The truth about opium

 

 

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LECTURE II.

I closed my first lecture with a list of fallacies, upon which the objections to the Indo-China opium trade, and the charges brought against England in relation to that trade, are founded, stating that I should return to them and dispose of each separately.I also said in the earlier part of my lecture, that the extraordinary hallucinations which had taken hold of the public mind, with respect to opium smoking in China, arose, amongst other causes, from the fact that the public had formed their opinions from hearsay evidence, and that of the very worst and most untrustworthy kind.I say untrustworthy because hearsay evidence, although in general inadmissible in our law courts, may be in some cases very good and reliable evidence.As this point goes to the root of all these fallacies and false assertions, and the delusions based upon them, I wish to show you why hearsay evidence is, in this case, of the worst and most unreliable kind.In the first instance, I would refer you to the general character of the Chinese for mendacity and deceit, admitted by all writers upon the subject of China and the Chinese, and supported by the general opinion of Europeans who have dwelt amongst them.Now, I am far from saying that every Chinaman is necessarily a liar, or habitually tells untruths for corrupt purposes.The point is, rather, that the Chinese do not understand truth in the sense that we do.The evidence of Chinese witnesses in courts of justice is notorious for its untrustworthy character.The judges are not generally contented with the direct and cross-examination to which witnesses are ordinarily subjected by counsel, but frequently themselves put them under a searching examination, and generally require more evidence in the case of Chinese than they would if Europeans were alone concerned.

From my acquaintance of the Chinese I can say that they are a very good-natured people, especially when good-nature does not cost them much; but they are also a very vindictive people, as, I suppose, most heathen nations are.I have known cases where, to gratify private malice, or to obtain some object, the reason for which would be hard for us to appreciate, a Chinaman has got up a charge without foundation in fact, but supported by false witnesses, who were so well drilled and had so thoroughly rehearsed their parts that it was hard to doubt, and almost impossible to disprove, the accusation.By such means innocent men have been condemned and sentenced to severe punishments, or been unjustly compelled to pay large sums of money.I have, on the other hand, known cases which, according to the evidence brought before me, appeared perfectly clear and good in law; but on taking each witness quietly into my own office, and going through his evidence, the whole fabric would tumble down like a pack of cards; so that, although my client’s case might still be intrinsically good, the witnesses he brought in support of it knew nothing about it beyond what they had heard from others.It would turn out that they had been told this by one person, that by another, and so on, throughout the series of witnesses, not one of them would have any actual knowledge of the alleged facts.In cases like these there would probably be no corrupt motive whatever.

While upon this point I may allude to another peculiar phase in the Chinese character.They are so addicted to falsehood that they will embellish truth, even in cases where they have the facts on their own side.On such occasions they like to add to their story a fringe of falsehood, thinking, perhaps, that by doing so, they will make the truth stand out in brighter colours and appear more favourable in the eyes of the Court and the Jury.Another Chinese peculiarity is the following:—If you put leading questions to a Chinaman upon any particular subject, that is to say, if you interrogate him upon a point, and by your mode of doing so induce him to think that you are desirous of getting one particular kind of answer, he gives you that answer accordingly, out of mere good-nature.In these instances his imagination is wonderfully fertile. The moment he finds his replies afford pleasure, and that there is an object in view, he will give his questioner as much information of this kind as he likes. Not only is this the case with the common people, corresponding to the working or the labouring classes here, but the habit really pervades the highest ranks of Chinese society. It is mentioned in Dr. Williams’s work, how the Chinese as a people think it no shame in being detected in a falsehood. It is very hard to understand, especially for an Englishman, such moral obtuseness. We are so accustomed to consider truth in the first place, and to look upon perjury and falsehood with abhorrence, that it may seem almost like romancing to gravely assure you of these facts.

If I relate a few short anecdotes which are absolutely true, and in which I was personally concerned, I may put the matter more clearly before you.A Chinese merchant, now in Hong Kong, once instructed me to prosecute a claim against a ship-master for short delivery of cargo, and from the documents he gave me, and the witnesses he produced, I had no hesitation in pronouncing his case a good one, although I knew the man was untruthful.When we came into court, knowing my client’s proclivities, my only fear was that he would not be content with simply telling the truth, but would so embellish it with falsehood that the judge would not believe his story.I therefore not only cautioned him myself in “pidgin English,” but instructed my Chinese clerk and interpreter to do so also.My last words to him on going into court were, “Now mind you talkee true.Suppose you talkee true you win your case.Suppose you talkee lie you losee.”The man went into the witness-box, and I am bound to say that on that occasion he did tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, but I could plainly see by his manner and bearing that the task was a most irksome one.When he left the box, after cross-examination, I felt greatly relieved.The defendant, who, I am glad to say, was not an Englishman, although he commanded a British ship, told falsehood after falsehood.There could be no doubt about this, and the judge, Mr. Snowden, the present Puisne Judge of Hong Kong, at last ordered him to leave the box, and gave judgment for my client.Notwithstanding this satisfactory result, I saw that the plaintiff was still dissatisfied.I left the court and he followed me out. He still seemed discontented, and had the air of an injured man. When we got clear of the court he actually assailed me for having closed his mouth and deprived him of the luxury of telling untruths. “What for,” said he, “you say my no talkee lie? that man have talkee plenty lie.” I replied, “Oh, that man have losee; you have won.” But with anger in his countenance, he walked sullenly away.

