matter for surprise to find that they are not better appreciated in the present day. In this, as in many other matters, we are in fact only gradually emerging from the condition of those dark times during which, amongst many good things, the knowledge of opium, for example, was lost.... These and other considerations led me to look about for a more convenient mode of producing the effects of morphia without its inconveniences or even dangers. I know from the experiments of Descharmes and Benard (Compt. Rend., 40, 34) that in opium-smoking a portion of the morphia is volatilized and undecomposed, and I therefore experimentalized with the pyrolytic vapours of opium, first upon myself, then upon others; and when I had made myself fully acquainted with the Chinese method of using the drug, I came to the conviction that here one of the most interesting therapeutical problems had been solved in the most ingenious and at the same time in the most safe manner. I held in my hand a power well-known and used largely by Eastern races, yet its use neglected, ignored, denounced, and despised by the entire Western world.

In other and non-professional words, Dr. Thudichum has found opium smoking not only harmless but a valuable curative practice.

As to Chinese evidence on this question I could, had I thought proper, have adduced the testimony of some really trustworthy Chinese merchants and traders, which would have fully borne out all that I have stated as to the innocuous effects of opium smoking. I have refrained from doing so, because such evidence, however strong and reliable, would, I feel assured, be impugned as untrustworthy by the agents of the Anti-Opium Society and missionaries, who on their part would, no doubt, in the best faith and with good intentions, I admit, bring out counter testimony of so-called Christian converts and other natives of a wholly unreliable character. One of these persons, called Kwong Ki Chiu, styling himself “late a member of the Chinese Educational Commission in the United States,” has written, or purported to have written, from Hartford, in Connecticut, a letter on this question to the London and China Telegraph. The statements in this document are exaggerated, misleading, and, in many respects, actually untrue. I doubt very much if the letter was ever, in fact, written by a Chinaman at all, and suspect it was produced either here in London by some agent or advocate of the Anti-Opium Society and forwarded to Mr. Kwong Ki Chiu for signature, or that it was written by some American missionary. At any rate, it is plain that the writer has no real knowledge of the subject of his letter. To prove this is so it is only necessary to refer to one passage, in which the writer proceeds to show that opium is to a beginner more alluring than tobacco or spirits. He says:—

There is this also to be said as to the difference between the two stimulants: opium is much the more stimulating, and therefore more dangerous. It is also much more agreeable and fascinating. Not every person likes the taste of liquor; the flavour of tobacco is agreeable to very few persons at first: but everyone, of whatever nationality, finds the fragrance of the smoking opium agreeable and tempting, so that I have no doubt that if opium shops were opened in London as in China, the habit would soon become prevalent even among Englishmen.

Now this is not true. Every foreigner who has lived in China knows it to be quite the opposite. During my long residence in Hong Kong I have never known a single instance of an Englishman, or any other foreigner, being an opium smoker, although I have met with many who had smoked a few pipes by way of experiment. All have assured me that the vapour was nauseous, and produced no pleasurable sensations whatever. The fact that Europeans dislike the fumes of opium, and never indulge in the opium pipe, shows that Mr. Kwong Ki Chiu, who has doubtless been since his childhood under missionary tutelage, and therefore interdicted from the use of the drug, knows nothing reliable upon the subject he writes about so glibly. At a proper time and place, I should be prepared to treat Mr. Storrs Turner to such native testimony upon this subject as would make him open his eyes very wide and put him and his disciples to confusion and flight.

Let me now give you an extract from a despatch of Sir Henry Pottinger, formerly Her Majesty’s Governor-General and Minister Plenipotentiary in China, written by him some fifty years ago to the Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. It is very important, showing, as it does, the pains that have been taken by Her Majesty’s Government at home and her representatives in China so long ago to ascertain if there were any truth in the theory that opium smoking was injurious to the health and morals of the Chinese:—

I cannot admit in any manner the idea adopted by many persons that the introduction of opium into China is a source of unmitigated evil of every kind and a cause of misery. Personally, I have been unable to discover a single case of this kind, although, I admit that, when abused opium may become most hurtful. Besides, the same remark applies to every kind of enjoyment when carried to excess; but from personal observations, since my arrival in China, from information taken upon all points, and lastly, from what the Mandarins themselves say, I am convinced that the demoralization and ruin which some persons attribute to the use of opium, arise more likely from imperfect knowledge of the subject and exaggeration, and that not one-hundredth part of the evil arises in China from opium smoking, which one sees daily arising in England as well as in India from the use of ardent spirits so largely taken in excess in those countries.

I may now appropriately give you the promised extract from De Quincey’s Confessions. I recommend it to the notice of Sir Wilfrid Lawson. The distinction which he draws between alcoholic intoxication and the excitement produced by opium eating is instructive and entertaining. He says:—

Two of these tendencies I will mention as diagnostic, or characteristic and inseparable marks of ordinary alcoholic intoxication, but which no excess in the use of opium ever develops. One is the loss of self-command, in relation to all one’s acts and purposes, which steals gradually (though with varying degrees of speed) over all persons indiscriminately when indulging in wine or distilled liquors beyond a certain limit. The tongue and other organs become unmanageable: the intoxicated man speaks inarticulately; and, with regard to certain words, makes efforts ludicrously earnest yet oftentimes unavailing, to utter them. The eyes are bewildered, and see double; grasping too little, and too much. The hand aims awry. The legs stumble and lose their power of concurrent action. To this result all people tend, though by varying rates of acceleration. Secondly, as another characteristic, it may be noticed that, in alcoholic intoxication, the movement is always along a kind of arch; the drinker rises through continual ascents to a summit or apex, from which he descends through corresponding steps of declension. There is a crowning point in the movement upwards, which once attained cannot be renewed; and it is the blind, unconscious, but always unsuccessful effort of the obstinate drinker to restore this supreme altitude of enjoyment which tempts him into excesses that become dangerous. After reaching this acme of genial pleasure, it is a mere necessity of the case to sink through corresponding stages of collapse. Some people have maintained, in my hearing, that they had been drunk upon green tea; and a medical student in London, for whose knowledge in his profession I have reason to feel great respect, assured me, the other day, that a patient, in recovering from an illness, had got drunk on a beef-steak. All turns, in fact, upon a rigorous definition of intoxication.Having dwelt so much on this first and leading error in respect to opium, I shall notice briefly a second and a third; which are, that the elevation of spirits produced by opium is necessarily followed by a proportionate depression, and that the natural and even immediate consequence of opium is torpor and stagnation, animal as well as mental. The first of these errors I shall content myself with simply denying; assuring my reader, that for ten years, during which I took opium, not regularly, but intermittingly, the day succeeding to that on which I allowed myself this luxury was always a day of unusually good spirits.

With respect to the torpor supposed to follow, or rather (if we were to credit the numerous pictures of Turkish opium-eaters) to accompany, the practice of opium-eating, I deny that also. Certainly, opium is classed under the head of narcotics, and some such effect it may produce in the end; but the primary effects of opium are always, and in the highest degree, to excite and stimulate the system. This first stage of its action always lasted with me, during my novitiate, for upwards of eight hours; so that it must be the fault of the opium-eater himself, if he does not so time his exhibition of the dose, as that the whole weight of its narcotic influence may descend upon his sleep.

