Chapter VIII: Part 8

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:--

It is totally wrong to suppose that the Mandarins are anxious to
prevent the introduction of opium into the country. Many of these
Mandarins smoke it; most of them, if not all, accept presents and
close their eyes at opium smuggling. With the exception of the famous
Lin-tsi-su and a few others who reside at Court, all the others, and I
think even Ki-Ying himself, have profited by this illegal traffic. Sir
I. F. Davis when in China as Minister Plenipotentiary frequently
called Ki-Ying's attention to the smuggling that was being carried on
under the connivance and encouragement of rural officials.

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:--

Whatever may have been the motive or true cause, about which there
hangs considerable doubt, it is certain that neither in the first
edicts of 1793-6, nor as late as 1832-4, when several Imperial edicts
were issued against the introduction of opium from abroad, no
reference whatever is made to the _moral ground_ of prohibition, so
ostentatiously paraded in later issues, and notably in Li Hung Chang's
letter to the Anglo-Opium Society last July. The reasons exclusively
put forward in the first of these edicts (in 1793) were that "It
wasted the time and property of the people of the Inner Land, leading
them to exchange their silver and commodities for the vile dirt of the
foreigner." And as late as 1836, when memorials were presented to the
Emperor, showing the connection of the opium trade with the
exportation of sycee, they generally regarded the question in a
political and financial character, rather than a moral light; and
certainly, in several edicts issued between 1836 and 1839, when Lin
made his grand _coup_, there is little, if any, reference to the evils
of opium smoking, but very clear language as to the exportation of
bullion. When we reflect that this "vile dirt," as I will presently
show, was being extensively cultivated in the provinces of China, and
largely consumed by his own subjects, we may be permitted to question
whether the balance of trade turned by the large importation of opium,
and the leakage of the sycee silver, so emphatically and angrily
pointed to in after years, was not the leading motive for the
prohibition of the foreign drug. We have it on authority, that "From
the commencement of the commercial intercourse down to 1828-29 the
balance of trade had always been in favour of the Chinese, and great
quantities of bullion accumulated in China. Since that date the
balance of trade had been in the opposite direction, and bullion began
to flow out of China. As silver became more scarce, it naturally rose
in value, and the copper currency of the realm (and the only one),
already depreciated by means of over-issues and mixture of foreign
coin of an inferior standard, appeared to suffer depreciation when
compared with its nominal equivalent in sycee; and the effects of this
change fell heavily upon a large and important class of Government
officers, and ultimately upon the revenue itself. Memorials were
presented to the Emperor on the subject, and the export of sycee was
prohibited."

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:--

It is another fallacy to say that if the East India Company were to
prohibit the cultivation of opium in her territories that the article
would disappear from China altogether. The poppy grows freely between
the equator and latitudes 30° to 40°; it is produced in large
quantities in Java, the Phillipines, Borneo, Egypt, and other places,
as well as in China itself, where for many years past some thousands
of chests are annually produced. It may be that the opium grown at
Java has perhaps a different taste from that grown at Malwa and
Benares, and may seem to be of inferior quality, but the consumers
would soon become accustomed to that, and would probably prefer the
former to the latter. Persons who are in the habit of smoking Havanna
dislike Manilla cigars, and those who generally smoke Manillas prefer
them to Havannas. At present opium is not exported from other
countries because Indian Opium is so cheap.

What, then, may I ask, is the reproach constantly hurled at the East
India Company? That it derives an annual income by the culture of
opium of at least three millions of pounds sterling. Should the
Company prohibit the culture of the drug in order to allow other
nations to derive the emoluments arising from it? I who have travelled
in both upper and lower India, and know something of the country, am
persuaded that the people there are already over-taxed, and to demand
from them a substituted tax for those three millions would be a very
serious matter indeed. And for whom pray would this sacrifice be made?
To reduce the quantity of opium smoked in China? Most assuredly not;
for the Chinese would still smoke just as much. This sacrifice on the
part of England would only benefit those countries which would take up
the cultivation of opium in order to supply the Chinese markets from
which the Indian drug had been withdrawn. And what fault can be found
with the merchants? Is it not the Chinese who ask for opium, and who
buy it of their own free will, although not a single foreigner, either
by example or precept, encourages them to do so. Is it not the Chinese
who go out of their ports to the "Receiving Ships" to fetch it? Is the
Chinese nation composed of children, or of savages who do not know
right from wrong? Ought, for instance, the Queen of England to
undertake to redress Chinese habits, or let us say vices, and to
reform her Custom-house administration by watching the Chinese Coast?
By what right could the English Government or any other Government do
such things? If that is not what is wished, what is? Against whom and
against what is all this outcry?

It is said that the receiving ships are anchored at the mouth of
rivers, that British war-ships anchor alongside of them, and that the
consuls know this. That is quite true. The consuls admit all this--in
fact, they often send their despatches by these very opium ships to
Hong Kong. How many times has it happened that the consuls have had
discussions with the Chinese governors respecting these receiving
ships? They say, "We do not protect these ships; why do you not drive
them away?" All this, I repeat, is notorious, and it is to be
regretted that it is so; because, under proper legal authorisation,
opium might be introduced into the Chinese Empire with such great
advantage to the Imperial treasury....

It cannot be expected that the English Government through its naval
commanders should prevent its subjects from carrying on a remunerative
commerce, whilst Americans, Dutchmen, Danes, Swedes, and Portuguese
would continue to carry on the trade with increased profit through the
withdrawal of the English.

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:--

The present governor of Hong Kong is extremely unpopular with the
British community under his jurisdiction. Into the occasion and merit
of the feud we do not pretend to enter, but in reproducing the
Governor's condemnation of the Colony it is only fair to note the fact
of the existing hostility between governor and governed. _We are
sorry, too, that Sir John did not state that these desperate smugglers
are of Chinese race. So far as we know there is no ground for
inculpating a single Englishman in Hong Kong in these nefarious
proceedings; the English merchant sells his opium to Chinese
purchasers, and there his connection with the traffic ceases._

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:--

The strong man knocks down the weak one, sets his foot upon his chest
and demands:--"Will you give me the liberty to knock at your front
door and supply your children with poison _ad libitum_?" The weak man
gasps out from under the crushing pressure--"I will, I will; anything
you please." And the strong man goes home rejoicing that he is no
longer under the unpleasant necessity of carrying on a surreptitious
back-door trade.

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:--