Now I will tell you another—and a totally different case.The judge on this occasion was the late Sir John Smale, Chief Justice of Hong Kong.It was an action brought by a Chinese merchant, carrying on business in Cochin China, against his agent in Hong Kong, a countryman of his, who had not accounted for goods consigned to him for sale.The plaintiff put his case in my hands.When it came into court the defendant was supported by witnesses who seemed to have no connection whatever with the subject-matter of the suit.They, however, swore most recklessly.In cross-examination one of the witnesses completely broke down.The Chief Justice then stopped the case, and characterized the defendant’s conduct “as the grossest attempt at fraud he had ever met with since he had come to China,” and, under the special powers he possessed, sent the false witness to gaol for six weeks.The person so punished for perjury proved to be what we would call a Master of Arts.He was, in fact, an expectant mandarin, ranking very high in China.I should tell you that in that country there is no regular hereditary nobility, nor any aristocracy save the mandarin or official class.The fact is, and in view of Mr. Storrs Turner’s comparison of the Chinese with the savages of Central Africa, I may here mention it, that in China—where these simple, innocent “aborigines,” as it suits the anti-opium advocates to treat them, flourish—education is the sole criterion of rank and precedence.They have a competitive system there, which is undoubtedly the oldest in the world.This man, as I said, was a Master of Arts, and would, in regular course, have been appointed to an important official post and taken rank as a mandarin.He was, I believe, at the time of his sentence, one of the regular examiners at the competitive examinations of young men seeking for employment in the Civil Service of the Empire.When the case ended, I dismissed it from my mind.But, to my great surprise, six or seven of the leading Chinamen of Hong Kong waited upon me on the following day, and implored of me to get this man out of gaol. They declared that the whole Chinese community of Hong Kong felt degraded at having one of their superior order, a learned Master of Arts, consigned to a foreign prison. They assured me that this was the greatest indignity that could have been offered to the Chinese people. I replied that the fact of the prisoner being a man of education only aggravated his offence, that he had deliberately perjured himself in order to cheat my client, and that the foreign community considered his punishment far too lenient, for had he been a foreigner he would have got a far more severe punishment. But they could not see the matter in that light, and went away dissatisfied. They afterwards presented a petition to the Governor, praying for the man’s release, but without success. My object in narrating this to you is to show the utter contempt which the Chinese, not only of the lower orders, but of the better class, have for the truth. I could supplement these cases by many others, all showing that the Chinese do not regard the difference between truth and falsehood in the sense that we do.

To illustrate more clearly what I have told you, I will read to you a short passage from a leading article in the “China Mail,” a daily newspaper published in Hong Kong.The date of the paper is the 3rd of October 1881.The editor is a gentleman who has been out there for twenty years; he is a man of considerable ability and knows the Chinese character perfectly, and I may also mention that he is a near relative of Mr. Storrs Turner.This is what he says:—

That is exactly what I have already said.It would occupy too much time to read the rest of the article, which is ably written, but the portion I have quoted tends to show the unreliability of Chinese witnesses, even in a solemn Court of Justice.

Now, I think, I have shown you that our Celestial friends present rather an unpromising raw material from which to extract the truth.Yet these are the men from whom the missionaries derive their information as to those wonderful consequences from opium smoking which, the more greedily swallowed, are the more liberally supplied, thus affording an illustration of Mr. Storrs Turner’s extraordinary theory of supply and demand, of which I shall have to speak more by and by.Having exhibited to you the well of truth from which credible evidence is sought to be obtained, I have now to turn to the other side of the question and describe the character and competence of those who draw their facts from that source, and from whom the general public have mainly derived their knowledge of opium and opium smoking.