First, then, it is not so much affirmed, as taken for granted, by all who ever mention opium, formally or incidentally, that it does or can produce intoxication. Now, reader, assure yourself, meo periculo, that no quantity of opium ever did, or could, intoxicate. As to the tincture of opium (commonly called laudanum), that might certainly intoxicate, if a man could bear to take enough of it; but why? Because it contains so much proof spirits of wine, and not because it contains so much opium. But crude opium, I affirm peremptorily, is incapable of producing any state of body at all resembling that which is produced by alcohol; and not in degree only incapable, but even in kind; it is not in the quantity of its effects merely, but in the quality, that it differs altogether. The pleasure given by wine is always rapidly mounting, and tending to a crisis, after which as rapidly it declines; that from opium, when once generated, is stationary for eight or ten hours: the first, to borrow a technical distinction from medicine, is a case of acute, the second of chronic, pleasure; the one is a flickering flame, the other a steady and equable glow. But the main distinction lies in this—that, whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in a proper manner), introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possession; opium sustains and reinforces it. Wine unsettles the judgment, and gives a preternatural brightness and a vivid exaltation to the contempts and the admirations, to the loves and the hatreds, of the drinker; opium, on the contrary, communicates serenity and equipoise to all the faculties, active or passive; and, with respect to the temper and moral feelings in general, it gives simply that sort of vital warmth which is approved by the judgment, and which would probably always accompany a bodily constitution of primeval or antediluvian health. Thus, for instance, opium, like wine, gives an expansion to the heart and the benevolent affections; but, then, with this remarkable difference, that in the sudden development of kind-heartedness which accompanies inebriation, there is always more or less of a maudlin and a transitory character, which exposes it to the contempt of the bystander. Men shake hands, swear eternal friendship, and shed tears—no mortal knows why; and the animal nature is clearly uppermost. But the expansion of the benigner feelings incident to opium is no febrile access, no fugitive paroxysm; it is a healthy restoration to that state which the mind would naturally recover upon the removal of any deep-seated irritation from pain that had disturbed and quarrelled with the impulses of a heart originally just and good. True it is, that even wine, up to a certain point, and with certain men, rather tends to exalt and to steady the intellect; I myself, who have never been a great wine-drinker, used to find that half-a-dozen glasses of wine advantageously affected the faculties, brightened and intensified the consciousness, and gave to the mind a feeling of being “ponderibus librata suis,” and certainly it is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor; for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety, and exceedingly disguised; and it is when they are drinking that men display themselves in their true complexion of character; which surely is not disguising themselves. But still, wine constantly leads a man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance; and, beyond a certain point, it is sure to volatilise and to disperse the intellectual energies; whereas opium always seems to compose what had been agitated and to concentrate what had been distracted. In short, to sum up all in one word, a man who is inebriated, or tending to inebriation, is, and feels that he is, in a condition which calls up into supremacy the merely human, too often the brutal, part of his nature; but the opium-eater (I speak of him simply as such, and assume that he is in a normal state of health) feels that the diviner part of his nature is paramount—that is, the moral affections are in a state of cloudless serenity; and high over all the great light of the majestic intellect.

This is the doctrine of the true church on the subject of opium, of which church I acknowledge myself to be the Pope (consequently infallible), and self-appointed legate À latere to all degrees of latitude and longitude. But then it is to be recollected that I speak from the ground of a large and profound personal experience, whereas most of the unscientific authors who have at all treated of opium, and even of those who have written professionally on the materia medica, make it evident, by the horror they express of it, that their experimental knowledge of its action is none at all.

I have now dealt with fallacies 1, 2, 3, and 5. The fourth Mr. Turner gravely states in his book—and I am perfectly sure it is accepted as seriously by his fellowers, that the supply of opium regulates the demand, and not the demand the supply. He says at pp. 152, 153:—

Defenders of the [opium] policy vainly strive to shelter it behind the ordinary operation of the trade laws of demand and supply. The operation of these economic laws does not divest of responsibility those who set them in motion at either end; for though it would be absurd to speak of supply as alone creative of demand, there is no question but that an abundant and constantly sustained supply increases demand whenever the article is not one of absolute necessity. When silk came by caravans across Central Asia, and a single robe was worth its weight in gold in Europe, the shining fabric was reserved for emperors and nobles, and no demand could be said to exist for it among common people, whereas now the abundant supply creates a demand among all classes but the very poorest. The maid-servant who covets a silk dress may be literally said to have had the demand created in her case, by the ample supply of the material which places it constantly before her eyes and renders it impossible for her to obtain it. Only a few years ago there was no demand for newspapers amongst multitudes who are now daily or weekly purchasers of them. In this case the supply of penny and halfpenny journals may be fairly said to have almost alone created the demand. Such illustrations might be indefinitely multiplied.

After that it may be said that the Birmingham jewellers and Manchester merchants have only to send out to China any amount they please of their wares, and they will find a ready market, the more the merrier. All their goods will be taken off their hands; they will only have to take care that the prices shall not be too exorbitant, for otherwise, as in the case of the maid-servant, though the Chinese working classes may have helped to create the demand, they would be unable to avail themselves of the supply. If that doctrine were sound, a mercantile firm could create as extensive a trade as it desired, and that, too, in any part of the world. Instead of sending out fifty thousand pounds worth this year, as it did last, it would have only to export ten times the amount, and still the demand would continue. The fact is, as every man well knows who is not blinded by enthusiasm and looks at the subject by the light of cool reason and common sense, that the effect of sending to China or elsewhere an excessive quantity of merchandise, even though such merchandise were in request there, would have the effect of glutting the market. It is only where the demand exists, and the desire to possess the article, or where the people want a particular class of thing, that the goods can be readily and profitably disposed of. I am sure that if we sent double the quantity of opium that we do to China, or, indeed, three times the amount, it would be readily bought up by the natives, because there is a great demand there for Indian opium, owing to its superior strength and better flavour. And it must be remembered that China is a vast empire, and that the natives cannot get as much of the Indian drug as they want. I had an opportunity recently of speaking to a German gentleman established here in London, who has been many years in the opium trade generally, who has made opium quite a study, tasting and smelling it, as wine merchants do their wine, and he declares that Indian opium has a perfume and aroma that is not found in the Chinese or Persian drug, and that, in fact, the smell of the one is comparatively agreeable, while that of the others is offensive. This, I believe, is one of the reasons for the Chinese liking Indian opium. For my own part I must say, that much as I dislike the odour of tobacco, I have a greater aversion still to the effluvium of opium in any form or shape, and I think this is also the case with all Europeans. In fact, opium smoking is a practice peculiar to China.

Nothing proves this so completely as the correspondence between Sir Robert Hart and his various Sub-Commissioners of Customs, as set out in the Yellow-Book to which I have so often referred. These Commissioners say that the Indian drug is almost invariably used to mix with the Chinese article to flavour and make it, so to speak, the more palatable. The proposition which Mr. Storrs Turner lays down is simply preposterous, and cannot for a moment be sustained. I do not wish to utter an offensive word towards that gentleman personally, whose talents and energy are unquestionable, and whom I hold in great esteem. Upon any subject but opium he would be incapable of writing anything but sound sense, but having opium on the brain, he starts theories that are wholly unsustainable, which, I am sorry to say, his devoted followers accept as gospel. But to return to the theory that supply creates the demand. By way of illustration, Mr. Turner goes on to show that, previous to the removal of the duty on newspapers, there were very few in the country, but that the moment the duty was taken off, they multiplied, which he considers proof that in this case the supply created the demand. That is most fallacious. The demand for newspapers always existed, but, unfortunately, owing to the oppressive taxes upon knowledge to which the press in former times was subjected, the supply was limited. In those days even a weekly newspaper was a great undertaking. An enterprising man in a country town might start such a paper, but after a lingering existence it was almost sure to die, not for want of readers, but because it was so heavily taxed that readers could not afford to buy it, the price then being necessarily high. First there was a penny duty on each copy of the newspaper. Next there was a duty of so much the pound upon the raw material, which had to be paid before it left the mill; and then there was a further duty upon every advertisement; so that the unfortunate newspaper proprietor was met with exactions on every side. A copy, even though an old one, of the Times, or of any of the London morning papers, was in former days eagerly sought for. In his “Deserted Village,” Goldsmith, describing the village ale-house, says:—

Where village statesmen talked with wit profound,
And news much older than their ale went round.

And one can imagine an eager group in that ale-house trying to get a glimpse of a London newspaper over the shoulders of the privileged holder. But when these oppressive duties were removed, a different state of things prevailed. The cost of starting and manufacturing a newspaper was reduced to about one-fifth of what it was formerly. Every considerable town had its daily and its weekly newspaper, because the demand had always existed, whilst, owing to these prohibitive taxes, there was no supply. The craving for news had always been present, and the moment these prohibitive duties were struck off, the ambitious editor, or proprietor, saw his opportunity and started a paper, not because the supply would create a demand, but because he knew the demand already existed, and he printed just as many as he thought he would find readers for, and no more. Had he printed more than was required the excess would have lain on his hands as so much waste paper. But according to Mr. Turner’s theory, the more newspapers he printed the more he would have sold! It will at once be recognised that this theory of supply and demand is simply absurd. If it could be shown to hold water for a moment, China, and other countries also, would be inundated with articles that never were seen there before. There would be no reason why China should not be largely supplied with ladies’ bonnets and satin shoes, which, we know, might lie there for a thousand years and never be used. I have brought before you this notable theory of Mr. Storrs Turner’s, to show you the utterly worthless kind of arguments with which the British public have been supplied, in order to support the silly, unfounded, and most mischievous agitation against the Indo-China opium trade.

The next fallacy is number six, namely: that all, or nearly all, who smoke opium are either inordinate smokers or necessarily in the way of becoming so; and that once the custom has been commenced it cannot be dropped, and that the consumption daily increases. That is not so at all. It is altogether exceptional to find an inordinate opium smoker; my reasons for saying so I have already given. I am supported in those views by every English resident in China, amongst them by Dr. Ayres, whose authority is simply unquestionable, and whose opinion on the point I have set out at page 7. I have known hundreds of men who were in the daily habit of smoking opium after business hours, and they never showed any decadence whatever. Opium smoking is never practised during business hours, except by very aged people or the criminal classes. This is an absolute fact. The Chinese are too wise and thrifty to while away their time in such luxurious practices during working hours. The opium pipe, as a rule, is indulged in more moderately than wine or cigars are with us, the Chinese being so extremely abstemious in their habits. I never saw any such instances of over-indulgence as Mr. Turner alleges, and I could get hundreds of European witnesses out in China and here in London who would depose to the same fact. Frequently have I compared the small shop-keeping and working people of China with the same classes here at home as regards sobriety, industry, and frugality, and always, I regret to say, in favour of the Chinese.

It is absolutely untrue, as put forward by the Anti-Opium Society and their secretary, Mr. Turner, that opium is so fascinating that, once a man begins to use it, he cannot leave it off; natives will smoke it, on and off, for two or three days, and not smoke it again for a week or more; but the truth is, the habit is a pleasant and beneficial one, and few who can afford it desire to discontinue smoking. The fact undoubtedly is, that if opium smoking were productive of the terrible results that the missionaries and the Anti-Opium Society allege, China would not be the densely-populated country that it now actually is. China could not have held its own as it has done so long and so successfully had all the people been addicted to such a vice as dram drinking. The true way to look at this aspect of the case is to suppose for a moment that, instead of being “opium sots,” as Mr. Storrs Turner puts it, the Chinese, “everywhere in China, in all climates and all soils, in every variety of condition and circumstance throughout the vast Empire,” to adopt that gentleman’s own language, drank spirits freely. Should we then have the Chinese the hard-working, industrious, thrifty, frugal people that we find them? I trow not. Intemperance carries with it the destruction of its votaries, but no baneful consequences attend opium smoking. Some thirty years ago, as Sir Rutherford Alcock tells us, an American missionary declared that there were twenty millions of opium smokers in China—all, no doubt, induced to that immorality by the British Government and people—and that two millions were dying annually from the effects of the vice! This monstrous tale was implicitly believed in by Lords Shaftesbury and Chichester. Yet we now have a Chinese official, Sir Robert Hart, deliberately telling the Government of China, in his official Yellow Book, that there are but two millions of smokers in the whole Empire; that Indian opium supplies but a moderate quantity of the drug to but half of that number; and that neither the health, wealth, nor prosperity of the people suffers in consequence.

This is what Don Sinibaldo de Mas says upon the subject:—

The most extraordinary of the advocates of the opium trade is the Earl of Shaftesbury, President of the Committee organized in London for the suppression of the traffic. I have not the slightest doubt as to the bona fides and excellent heart of the noble lord. There is something grand and generous in entering the lists for the welfare and protection of a distant and foreign nation, and manfully fighting for it against the interests of one’s own country and one’s native land. I sincerely admire men of such mettle and the country which can produce them, but I regret that Lord Shaftesbury did not act with greater caution, and that before entering upon this question he had not studied it more carefully; especially do I regret that he did not adopt a more moderate and dignified tone in the expression of his opinions. Had he done so, he would have saved himself from the reproach of having lent his name and sanction to a document disfigured by statistical errors, some of which are opposed to common sense, and also of having given gratuitous and undeserved insults to others who differed from his opinions.

He argues in his statement to the Queen’s Government that opium smoking annually kills two millions of people in China. How is it possible that the noble Earl could for a moment imagine that every year so many human beings voluntarily commit suicide! Two millions of adults who destroy themselves to enjoy a pleasure! Does it not strike His Lordship how absurd is such an antithesis as pleasure and death? Can he believe that human nature in China is different to what it is in Europe? Is it logical to give publicity to such strange assertions without adducing the slightest proofs. If we inquire into the accusations brought forward against the merchants and growers of opium, we find the same discrepancy and the same injustice. It is a mistake to imagine that the English alone trade in opium, for all foreigners alike, especially the Americans, introduce and sell it.

Lord Shaftesbury, in speaking of the value of the opium imported into China, says that the merchants “rob” the Chinese. I scarcely know which is the funnier, the idea expressed by the noble Earl, or the way in which he expresses it. I can assure His Lordship that amongst the merchants who make opium their business there are men of the highest integrity, perfect and most accomplished gentlemen, who not only are incapable of “stealing” anything, but who are equal to any living men in noble sentiments, justice, and practical benevolence; I need only mention one man, and do so because he is not now living. I refer to the late Mr. Launcelot Dent, who, during a most trying and critical time when this question first arose, was considered one of the most interested men in the opium trade.... Everyone who has been in China knows the generosity and the charity for which Mr. Launcelot Dent was renowned. Having on one occasion travelled from India to Europe with him, I saw many of his good deeds, but will only mention one, so as not to wander too far from my subject. A Catholic missionary was amongst the steerage passengers; Mr. Dent having seen this, without saying a word to any person on the subject, took a berth for him in the first cabin and paid the difference, begging me to ask him to take possession. The missionary expressed much gratitude, but said that as he had not a sufficient change of linen he would not feel at home in the state room, especially as there were lady passengers. Mr. Dent understood the difficulty, and having casually heard that the clergymen intended to proceed to Jerusalem, begged of him to accept the sum which the saloon cabin would have cost,[11] which the poor missionary accepted with heartfelt thanks.

I should like to know what Mr. Storrs Turner thinks of that. He objects to British testimony, except when it coincides with his own views. There is the evidence of a Spanish nobleman, a scholar, a traveller, and an accomplished diplomatist, for him! I am afraid he will find the foreign testimony quite as unpalatable as the home article. This Mr. Launcelot Dent, by the way, was a member of the eminent firm of Dent and Co.—since dissolved—which, Mr. Turner says, in his article in the Nineteenth Century, were “legally smugglers.”

The next fallacy, number seven, is that the Chinese Government is, or ever was, anxious to put a stop to or check the use of opium amongst the people of China. That is one of the accepted propositions or dogmas of the Anti-Opium people. There is another fallacy, number ten, which I will dispose of at the same time. It is that the opposition of the Chinese officials to the introduction of opium into China arose from moral causes. There never was anything more fallacious or more distinctly untrue than that the Chinese Government is, or ever was, anxious to put a stop to the trade upon moral grounds. The sole object of the Government of China in objecting to the importation of Indian opium into the country, as I have stated already, and as everybody except the infatuated votaries of the Anti-Opium Society believes, was to protect the native drug, to prevent bullion from leaving the country, and generally to exclude foreign goods. This Don Sinibaldo de Mas points out in his book written some five and twenty years ago.