As regards the missionaries, I have stated already that I hold them in the very highest respect, and they are well deserving of it, and, indeed, of the consideration of the whole community.Were I to state anything to their prejudice or disadvantage, further than what I assert as to their fallacious views and unjustifiable conduct on the opium question, I should certainly be speaking without warrant; for a more respectable, hard-working, or conscientious body of gentlemen it would be difficult to find.Perhaps they are the hardest worked and worst paid class of any foreigners in China.They have a work to perform, the difficulty of which is but partially understood in this country; that is, the task of converting to Christianity these heathen people, who think Confucianism and the other religions engrafted upon it which they follow, and which seem to suit their temperament, immeasurably superior to ours; who point to our prophets and sages as men of yesterday, and look with comparative contempt upon our literature, laws, and customs. The real difficulty of the situation lies in these facts; believe me, that it is as absurd as it is untrue to say that opium has had anything to do with the slow progress of Christianity in China. Missionary clergymen in China are really not the best men to get at the facts of the opium question. If a foreigner, here in England, were to ask me in which quarter he would be likely to obtain the best information regarding the manners and customs of the English people, I should certainly advise him to get introductions to some of our working clergy of all denominations, because they are the people’s trusted friends and advisers, sharing in their joys and sympathizing in their sorrows, their wants and necessities. They are educated and matter-of-fact men, just the class of persons to afford sound and accurate information as to the country and people. This, I believe, will be generally admitted. The same rule would not apply to our missionary clergymen in China; for they, unlike our clergy at home, are not the trusted friends and advisers of the Chinese people, and, knowing really very little of the inner life of the people, cannot be said to sympathize in their wants and necessities. No doubt there have been some admirable books written on China by missionary clergymen, such as the “Middle Kingdom,” from which I have already quoted, and Dr. Doolittle’s work; but everyone who has lived long in China takes all their statements on every point affecting their missionary labours, and upon many other matters also, cum granoSo far as the manners and customs of the Chinese can be understood from their outdoor life, literature, and laws, they are competent judges enough; but as they are not admitted into Chinese society, and do not possess the confidence of the people, they cannot be accepted as authorities on the inner social life of the natives, so far as regards opium-smoking.They have not at all the same status as regards the Chinese that English clergymen have in respect to their own countrymen here in England; and if a friend were to put such a question to me respecting China and the Chinese, the last people I would refer him to for information would be the missionary clergymen.These missionary gentlemen, if they were at home in England, would, no doubt, have their livings and vicarages, and would take their place with the regular clergy of the country.But in China things are totally different. There the people not only despise them, but laugh at the creed they are trying to teach. The simplicity of the Gospel is too cold for them. Teeming with the marvellous as their own religions do, no other creed seems acceptable to them that does not deal in startling miracles and offer a continuous supply of supernatural feats. Anyone who reads Dr. Legge’s book, on the religions of China, will see this at once. The Chinese have an accepted belief three or four thousand years older than Christianity, and they are well aware of the fact. Despising Europeans, as they do, and looking upon themselves as a superior race, it is not likely that the Chinese will take missionary clergymen into their confidence, or afford them any trustworthy information about private or personal matters. In short, there is no cordiality between the Chinese and the missionaries.

Still our Chinese friends are a very polite people, and no doubt they are and will continue to be outwardly very civil to missionaries, and, although they may consider them impudent intruders, will give courteous answers to their questions; but it does not follow that they will give true answers. A respectable Chinaman, such as a merchant, a shopkeeper, or an artizan, would consider himself disgraced among his own community if it were known that he had embraced Christianity, or even entertained the thought of doing so. I do not think that, long as I was in China, I had a single regular Chinese client who was a Christian. All my native clients—merchants, shopkeepers, clerks, artizans, and coolies, and I have had professional dealings with thousands of them—were heathens. In very rare instances Chinese professing Christianity will be found holding respectable positions; but, I regret to say, I do not believe that any of such people are sincere. I had myself a clerk in my office for about twelve years; he was a young man educated at St. Paul’s College, in Hong Kong. The College is now closed, but when in existence the pupils there got an excellent education, and were also well clothed and fed. They were not only taught Chinese, as is the case in Chinese schools, but also to read and speak English well. When he went to the school he was not more than seven or eight years old, and left it probably when he was fourteen or fifteen. He was an excellent clerk, a highly intelligent young fellow, and wrote and spoke English well. Now, if ever there were a case where a lad might be expected to be a sincere convert this was the one. He had been strictly brought up as a Christian, went to church, and read the Bible regularly, and, indeed, was far more kindly treated in the College than English lads are in many schools in this country. Even that boy was not a sincere convert.

When about eighteen years of age he got married, as is the custom with the youth of China.On informing me of his intention, he asked me to procure from the Superintendent of Police the privilege of having “fire crackers” at his wedding, a heathen custom, supposed to drive away evil spirits.I reminded him that I had always believed him a Christian; when he said, “Oh!it’s a Chinese custom.”However, I got him the privilege.But instead of being solemnized in the church, which he had been in the habit of attending when a pupil in St.Paul’s College, according to the rites of the Church of England, his marriage ceremony was celebrated in Chinese fashion, a primitive proceeding, and certainly heathen in its form.He never went near the church at all.A few days afterwards I remarked to him that he had not been married in the church.He laughed, and said, “that as he and his wife were Chinese they could only be married according to Chinese custom.”