If the Chinese Government really wanted to put a stop to or check the use of opium, they would begin by doing so themselves. They would first stop the cultivation of the poppy in their own country. We have it on the high authority of Sir Robert Hart, that the drug was grown and used in China long before foreigners introduced any there. The Chinese are emphatically a law-abiding people, and if the Chinese Government really wished to put a stop to the opium culture, they could do so without any difficulty, just as our Government has put down tobacco culture in the United Kingdom. I suppose that in Cornwall and Devon, and in some parts of Ireland—the golden vein, for instance—tobacco could be grown most profitably. It could be cultivated also in the Isle of Wight, and in many other parts of the country. Why, then, is it not grown here? Simply because it is illegal to do so, and the Government is strong enough to enforce the law. If a farmer in Ireland or in England were to sow tobacco, the fact would be soon discovered, and it would be summarily stopped. The same thing could be done with even greater facility in China. Why, then, does not the Government of China suppress the cultivation of the poppy there? Simply because it does not desire to do so, because it derives a large revenue from opium, both native and foreign, and because the smoking of the drug is an ancient custom amongst the people, known by long experience to be harmless, if not beneficial. If it were possible to put down opium smoking in China, the people would assuredly resort to sam-shu, already so abundant and cheap, and that would indeed cause China’s decadence: for then we should have the working classes there indulging in spirits, when the quarrellings, outrages, and kicking of wives to death—which Mr. Turner admits are never the result of opium smoking—would ensue. I only wish we could turn our drunkards into opium smokers. If the change would only save those wretched wives and their helpless children from ill-treatment by their husbands and fathers, we should have secured one valuable end. No Government will attempt to interfere with the fixed habits of the people, especially where those habits have existed many centuries, if not thousands of years, and where they are known to be not injurious to themselves or the safety and stability of the State, and to be, in fact, harmless. We have it from Sir Robert Hart’s book, that as far as can be ascertained, the probability is that there is about the same quantity of the drug grown in China as is imported into it. That is admittedly a mere approximation, and Sir Robert Hart gives no data for it, save the returns of his Sub-Commissioners, each of which differs from the other, and which he admits are not reliable. The information upon which these Commissioners made up their returns is simply the gossip collected by them at the Treaty Ports of China: no doubt the best, and, indeed, the only, information which they could procure. But with the light thrown upon the subject by Messrs. Baber and Spence, and numerous other independent authorities, no one can doubt that there is at least three times the quantity produced in China that is imported from abroad.

Both the Customs and Consular reports on trade in China for the year 1880 as well as 1881 bear testimony to the ever-increasing production of opium in the northern and western provinces of China, and missionaries and others who have recently made journeys in the interior report the poppy crops to be much larger than before the Imperial decree purporting to prohibit its cultivation. The report of the Customs’ Assistant-in-charge at Ichang for 1880 shows that the average annual import of the Indian drug at that port does not exceed ten pikuls, while the native production in the Ichang Prefecture is estimated to be over one thousand pikuls per annum. Mr. W. Donald Spence, in his report on trade for 1880, gives an estimate of the total crop of opium raised in Western China in 1880, which is as follows:—Western Hupeh, two thousand pikuls; Eastern Szechuan, forty-five thousand pikuls; Yunnan, forty-thousand pikuls; and Kweichow, ten thousand pikuls; giving a total of ninety-seven thousand pikuls—as much, in fact, for these districts as the whole amount of Indian opium imported into China for that year. What his report for 1881 is I have already shown you. This, it must be borne in mind, is the production of Western China only. In Shantung, Chihli, the inland provinces, and Manchuria it is extensively grown, and in all the other provinces smaller quantities of the drug are produced. That nothing is being done to check this widespread cultivation of the poppy is notorious. Messrs. Soltan and Stevenson, who passed through Yunnan last year on their way from Bhamo to Chingkiang, described the country as resembling “a sea of poppy”; and Mr. Spence tells us that in 1880 and 1881 a greater breadth of land was sown with poppies in Western Hupeh than in the previous years. In Manchuria, which is a large territory forming part of the empire to the north-east of China, and in the northern provinces of China proper, there was also a general increase in the area under poppy cultivation. No efforts, in fact, are being made to stop it. On this subject Mr. Spence, in his report for 1880, remarks:—

In Western Hupeh there has been no interference with opium farmers or opium cultivation by the officials, nor, as far as I have been able to ascertain, by any of the authorities of the provinces named in this report. In Yunnan it receives direct official encouragement, and in all the cultivation is free. Its production is regarded as a fertile source of revenue to the exchequer, of pelf to officials and smugglers, of profit to farmers and merchants, and of pleasure to all. Nearly everybody smokes, and nearly everybody smuggles it about the country when he can; and in this matter there is no difference between rich and poor, lettered and unlettered, governing and governed.

After this testimony, which is corroborated in the strongest manner by many other and equally disinterested persons, who can pretend to say that the Chinese Government has any real desire to put down the poppy cultivation?

Let us now see what Don Sinibaldo de Mas has to say upon this point. Having gone into the history of the Indo-Chinese opium trade, and shown that the sole object of the Chinese Government in objecting to that trade was to prevent bullion from leaving the country, he says:—

I referred in my last lecture to a valuable paper read by Sir Rutherford Alcock at a recent meeting of the Society of Arts. Everybody knows this gentleman’s abilities and his high character, which afford the most perfect assurance that he would be incapable of asserting anything that he did not know from his own experience, or from unquestionable sources, to be true. He speaks also with authority. He may be taken to be, therefore, a perfectly unbiassed witness. He has no personal interest in the question, and there is no reason why he should state anything but what is perfectly accurate. He says, in the paper I have mentioned:—

How, after that, it can be said for a moment that the Chinese Government was actuated by moral considerations, or was really anxious to put down opium smoking or opium culture, I cannot conceive. The truth is, and it is so palpable that it really seems to me to require no advocacy whatever, that the Government, as Sir Rutherford Alcock and Don Sinibaldo so strongly put it, does not like to see so much bullion leaving the country.

Now, Sir Rutherford Alcock, unlike the missionaries and the agents of the Anti-Opium Society, has acquired his knowledge of opium and the opium trade in the regular course of his ordinary duties, and has necessarily, therefore, acquired an authentic knowledge of the subject. His testimony, like that of Messrs. Spence, Baber, and a host of other unimpeachable witnesses, comes under the head of the “best evidence.” But it is said of Sir Rutherford by the agents of the Anti-Opium Society, with the view of discrediting his testimony, that he has changed his opinions; that formerly he was opposed to the trade which he now defends. I do not believe there is any solid truth in this assertion; but if there is, what does the fact prove? Why, simply nothing at all. Show me the public man who during the past forty or fifty years has not altered or modified his opinions more or less. Sir Robert Peel, one of the greatest of modern statesmen, when he was past sixty years of age, changed the opinions he had held all his life upon free trade. Was he right or wrong in doing so? If Sir Rutherford Alcock had at an earlier period of his life held different opinions to those he now holds on the Indo-Chinese opium trade, it is not unreasonable that on a closer study of the subject, and by the strong light that has been thrown upon it within the past ten or fifteen years, he should have modified or even altogether changed his opinions. This is, again, another instance of the desperate efforts of the Anti-Opium advocates to hold their ground and maintain their unfounded and untenable theories.The Government of China have always been protectionists in the strictest sense of the term. Their idea has been that China can support itself; that the people can provide themselves with everything they want, and need nothing from abroad. They will sell the foreigner as much of their produce as he wishes to buy, and cheerfully take his gold in exchange, but they will not buy from him if they can help doing so. This is the real end they are aiming at; but they would not be at all so persistent, or put their case so much forward as they do, were it not for the attitude taken up by the missionaries and that most mischievous, intermeddling, un-English confederacy the Anti-Opium Society, as revealed to them by The Friend of China. The Government of China have in their employment Chinese clerks and interpreters who are excellent English scholars. These men explain everything about the objects of the Anti-Opium Society, and, whilst the Mandarins laugh at the absurdities put forward by that association, they are still quite ready to accept the Society as their ally. Hence Li Hung Chang’s letter to Mr. Storrs Turner, mentioned in Sir Rutherford Alcock’s paper; one would almost fancy that this letter had been written for Li by Mr. Storrs Turner himself. No one knew better than Li Hung Chang that this letter was one tissue of hypocrisy and mendacity. But, stay, there is one part of it that is certainly true. Li says to Mr. Turner: “Your Society has long been known to me and many of my countrymen.” There can be no doubt of the fact. Whilst despising Mr. Storrs Turner and his Society, and cordially hating him and his fellow missionaries, Li Hung Chang and his friends play into their hands and humour them in this matter to the top of their bent. Their real object is to get rid of the Indian opium if they can; or, if they cannot, to have a higher duty fixed upon it, so as to reduce its supply; or, at all events, to augment their own revenues by the higher duty. As matters stand at present, the Chinese Government obtains a net revenue of over two million pounds sterling from the Indian drug, and they derive, perhaps, half that amount from the duty on the home-grown article. They have revenue cruisers constantly watching to put down opium smuggling, and they adopt other rigid steps to prevent the practice; but it is still carried on to a considerable extent, not by Englishmen or other foreigners, mark you, but by their own countrymen. Very great misconception, I may here say, prevails upon this point artfully spread abroad by agents here of the Anti-Opium Society, but I shall sweep this away before I close. The Chinese Government is quite willing to perpetuate the Indo-China opium trade if it can only get the duty raised to suit its purpose. Therein lies their whole object. Mr. Turner speaks about the paternal character of the Chinese Government. In the Peking Gazette—which is in some respects analogous to the London Gazette—Imperial decrees are from time to time published. Amongst others, there will appear proclamations addressed to the people, warning them to abstain from this and that evil practice. But they have not the least effect, nor is it expected that they will have effect. They are mere shams, and are not heeded; yet they please the people. These proclamations or injunctions are never seriously intended, and Mr. Turner knows this perfectly well. Dr. Wells Williams mentions in his book that two thousand years before Christ the manufacture of spirits was forbidden in China; yet the trade still flourishes there. Spirits are still drunk in moderation throughout China, just as opium is smoked.

Sir R. Hart says that “Native opium was known, produced, and used long before any Europeans began the sale of the foreign drug along the coast.” Mr. Watters, one of Her Majesty’s Consuls in China, states that the poppy is largely cultivated throughout Western China; Mr. Colborne Baber, who has travelled through nearly the whole of China, not only confirms Mr. Watters’ statement, but says that from his own experience one-third of the province of Yunnan is under opium culture. Mr. W. Donald Spence and a host of others thoroughly well informed upon the question also give the strongest corroborative testimony. Now, in the face of the statements of such witnesses as these, can you credit for a moment Mr. Storrs Turner when he says—believing only what he wishes to be true, but having no data whatever for his statements—that it is only recently that opium has been cultivated in China? Of all the existing nations of Asia, the only one that can now be described as civilized is China; and this is the country where Mr. Turner, because it suits his purpose, tells us that this invaluable drug has been only recently known.

China may be said to be the garden of Asia. Opium has been grown throughout the fertile plains of that immense continent for thousands of years, and is it likely that the oldest and most civilized of all Asiatic nations would be the last to introduce into their country the culture of that drug to whose curative properties Mr. Storrs Turner bears such strong testimony in the opening chapter of his book? The only reason that gentleman could have had for making such a statement is simply, as I have already intimated, to induce his readers to believe that the Chinese would not have cultivated the drug, nor have used it for smoking, were it not for the importation of Indian opium into China. Upon this part of my subject, I may mention that a book has been written by a very learned man, Dr. W. A. P. Martin, President of the Tungwen College at Peking, who shows that China was the cradle of Alchemy, which was known there five hundred years before it was ever heard of in Europe. Are these a people likely to be ignorant of this indispensable medicine, as Mr. Turner characterizes it, or to neglect its cultivation throughout their fertile country? I may add that all, or nearly all, the medicines of the British Pharmacopoeia, and a great many more also, have been known to the Chinese for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

The eighth fallacy is, that the British merchants in China are making large fortunes by opium. I have already, I think, pretty well disposed of this, and I need not say much more upon the subject now. One of the great points of the Anti-Opium Society and its supporters seems to be that the British merchants are birds of prey, a set of rapacious and ravenous creatures, without the feelings of humanity in their breasts, who have gone out to China to make princely fortunes, after the manner of that apochryphal youth who, on his departure from the paternal roof, is said to have received this admonition from his canny sire, “Mak money, ma boy—honestly if you can—but mak money”; that thus animated the British merchant arrives in China like a hawk amid a flock of pigeons, and helps himself to one of those princely acquisitions, which, to Mr. Storrs Turner, seem to be as plentiful as blackberries in the flowery land, and who, after having helped to demoralise and ruin the nation, gracefully returns home to enjoy his ill-gotten gains. The best answer to this is the amicable relations that now exist and have always existed between the natives and these merchants. The British merchants, as a body, have no interest in the opium trade; nor are any of them engaged in smuggling or in any practices detrimental to the natives of China. In point of education, thorough mercantile knowledge, strict integrity, and sound practical Christianity, these gentlemen are second to no other body of men in the British Empire.

Another fallacy, or false assumption, number nine, which the advocates of the Anti-Opium Society are fond of propagating, and which is as fully believed in by themselves as by their deluded followers, is—that the discontinuance of the supply of opium from India would stop or check the practice of opium smoking. They fully believe that if they could only succeed in suppressing the Indo-China opium trade they would deal such a death-blow to this ancient custom, which prevails more or less over the eighteen provinces of the Chinese empire, that we should in a very short time hear of there being no opium smoking at all in China! That is as great a delusion as was ever indulged in. Imagine a person saying that if we ceased to ship beer, stout, and whiskey to Denmark, France, or Italy, we should check the consumption of brandy or other alcoholic liquors throughout Europe, and you have a pretty fair parallel to this assumption.

Suppose it were possible to stop the supply of opium from British India, and that such stoppage had in fact taken place, the result would be that the Chinese would increase the cultivation of the poppy in their own country still more than they have already done, and the Indian drug known as “Malwa opium” would still continue to be imported into China, for the British Government, even if desirous to do so, could not prohibit its manufacture and exportation. The Portuguese, who were the first to import Indian opium into China, would cultivate the drug, not only in their Indian possession of Goa, but in Africa, where they have colonies. Further, they would encourage its increased cultivation in the native states of India, which produce the Malwa opium, and which, as I have just said, we could not prevent. A great stimulus would also be given to the cultivation of Persian opium. Hear, how I am borne out by Don Sinibaldo de Mas, an authentic and thoroughly impartial witness. This is what he says, in his very valuable book:—

Were the supply of opium from British India discontinued we should have a class of merchants who would form syndicates to buy up all the opium that could be found, and Macao would become the great depÔt for Persian, Javanese, and Malwa opium for the China market, so that we should have probably four times the quantity of the foreign drug shipped to China that is now imported into that country, and thus the alleged evils of opium smoking in China would be intensified. By a stupid though well-meaning policy, that ultimate demoralisation, degradation, and ruin which the Anti-Opium Society allege is now being wrought upon the natives of China by the existing Indo-China opium trade would be enormously accelerated, whilst England and English missionaries would only earn the contempt of the Chinese nation and the ridicule of the whole world. I have shown you that the Government of China is not sincere in its professed desire to put down opium smoking; for if it was we should never have had the poppy grown so extensively as it is at present all over the empire. The evidence of Sir Robert Hart alone upon this point puts the matter beyond the question of a doubt. How, in the face of that gentleman’s book, this Anti-Opium agitation can continue I really cannot understand. He is an officer of the Chinese Government, and he would be the last man to publish anything damaging to the Government or people of China. Here have these Anti-Opium agitators been forty years in the wilderness without making any progress, but only getting deeper into the quagmire of error and delusion. Even now, although defeated at all points, they persist, as I shall show by and by, in obstructing public business in the House of Commons by again ventilating their unfounded theories.