Let me give another story in point.I knew a man in Hong Kong who, owing to the difficulty of finding suitable natives who understood English, was for a long time the only Chinese on the jury list.He spoke English fairly well.He was educated at a school presided over by the late Rev.Dr. Morrison, the learned sinologue, who had lived in Hong Kong before my time.His school was an excellent one, and had turned out some very good scholars.I have seen this man go into the jury-box, and often too, into the witness-box, and take the Bible in his hand and kiss it ostentatiously.I used to think he was a sincere Christian, and was glad to see so respectable a Chinaman (for he held a responsible position in a bank) acknowledge in public that he was a Christian.But that man, I afterwards discovered from the best possible authority, was at heart a heathen; he always had idols, or, as we call them, “Josses,” in his house.He also was a Christian in name, and nothing more.

There was another man educated in Dr. Morrison’s school.Dr. Legge knew him very well, and was a sort of patron of his.I suppose it is pretty well known that polygamy is a custom in China, and that it is quite an exception for a Chinese in any decent position there not to have three, four, or more wives; the more he has the greater his consequence among his countrymen.This man, as a matter of fact, had three wives, and when his so-called first wife died, he was in a great fright lest Dr. Legge should discover that he had two more wives, for it is customary that the other wives should attend the funeral of the first as mourners.Now these are the sort of converts, for the most part, to be met with in China.As a rule, they are far less honest and more untruthful than their heathen countrymen, and many Europeans in consequence will not take converts into their service.In proof of this statement I will here give you an extract from a very able article which appeared in the “Hong Kong Daily Press,” an old and well conducted newspaper, of the 31st October 1882.This is it:—

Are these Chinese converts the class of the Chinese from which truth is to be gleaned?Is the testimony of such people of the slightest value?Yet these are the persons from whom the missionaries derive their knowledge of opium smoking and its alleged baneful effects.I venture to say that among all the so-called Christian converts in China you will not find five per cent.who are really sincere—all the rest profess Christianity to obtain some personal advantage.These so-called converts are generally people from the humblest classes, because, as I have mentioned, people of the better class, such as merchants, shopkeepers, and tradesmen, not only consider their own religion superior to the Christian’s creed, but they would be ashamed to adopt Christianity, as they would thus be disgraced and make themselves appear ridiculous in the eyes of their neighbours; and they are a people peculiarly sensitive to ridicule. I will not say that there are not some true converts to be found among Chinese congregations; if there are none, the missionary clergymen are certainly not to blame, for they are indefatigable in their exertions to make converts, proving also by their blameless lives the sincerity of their professions. As I have said, the difficulty attending their efforts is enormous. It must be remembered that in China we are not teaching Christianity to the poor African, or the semi-civilised native of Madagascar or the Fiji Islands; but that we are dealing with civilized men, who consider their own country and literature, customs and religion, far superior to those of England or of any other country in the world. The Chinese are so convinced of this, that the very coolies in the streets consider themselves the superiors of the foreign ladies and gentlemen that pass, or whom, perhaps, they are carrying in their sedan chairs.

I hold the missionaries altogether responsible for the hallucination that has taken possession of the public mind on the opium question.With the Bible they revere in their hands, they think the Chinese should eagerly embrace the doctrine it inculcates, and, unable to account for their failure, they readily accept the subterfuge offered by certain Chinese for not accepting Christianity or attending to their teaching.They feel that it is, or may be, expected of them in this country, that they should have large congregations of native proselytes, such as, I believe, the missionaries have in Madagascar, and in like places, forgetting that no parallel can be drawn between such races and the Chinese.The Protestant missionary clergymen in China are, not unnaturally, anxious to account for their supposed failure in that large and heathen country.They would not be human if they were not.The better class of Chinese, as I have said, will not listen to a missionary, or argue with him.They do not want to hear lectures on Christianity, and grow impatient at any disparaging remark about their own religion.They simply say, “We have a religion that is better than yours, and we mean to stick to it.”The missionaries, however, think they ought to have better success.They are, no doubt, indefatigable in their labours, and as they do not meet with the results that ought, they consider, to follow from their labours, and as their sanguine minds cling to any semblance of excuse for their shortcomings, they accept the stale and miserable subterfuge, to the use of which their converts are prompted by the Mandarins, that the Indo-China opium trade is vicious, and that before Christianity is accepted by the country, the trade in question must be abolished. This transparent evasion of the Chinese appears to me to bear too strong a family likeness to the famous “confidence trick,” with which the police reports now and then make us acquainted, to be entertained for a moment.