As matters stand, this book of Sir Robert Hart’s must show to every impartial mind that the teaching of the Anti-Opium Society, from its formation to the present time, has been fallacious, misleading, and mischievous. Yet, in the face of this most damaging official Yellow-Book, we are still calmly and seriously told from many platforms, by dignitaries of the highest position in the Church, and by clergymen of all denominations, that we are demoralising and ruining the whole nation, because we send the Chinese a comparatively small quantity of pure and unadulterated opium, which is beneficial rather than injurious to them. But what does Sir Robert Hart, with all his official information, say? That all this opium, amounting to about six thousand tons annually, is consumed in moderation by one million of smokers, or one-third of one per cent. of the whole population of China, estimating the number of people at three hundred millions only.

The missionaries and the Anti-Opium Society, in the face of facts which directly contradict them, say that the Chinese Government has a horror of opium; but they never tell us that that Government has a horror of themselves. What was the celebrated saying of Prince Kung to the British Ambassador? “Take away your opium and your missionaries,” said he. Now the Chinese Government does not hate opium; it derives a very large revenue from the drug at present, and it is only anxious to increase the amount. I have very little doubt that Prince Kung, and all the other Imperial magnates, including Li Hung Chang, that strictest of moralists, revel in the very Indian drug they affect so to abhor. But they do detest the missionaries most cordially; so do the whole educated people of the empire, and so do Chinamen generally. None know this better than the missionaries themselves. That disgraceful book, written by a Mandarin, called “A Death-blow to Corrupt Practices,” which was, by the aid of his brother Mandarins, extensively circulated throughout China, but too plainly proves the fact. That infamous volume was aimed at the whole missionary body in China, Roman Catholic as well as Protestant; it attributed the foulest crimes, the most disgraceful and disgusting practices to the missionaries. It was, in fact, the precursor of the fearful Tientsin massacre; yet the missionaries tell us that if we will only discontinue the Indo-China opium trade the millennium will arrive. I may here observe that if opium was the terrible thing, and was productive of so much misery to its votaries, as the Protestant missionaries and the Anti-Opium Society would have us believe, it seems strange that no mention of opium or opium smoking appears in this book. If half the outcry raised against the Indo-Chinese opium trade were true, here was an excellent opportunity for the writer to have inveighed against the wickedness of foreigners in introducing the horrible drug into the country. If the Gospel is objected to because of this Indian opium, what a fine occasion for the author to have enlarged upon the iniquity. If the Chinese mind had been in any way impressed with the evils proceeding from opium smoking, can it be supposed for a moment that the author of this book, an educated Mandarin—one of the literati, in fact—would have omitted the opportunity of denouncing the missionaries and foreigners generally for introducing the terrible drug into the country and making profit by the vices and misery of the Chinese people? Does not the entire omission of opium from this book prove most eloquently that there is no real truth in the outcry raised by these missionaries against the opium trade? The real fact, believe me, is this, the Chinese dislike and distrust the missionaries not because opium is an evil but because they hate and despise Christianity. From the Anti-Opium Society one never hears anything about the removal of the missionaries; it is all “take away your opium.” I am perfectly sure that, if we agreed to exclude our missionaries from China, the Government of that country would unhesitatingly admit Indian opium into the country duty free. No greater proof can be adduced of this than the zeal and persistency with which the Chinese Government recently and successfully prosecuted the celebrated Wu Shi Shan case, which was in the nature of an action of ejectment against a Protestant missionary body at Foochow. The late Mr. French, the Judge of Her Majesty’s Supreme Court for China and Japan, tried the case, the hearing of which occupied nearly two months. It cost the Chinese Government about one hundred thousand dollars, or twenty thousand pounds; they were well satisfied with the result, although the land they recovered was not worth a tenth of the money.

It is declared by Mr. Turner and the other advocates of the Anti-Opium Society that we have treated the Chinese with great harshness; that we have extorted the Treaty of Tientsin from them, and bullied them into legalizing the admission of opium into the empire; that we began by smuggling opium into China, and ended by quarrelling with the Chinese. It must not be forgotten, on the other hand, how the Chinese have treated us. For more than a century before we introduced opium into China, and began, as it is said, to quarrel with the Chinese, we had been buying their teas and silks, and paying for them in hard cash. During all that time we were treated by the Mandarins with the greatest indignity. Our representatives and our people were insulted, often maltreated, and sometimes murdered. As to opium smuggling, about which so much is sought to be made by the Anti-Opium people, there is one point that the writers and speakers upon the subject seem to have forgotten. In the first place, I think I will show you that smuggling, in the proper sense of the term, has never, in fact, been carried on in China by Englishmen—or, indeed, by other foreigners—at all. But even admitting, for argument’s sake, that smuggling in its ordinary acceptation did, in fact, exist, how does the matter stand? It has been for centuries the recognized international law of the civilized world that one nation is not bound to take cognizance of the revenue laws of another. This principle has been carried out in past times with the greatest strictness. For instance, there was once a very large contraband trade done between England and France. When brandy was heavily taxed, and when it was thought more of than it is now, smuggling it into England was a very profitable business. It was the same as regards silks, lace, and a great many other articles before free trade became the law of this country. Our Government knew this very well, but they never dreamt for a moment of sending a remonstrance to the French Government upon the subject. Had they done so, the latter would probably have replied: “We cannot prevent our people from doing this. We give them no encouragement whatever. We have enough to do to prevent your people from smuggling English goods into our country, and you must do your best on your side to prevent our subjects from introducing French goods into yours.” For I suppose our people, carrying out the principle of reciprocity, had some contraband dealings with French contrabandists on their own account. That was the law for centuries, and it is so still.

But of late years what is called “the comity of nations” has become more understood, and there is a better spirit spreading between different states on this subject, although, as I have said, the law is still the same. If our Government knew that there was now an organized system of smuggling carried on here with France, they would, I dare say, try to put a stop to the practice, and would, at the least, give such information to the Government of France as would put their revenue officers on their guard, and I am sure that the French Government would act in the same way towards us. That would be due to the better feeling that has arisen between the two countries within the last forty years. The moment, therefore, it was found that there was a considerable demand in China for Indian opium, British and other vessels brought the article to China; and there can be no doubt that they met with great encouragement from the Chinese officials, but they got no assistance from us. The opium shippers carried on the trade at their own risk. All this has been very clearly shown by Don Sinibaldo de Mas. There was no actual smuggling on the part of the owners of these vessels. The Chinese openly came on board and bought and took away the opium, “squaring” matters, so to speak, with the Mandarins. These so-called smugglers belonged to all nationalities. There were Americans, Portuguese, and Germans, as well as English, engaged in it. According to the international law of European countries, the Chinese Government ought, under the circumstances, to have had a proper preventive service, and so put down the smuggling. But, instead of this, the practice was openly encouraged by the Chinese officials, some of them Mandarins of high position.

Now and then an explosion would occur; angry remonstrances would be addressed to the British Government, and bad feeling between the two nations would be engendered, the Chinese all along treating us as barbarians, using the most insulting language towards us, and subjecting our people, whenever opportunity offered, to the greatest indignities. The missionaries have ignored all this. They appear to have satisfied themselves so completely that we forced this trade upon the Chinese that they have lost sight both of fact and reason. The very existence of an opium-smuggling trade with China shows that the article smuggled was in very great demand in that country. People never illegally take into a country an article that is not greatly in request there. They will not risk their lives and property unless they know large profits are to be acquired by the venture, and such profits can only be made upon articles in great demand. It was because there was found to be a demand for Indian opium that this so-called contraband trade sprang up. This furnishes the strongest proof that the Chinese valued the opium highly, and that it was on their invitation that the drug was introduced. There is, I believe, a considerable contraband trade now carried on in tobacco between Germany and Cuba and England, just because the article is in demand here, and there is a very high duty upon it. The fact is, that if the arguments of the Anti-Opium people are properly weighed, they will be found, almost without exception, to cut both ways, and with far greater force against their own side.

Now with respect to smuggling, it is right that I should clear up the misconception that seems to prevail upon the subject. Whatever may have been the practice previous to the Treaty of Nankin, which was signed on the 29th of August 1842, and ratified on the 26th of June 1843—forty years ago, I say it advisedly, and challenge contradiction, that no smuggling or quasi smuggling, or any practice resembling smuggling, has been carried on in China by any British subject since the signing of that treaty. Although no mention is made of opium in that convention, it is an indisputable fact that from the time of the making of it until the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858, Indian opium was freely allowed into the country at an ad valorem duty. This is shown by Don Sinibaldo de Mas, in his book, and also by Sir Rutherford Alcock, in his valuable paper. No doubt the Chinese themselves have since then smuggled opium into their country, and are doing so still. They are, in truth, inveterate smugglers, and it has been found impossible for the British authorities of Hong Kong to prevent the practice. For the past thirty years laws have from time to time been passed in the colony with the object of checking the practice, which have not been wholly unsuccessful; for instance, some twenty-five years ago an Ordinance was passed prohibiting junks from leaving the harbour between sunset, and, I think, 6 a.m. on the following morning, and compelling every outward-bound junk to leave at the harbour master’s office a copy of the “Manifest” before starting, and I have known many prosecutions for breach of this Ordinance.

Still smuggling by Chinamen goes on more or less, but not now, I think, to any large extent. As for any connivance or participation in the practice by the British authorities or the British people, and, indeed, I may say the same for all foreigners in China, there is none whatever. I am fully borne out in this statement by the Friend of China, which you will remember is the organ of the Anti-Opium Society. It would appear that Sir John Pope Hennessy, lately Governor of Hong Kong, made a speech last autumn at Nottingham, on the occasion of the meeting of the Social Science Congress, in the course of which he made some allusion to smuggling by the British community of Hong Kong. I have not myself read the speech, but collect this from the statement of the journal in question, which I shall now read to you. This is the passage:—

So much for the delusion as to smuggling by British subjects in China. As for the “Hoppo” of Canton, who farms from the Chinese Government the revenue of the provinces of Kwantung and Kwangsi, and whose object it is to squeeze as much as he can from the mercantile community of these provinces during his term of office, he has a fleet of fast English-built steam cruisers, heavily armed, ostensibly to put down smuggling, but really to cripple the commerce of the port of Hong Kong, they keep the harbour blockaded by this fleet of armed cruisers to prey upon the native craft coming to and sailing from the colony. Wild with wrath at the prosperity of Hong Kong, the Hoppo and his cruisers lose no opportunity of oppressing the native junks resorting to the place. All those vessels they think should go to Canton to swell the Hoppo’s income. Many Chinese merchants have put cases of oppression of the kind in my hands, where those armed cruisers simply played the part of pirates, seizing unoffending junks, taking them to Canton, and confiscating junk and cargo; but I regret to say that only in a very few cases have I been able to obtain redress. This state of things has been going on for the past fifteen or twenty years, and should be put down by the British Government. So far as respects the Chinese authorities, and the junk owners, and native merchants, it is simply legalised robbery; whilst as regards the British Government and people of the colony, foreigners as well as natives, it is a system of insult and outrage—a very serious injury, and a glaring breach of international law, which no European Government would tolerate in another. I mention this to show how forbearing and long-suffering the Government of Hong Kong and the Imperial Government have been towards China during the continuance of this most nefarious and unjustifiable state of things. This is in truth a very serious matter. When Sir Henry Elliott took possession of Hong Kong in 1841 on behalf of the Queen, he invited by proclamation the Chinese people to settle in the place, promising them protection for their lives and property, upon the faith of which the natives took their families and property to the colony. But how can it be said now that their property is protected when this piratical fleet, like a bird of prey, hovers round the colony, pouncing down upon the native craft going to or leaving the port?

To close this part of my subject, I may say in short, that the charges brought by the Anti-Opium Society against the importation of Indian opium into China are exactly on a par with the objections of a Society established in France for the purpose of prohibiting the importation into England of cognac, on the grounds that that spirit intoxicated, demoralised, and ruined the English people. If any set of men in France were fanatical and insane enough to set forth such views, they would be laughed down at once. The answer to the objection to the brandy trade would be, “That the English people manufacture and drink plenty of gin and whisky, and if they, the French, discontinued sending them brandy the English would simply manufacture and drink more spirits of their own production.” No two cases could be more alike.

Before proceeding to the last of the fallacies by which the opponents of the Indo-Chinese opium trade have been so long deluding society, I wish to refer to the statements made by Mr. Storrs Turner in his book, and by the advocates of the Anti-Opium trade, respecting the Treaty of Tientsin. It is alleged that Lord Elgin, who bore the highest character as a statesman and Christian gentleman, extorted the treaty from the Chinese, and forced them to include opium in the schedule to that treaty. Mr. Turner, at p. 95 of his book, typifies the conduct of England thus:—

This metaphor is really absurd, and has no application whatever. Were a man so infamous as to act in the manner stated, it would be a matter of little concern to him whether his poison entered by the front or the back door, so long as he got paid for the article. The fact is, as I have stated, that since the Treaty of Nankin, in 1842, opium has been openly allowed in the country without any difficulty or objection. If there is any point in this metaphor of Mr. Storrs Turner’s at all, it applies not to the insertion of opium in the tariff, but to the clause in the treaty as to the admission of missionaries into China, for that was really the bitter pill the Chinese swallowed. In 1858, when the Treaty of Tientsin was being drawn up, the tariff upon British goods had to be settled. The Chinese Commissioners, not only as a matter of course, and without any pressure whatever, proposed to put down opium in the schedule at the present fixed duty of thirty taels a pikul, but actually insisted upon doing so. There was no necessity for using pressure at all, and none in fact was used. It was included in the tariff just like other goods. Mr. H. N. Lay, who jointly with Sir Thomas Wade, Her Majesty’s present minister at Pekin, was Chinese Secretary to Lord Elgin’s special mission, and who then, I believe, filled the important post in the Chinese service now occupied by Sir Robert Hart, expresses his opinion on the subject as follows:—

Now Mr. H. N. Lay is a gentleman whose testimony is altogether unimpeachable, and this is his statement. He explains the whole transaction, and it is substantially and diametrically contrary to the allegations of Mr. Turner and the Anti-Opium Society. His account of the matter has the greater force, because I believe he is rather anti-opium in his views than the opposite, and at the time of the treaty he was in the service of the Chinese Government. The truth is, that we never should have had the Chinese urging us to increase the duty had they not been supported by the Anti-Opium Society. Mr. Laurence Oliphant was Lord Elgin’s secretary at the time of the Tientsin Treaty. This is what he says on the subject:—

But Mr. Storrs Turner will doubtless still say, “Oh! these gentlemen are Englishmen; you cannot believe them.” I do not think, however, this kind of objection will have much weight with my readers or the country at large.

And now, as I am on the political side of the question, I will say a few words on the Indian aspect of the case. The Government of India is charged by Mr. Storrs Turner and the Anti-Opium people generally with descending to the position of opium manufacturers and merchants, and quotes an alleged proposal of the late Lord Lawrence to drop the traffic, leaving the cultivation and exportation of the drug to private enterprise, and recouping itself from loss by placing a heavy export duty on the article. If Lord Lawrence ever proposed such an arrangement, which I doubt very much, I hardly think he could have carefully considered the question. No doubt, in an abstract point of view, it is contrary to sound policy for the Government of a country to carry on mercantile business, much less to take into its own hands a monopoly of any trade, yet the thing has been done for a great number of years, and is still practised by some continental Governments without the existence of any special reason for so doing. The Indo-China opium trade, however, is an entirely exceptional one. When an exceptional state of things has to be dealt with, corresponding measures must be resorted to. The opium industry in India is an ancient one; and the exportation of this drug to China began under the Portuguese, several centuries ago. Were the Government of India to adopt the alleged proposals of Lord Lawrence, the result would be that a much larger quantity of opium than is now produced in India would be turned out, so that not only would the alleged evils now complained of by the missionaries and the Anti-Opium Society be intensified, but the Government of India would find its revenue greatly increased by its export duty on the drug. This is very conclusively shown by Don Sinibaldo de Mas, a most competent authority, who has studied the question deeply and can have no possible object but the revelation of the truth.