The Chinese, knowing the weakness of the missionaries, play upon it; and one of the best instances I can give you that they are successful is this:—They tell them that the Chinese Government objects to the opium trade upon moral grounds; but it never occurs to the missionaries to retort and say, “If so, why does your Government not prevent the cultivation of opium throughout China? In the provinces of Yunnan and Szechuen, and all over the Empire, indeed, enormous crops of opium are raised every year; why does not your Government, knowing, as you say, that the effects of opium are so fatal, put a stop to the growth of the deleterious drug?” This question would prove rather a difficult one to answer, though the Mandarins, skilful casuists as they are, would no doubt invent some specious one which might impose upon their interrogators. The mental vision of our missionary friends is so limited to one side only of the question, that even here they might be taken in by the astute natives. It is only of late that the Chinese Government has taken up the moral objection, and the reason, I believe, it has done so is because it has found out the weak side of the missionaries, probably through The Friend of China, published at Shanghai.

When it is taken into account that of late years the average quantity of Indian opium imported into China is about one hundred thousand chests, each of which, for all practical purposes, may be called a hundredweight, and that the price of each of these chests landed in China is about seven hundred dollars, and that the whole works up to something like sixteen millions sterling, the strong objection of the Mandarin classes to allow such a large amount of specie to leave the country becomes intelligible.Rapacious plunderers as they are, they see their prey escaping them before their very eyes, and are powerless to snatch it back. These sixteen millions, they think, would be all fair game for “squeezing” if we could only keep them at home. For although China is an immense empire, with great natural resources, it is still a poor country as regards the precious metals. No doubt an economist would tell these Mandarins: “It is true we sell you all this opium, but then we give you back again all the money you pay for it, with a great deal more besides, for the purchase of your tea and silk.” But a Mandarin would only laugh at such an argument. “Ah,” he would say, “you must have tea and silk in any case; you can’t do without them. We want to get hold of your silver and give you none of ours in return.” That is the true cause, or one of the true causes, of the objection of the Government of China to the importation into that country of Indian opium.

The missionaries, or at all events the greater number of them, have adopted the view, that if they could only put a stop to the importation of Indian opium into China the evangelization of the country would be a question of time only; and in one sense, indeed, this would be true; but the time would not be near, but very distant.The Chinese have a keen sense of humour, and if the British would allow themselves to be cajoled by the specious arguments with which the religious world here is constantly regaled about the opium question, so far as to put a stop to the traffic, such a feeling of contempt for English common sense, and in consequence for the religion of Englishmen, would ensue, that the spread of the Gospel in China would be greatly retarded indeed.The truth about opium is so clear to those who trust to the evidence of their senses, and who look at facts from a plain common sense point of view, that they cannot for a moment see that there is any connection whatever between opium and Christianity.It seems to me that those gentlemen who adopt the anti-opium doctrine, and scatter it abroad, are only comparable to the monomaniac, who, sane upon every subject but one, is thoroughly daft upon that.No better example of this can I give you than by referring to a speech made by a gentleman deservedly respected by the community, whom I have always considered as one of the hardest-headed men sitting in the House of Commons, possessing sound common sense upon all subjects save that of opium.I refer to Sir J.W.Pease, the Member for South Durham. In the year 1881 the usual anti-opium debate came on in the House of Commons. Sir J. W. Pease delivered a speech on the occasion denunciatory of the Indo-China trade, in the course of which he referred to the treaty recently made between China and America, one of the clauses of which provides that American ships shall not import opium into China, and that no Chinaman shall be allowed to import opium into America, where there is a large Chinese population, especially in San Francisco. The treaty relates to other matters, and this clause is, so to speak, interpolated into it, for a purpose I shall now explain. It was intended to appear as a sort of quid pro quo, for whilst America, in fact, gave up nothing, though she affected to do so, she obtained some commercial advantages by the treaty.This is the clause:—

I happened to be weather-bound in Rome when I first read, in a Hong Kong paper, that amusing and deceptive treaty, which was made in 1880.Knowing thoroughly the situation, and all the facts connected with the Indo-China opium trade, I undertake to assure you that so far, at least, as regards this opium clause, that treaty was simply a farce.With the single exception of a line of mail packet steamers between Hong Kong and San Francisco, America has few or no steamers trading in the China seas.She has protected her mercantile marine so well that she has now very little occasion for exercising her protection.She has no vessels trading between India and China, and never has had any, and, as a matter of fact, no American ships carry one ounce of opium between India or China, or to the port of Hong Kong, or have carried it for many years, if, indeed, any American vessel has ever done so.Nor is there, indeed, at present the slightest probability that her ships will ever convey opium between India and China. America, in fact, might, with as much self-denial, have undertaken not to carry coals to Newcastle as Indian opium to China. There are regular lines of British steamers plying between the ports of Bombay, Calcutta, and Hong Kong, by which all Indian opium for the China trade is carried direct to its destination.

I declare that anything more absurd, deceptive, and dishonest never formed the subject of an international treaty. The whole affair was so utterly false and misleading that the first thing I did after reading the treaty was to cut it out from the newspaper and forward it, with an explanatory letter, to the “Times,” the usual refuge of the aggrieved Briton. This deceptive clause was intended simply to mislead the simple, benevolent, good-natured John Bull, already, as the framers of the treaty no doubt supposed, half-crazed on the anti-opium movement. A better specimen of American smartness and Chinese astuteness could hardly be conceived than this crafty and fallacious clause. America has no opium to sell or import, and can, therefore, afford to be extremely generous on the point. It is just possible, however, that at a future day opium may be produced in the South-Western States, in which case the American Government—I will not say the American people, for I hold them in great respect—will endeavour to wriggle out of this precious treaty, just as they are now trying to do as regards the Panama convention with this country, when the possibility that gave rise to it is likely to become a reality. The stipulation that Chinese subjects should not be permitted to import opium into any of the ports of the United States is of course absolute nonsense. If the American Government had really intended to prohibit opium from being imported from China, or elsewhere, into their country they should not have confined the prohibition to Chinese subjects, but have extended it to all nationalities; in fact, to have made opium, save for medical purposes, contraband. To explain this point more clearly, you will remember what I have mentioned before, that the exclusive right to manufacture crude opium into the form used for smoking, called in China “prepared opium,” is farmed out. The present farmer pays the Government of Hong Kong two hundred and five thousand dollars, or forty thousand pounds a year for the monopoly. The reason why he pays so large a sum for this privilege is because of the facilities it affords him for exporting it to other places, and not merely to get the exclusive right of preparing and selling the drug in Hong Kong, for if that were all the benefit to be derived from the monopoly he would not give so large a rent for it. The greater source of profit arises from the circumstance that the Chinese must have the beloved stimulant wherever they roam. If you go to Australia, the Philippine Islands, the Straits, Borneo, or the town of Saigon in French Cochin China, or wherever else dollars are to be made, you will find Chinese in abundance. Go to the South Seas, go to the Sandwich or the Fiji Islands, you will discover the Chinese happy and prosperous, and you will always see in their houses the opium pipe. The advantage of having the exclusive privilege in Hong Kong of preparing and selling opium consists in this, that it is the terminus of an American line of steamers which ply between that port and San Francisco. It is also the port from which British lines of steamers run to Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. These packets always take with them consignments of prepared opium ready for smoking, because at these places there are large and well-to-do Chinese communities who can afford to indulge in the national luxury of opium smoking. I have already told you that I was for about ten years solicitor for that opium firm, and I happen to know a great deal about the prepared opium trade through that medium. The Chinese in California, where there is an immense number of those people, do not consume less, I should say, in the course of a year than one hundred thousand pounds worth of prepared opium. As is the case in Hong Kong, the Chinese have better means to buy the drug there than they would have at home. They get high wages, keep shops, are excellent tradesmen, and can live and make money where a European would starve. They are all, in fact, well-to-do, and wherever a Chinaman has the money he must have his opium pipe. Therefore the privilege of supplying the Chinese in California, Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania, and in the South Sea Islands, where are large China colonies, is enjoyed by the opium farmer of Hong Kong, because he has the means of shipping the drug by steamers direct to those places, thus out-distancing all other competitors. This trade, notwithstanding that wonderful treaty, is still going on, and not one ounce of opium less than was shipped before its ratification is now being carried to San Francisco, and in American bottoms too, for the treaty only says that no Chinaman shall import opium into America; there is no prohibition against Americans or Europeans doing so. What the opium farmer now does, if indeed he has not always done so, is to get an American or other merchant in Hong Kong to ship the drug for him in his own name, handing him, the opium farmer, the bill of lading. The opium is accordingly shipped in the name of Brown, Jones, or Robinson, and on its arrival at San Francisco the opium farmer’s consignee takes possession of it, and it is distributed by him among his countrymen in that flourishing city.