There are numerous objections to throwing open the Indian trade. As matters now stand, the Government of India annually makes advances to the opium growers, to enable them to produce the drug. These advances are made at a low or nominal rate of interest. Let the Government once drop the monopoly and throw open the trade, and then the small farmers—and they form perhaps seventy-five per cent. of the whole, whether they cultivate the poppy or any other crop—would be at the mercy of the usurers, who are the curse of India. Thus the poor cultivator, instead of paying the Government two or three per cent. interest for the advance, would have to pay perhaps five times that amount, with a bill for law costs; and a much larger bill staring him in the future, in case he should be so unfortunate as not to be up to time with his payments. The usurers or MÁrwÁris as I believe they are called, would in such cases profit by the fruits of the soil instead of the growers. As to the morality of the proposed change, I do not see what could be gained by such an arrangement. If it is wrong to derive a revenue from opium by direct, it is equally wrong to do so by indirect means. Before closing this part of the subject, there is another point I wish to say a few words upon. It is put forward by Mr. Turner in his book, with great plausibility, and is, no doubt, accepted by his disciples as fact, that every acre of land put under opium cultivation displaces so much rice, the one being a poison, the other the staff of life. This is perfectly fallacious; wherever rice is grown in China—and I fancy it is the same in India—there are two crops taken in the year. Rice is cultivated during the spring and summer months (that is, the rainy season), for the grain only grows where there is abundance of water.

The poppy thrives only in the dry season, that is, during the latter part of the autumn and the winter, when the rice crops have been saved. The poppy requires a rich soil, so that before planting it the farmers have to manure the ground well; then, when the poppy crop has been secured, the land is in good heart for rice, and so the rotation goes on. This I stated in the first edition of this lecture; since then Mr. Spence’s Report for 1881 has appeared which fully confirms my view. Thus much for the accuracy of this statement of Mr. Storrs Turner.

I come now to the last of the fallacies, follies, and fantasies, upon which the huge superstructure of delusion put forward for so many years by the Anti-Opium Society has been built. At once the least sustainable, it is the one which carries the most weight with the supporters of that Society, for it furnishes the raison d’Être of their whole action. It is that the introduction of Indian opium into China has arrested the progress of Christianity in that country, and that if the trade were discontinued the Chinese would accept the Gospel. No greater mistake, nor more unfounded delusion than this could be indulged in; indeed, it seems to me something very like a profanation to mix up the Indo-China opium trade with the spread of the Gospel in the Empire of China. If the objection to embrace Christianity because we send opium to that country has ever, in fact, been made by natives, that objection was a subterfuge only.

The Chinese are an acute and crafty race; when they desire to attain an object, they seldom attempt to do so by direct means, but rather seek to gain their ends indirectly. They despise and hate Christianity, although they will not tell you so, much less will they argue with you, or enter into controversy upon the subject. They will rather try to get rid of it by a side-wind. They are a very polite and courteous people, and understand this style of tactics very well. I have no doubt whatever that if the British trade in opium were suppressed to-morrow, and that no British merchant dealt any longer in the drug, or sent a particle of it into China, and if a missionary were to go before the Chinese and say, “We can now show clean hands, our Government has stopped the opium trade,” and then were to open his book and begin talking to them of Christianity, he would only be met with derisive laughter. “This man,” they would say, “thinks that because the English have ceased to sell us opium we should all become Christians. If they sold us no more rice or broadcloth, we suppose they would say that we should become Mahomedans.”

Knowing the cunning and keen sense of humour of the people, I have no doubt they would use another argument also. There is a story told of a Scotch clergyman who rebuked one of his congregation for not being quite so moderate in his potations as he ought to be. “It’s a’ vera weel,” returned the other, who had reason to know that the minister did not always practise what he preached, “but do ye ken how they swept the streets o’ Jerusalem?” The clergyman was obliged to own his ignorance, when Sandy replied, “Weel, then, it was just this, every man kept his ain door clean.” And I can well fancy in the case I have supposed, an equally shrewd Chinaman saying to the missionary, “What for you want to make us follow your religion? Your religion vely bad one. You have plenty men drink too muchee sam-shu, get drunk and fight, and beat their wives and children. Chinaman no get drunk. Chinaman no beat or kill his wife. Too muchee sam-shu vely bad. Drink vely bad for Inglismen; what for you don’t go home and teach them to be soba, plaupa men?” Believe me, the Chinese know our little peccadilloes and are very well informed respecting our doings here at home.

We send but six thousand tons of opium annually to China, which, according to Sir Robert Hart, who ought to be a reliable authority on the subject, inflicts no appreciable injury upon the health, wealth, or extension of the population of that vast empire. The truth is, that the alleged objection of the Chinese against Christianity amounts simply to this: because some of our people do what is wrong, and we are not as a nation faultless in morals, we should not ask them to change their religion for ours. Perfection is not to be attained by any nation or the professors of any creed. If we had the ability, and were foolish enough to stop the exportation of Indian opium to China, the natives of the country would find some other reason for clinging to their own creeds and rejecting Christianity. They could, and doubtless would, point to the fearful plague of intemperance prevailing amongst us; they could also refer to the great number of distilleries and breweries in the United Kingdom, to our Newgate Calendar, and to the records of the Divorce Court. In short, they would say, “You do not practise what you preach. What do you mean, then, by trying to make Christians of us?” The same doctrine has been used over and over again even in Christian countries, and it is lamentable to see educated and intelligent men becoming victims to such a delusive mode of reasoning. This sad hallucination on the part of the missionary clergymen is the origin of the mischievous and very stupid agitation going on against the Indo-China opium trade, but now rapidly, I believe and hope, coming to an end.

A few years ago I paid a short visit to Japan. Whilst I was at Tokio, the capital, a lecture was given there by an educated Japanese gentleman, who spoke English well and fluently. He introduced religion into his lecture, and considered the question why the Japanese did not embrace Christianity. “Our minds,” said he, “are like blank paper; we are ready to receive any religion that is good, we are not bigoted to our own, but we object to Christianity because we do not consider it a good religion, because we see that Christians do not reverence old age, and because they are so licentious, and so brutal to the coolies.” But these reasons are again merely subterfuges. The Japanese do not smoke opium, and the very same objection they urge against Christianity might also be used by the Chinese. The Oriental mind is very much the same, whether Chinese, Japanese, or Indian. Upon religious or political questions they well know how to shift their ground. As to the Chinese embracing Christianity, I trust the day will come when they will do so. They would then be the most powerful nation in the whole world, and probably become our own best teachers on religion and morals; but at present I see no immediate hope of their conversion. I say this in view of the stand taken by the Protestant missionaries on this opium question. Nothing, in my opinion, is more calculated to impede the progress of missionary work than this most absurd and unfounded delusion. The reason given by the missionaries for the apparently small success which has hitherto attended their efforts, is that the so-called iniquitous traffic in opium has been the one stumbling block in their way. Put a stop to this villanous trade, they say, and the Gospel will flourish like a green bay-tree. This sort of argument takes with the missionaries themselves and with religious people generally, and thus converts to the anti-opium policy are made. Yet all these statements rest, I can assure you, on an entirely fallacious foundation. We are not dealing with a savage but with a civilized people. You may change a nation’s religion, but you cannot alter its customs, and if China were evangelised to-morrow the Chinese would still continue opium smokers. The Reverend Mr. Galpin has hit the nail on the head when he said in his letter to the missionaries of Peking:—

Looking at Christianity in the broad and true sense, as a great regenerating force breathing its beneficent spirit upon and promoting the welfare of all, of course the excessive use or abuse of opium and every other thing, is a serious hindrance to its happy progress. But this is a very different position from that of supposing that the present apparently slow progress of mission-work in China is to be attributed to the importation of Indian opium. China is a world in itself, and the influence of Christian missions has hitherto reached but a handful of the people, for there are many serious obstacles to its progress besides opium.