If Sir J.W.Pease were not an enthusiast, ready to swallow without hesitation everything which seems to tell against the opium traffic, and to disbelieve everything said or written on the other side of the question, he would have seen through all this as a matter of course.This is what he said about the treaty in the speech I have referred to, having first delivered a philippic on the enormities and terrible wickedness of the traffic:—

Sir J.W.Pease is the most confiding of men; to my mind the treaty should be construed in a very different sense.Sometimes, when we want to convey our sentiments to another, we do so indirectly.There is a very well understood method of attaining that object.Instead of opening your mind to Mr. Jones, who is the object of your intended edification, you will in Mr. Jones’s presence address your remarks to Mr. Brown; but in reality, although you are speaking to the latter, you are speaking at the former.Now the whole object of this precious article of the treaty was to play a similar piece of finesse.Both nations well understood what they were about; they were simply trying to hoodwink and make fools of John Bull by putting into the treaty this false and hypocritical clause, which, as between themselves, each party well knew meant nothing to the other. Here is Sir J. W. Pease, a sensible and astute man of business, with his eyes open, yet, blinded by his good nature and anti-opium prejudice, falling into the trap set for him, and allowing himself to be deceived by this transparent piece of humbug, and quoting in the House of Commons this “bogus” treaty as evidence that the Indo-China opium trade is so infamous that the American Government intended, so far as they were concerned, to put a stop to it, and that the Chinese Government wish to abolish it on moral grounds. I give you this as an example of the lengths to which otherwise sensible gentlemen will go when smitten with opium-phobia, and how oblivious they become under such circumstances to actual facts. Imagine how his Excellency Li Hung Chang, that very able Chinese statesman, and those smart American diplomatists who have thus posed as anti-opium philanthropists, must have enjoyed the fun of being able to so completely bamboozle an English member of Sir J. W. Pease’s reputation!

Now, although I have exposed this Americo-Chinese juggle, I am far from meaning to cast the slightest imputation upon Sir J. W. Pease, whose personal character I in common with the whole country hold in the very highest respect. I am well assured that in bringing forward his motion in the House of Commons he was actuated by a sense of duty, and the very purest motives, and that in referring to the treaty in question he fully believed in its bona fides; upon this point I am at one with his warmest admirers.No one deservedly stands higher as a philanthropist and Christian gentleman, and, save as regards this opium delusion, no man has ever made a nobler use of an ample fortune than he.

I may speak in the same terms of the venerable and universally-respected nobleman who is the president of the Anti-Opium Society, whose whole life has been devoted to the welfare of his fellow men, especially those who stood most in need of his help.I referred in the first edition of this lecture to a Most Reverend Prelate, honoured and beloved both by his own countrymen, and, I believe, the whole Christian world, who is also, I deeply deplore, a believer in the anti-opium delusion, but in doing so nothing was farther from my intentions than to lay aside for a moment the respect that was due to him as a man and a high dignitary of the church. I revere and honour him and admire his great and noble qualities as much as any man living. Born and brought up as I have been in the Church of England, and sincerely attached to its doctrine and teaching, having near and dear relatives, too, ministers of that church, the last thing I would be capable of doing is to harbour an unkind thought, or utter a disrespectful word, against any of her clergy, much less one of her most honoured prelates. These three good and upright men are, I am sorry to say, but types of a great many other most estimable people, many of them ornaments to their country, who through the purity and overflowing goodness of their hearts, have been dragged into the vortex of delusion set afloat by the Anti-Opium Society—who allow themselves to be cajoled and victimised—led by the nose, in fact, by anti-opium fanatics, who, cunning as the madman and perfectly regardless of the means they resort to in the prosecution of what they consider right, bring to their aid the zeal of the missionary and the power for mischief which superior education and mis-directed talents confer. This is what rouses one’s indignation and compels me to pursue the unpleasant task of discrediting and otherwise painfully referring to men whom, apart from this wretched opium delusion, I honour and respect.

Upon this point I cannot refrain from referring to a gentleman of high standing, who had formerly been in China, and really ought to have known better.That gentleman went so far as to write a letter to the “Times,” in which he said that out of one hundred missionaries in China there was not one who would receive a convert into his church until he had made a vow against opium smoking.Bearing in mind that all these so-called converts made by these one hundred missionaries belong for the most part to the very poor, if not to the dregs of the people, I should think no missionary clergyman would find much difficulty in obtaining such a pledge.He has only to ask and to have.If a clergyman in a very poor neighbourhood in the East End of London proposed to his congregation that they should promise never to drink champagne, he would receive such a pledge without difficulty from one and all; but if any kind person were afterwards to give them a banquet of roast beef and plum-pudding, with plenty of champagne to wash those good things down, I am afraid their vow would be found to be very elastic.

So it is with the congregations of these missionary clergymen; there is not an individual amongst them who would refuse to enjoy the opium pipe if he got the chance, however much they might declaim against the practice to please the missionary.Opium, as the missionaries must well know, is a luxury that can only be indulged in by those who have the means of paying for it.Now, while twopence or threepence may appear to us a very insignificant sum, such will not be the opinion of a very poor person.Threepence will purchase a loaf of bread.So it is with the Chinese, especially those residing in their own territory.There is only one class of coin current in China.It is known by Europeans as “cash.”Ten should equal a cent, or a halfpenny, but owing to the inferiority of the metal they are made of, twelve or thirteen usually go to make one cent of English money, so that ten cents, or fivepence of our money, would be about one hundred and thirty cash.A poor Chinaman possessing that sum would think that he had got hold of quite a pocketful of money, and so it would prove, so far as regards a little rice or salt fish, which forms part of most Chinamen’s daily food; but were he so foolish as to indulge in opium, a few whiffs of the pipe would soon swallow up the whole.And then there arises the difficulty of getting the cash, so that it is really only people having command of a fair amount of money who can afford to indulge, habitually at all events, in the luxury of the pipe.

Now with respect to the alleged evil effects of opium smoking, you will constantly hear stories from missionary sources of wretched people, the slaves of the opium pipe, crawling to the medical officers of missionary hospitals, who are to a certain extent missionaries themselves, and asking to be cured of the terrible consequences of their indulgence in opium smoking.The medical officer at each of these missionary institutions, a victim himself, in most cases, to the delusions set afloat, accepts their story, pities the men, and takes them into the hospital; and, believing that if they do not get a moderate indulgence in opium smoking they will pine away and die, the good, easy man, full of kindness and simplicity, gives them a liberal allowance, which his patients are delighted to get. Knowing the bent of mind of the confiding doctor, they fill him with all kinds of falsehoods as to the evils attendant upon opium smoking in general, which he swallows without a particle of doubt. The truth, however, is that those men who go with such tales to the medical missionary are in most, if not all, cases simply impostors, generally broken-down thieves, sneaks, and scoundrels—the very scum of the people. No longer having energy even to steal, they are driven off by their old associates, to starve or die in a gaol. These men are the craftiest, the meanest, and the most unscrupulous on the face of the globe. They well know all that the missionaries think about opium smoking, and, like the accommodating Mr. Jingle, they have a hundred stories of the same kind ready to pour into the ears of their kind-hearted benefactors, who become in turn their victims. Much merriment, I have no doubt, these scamps indulge in amongst themselves at the good doctor’s expense; for the Chinese are not deficient in humour, and have a keen sense of the ludicrous. These people crawl to one of the hospitals; the doctor is delighted with their stories, for they confirm all he has written home or published, perhaps in The Friend of ChinaHe communicates with the missionary; their stories are sent home, and the patients get for three or four weeks excellent food and comforts, including plenty of opium, before they are turned out as cured.The lepers have been cleansed and made whole, but only to enable them to prey once more upon the industrious community.I may here observe that there are no missionary hospitals in Hong Kong, and so we never hear of those wonderful stories happening in that place, yet, if such stories were true, it is there that the strongest corroboration of them should be found, for, although there is no missionary hospital in the colony, there is the large and well-managed civil hospital, as also the Chinese Tung-Wah Hospital, both of which are subject to the inspection of Dr. Ayres.

Such are the tales, and such the authors who have caused much of this clamour about opium smoking.There is scarcely a particle of truth in any one of those stories.No man can indulge in opium to such an extent as to harm himself unless he possesses a fair income, and if such a person became ill from over-indulgence, he would not go to a foreign hospital, but would send for a doctor to treat him at his own house. It is only the broken-down pauper, thief, or beggar, who, in his last extremity, seeks admission to the hospital.

Dr. Ayres was the first to expose this imposture. On arriving at Hong Kong he found it had been the custom there to allow such of the prisoners in the gaol as were heavy smokers a modicum of prepared opium daily,—it having been supposed by his predecessors that without it such prisoners would pine away and die. Dr. Ayres, however, knew better; and he at once put an end to the custom. He would not allow one grain of opium or other stimulant to be given to any prisoner, however advanced a smoker he might be. The result was that the hitherto pampered prisoners moaned and groaned, pretending, no doubt, to be very ill; but after a little time they got quite well. The Doctor has published his experiences on this subject in the Friend of China

These persons know what pleases the missionaries, and so they detail to them all kinds of horrible stories respecting opium smoking, which, as I have before stated, are pure inventions.Trust a Chinaman to invent a plausible tale when it suits his purpose to do so.The missionaries do not smoke opium themselves, and have, therefore, no means of refuting the falsehoods thus related to them, or of testing their accuracy.They simply believe all these stories, and send them on to head-quarters in London, to be retailed by eloquent tongues at Exeter Hall and elsewhere.I have no doubt that every mail brings home numbers of apparently highly authenticated tales of this kind, every one of which is baseless.Thanks to the modern excursion agents, and to the present facilities for travelling, gentlemen can easily take a trip to China, and if any of them happen to have opium on the brain, they will take letters of introduction to missionary clergymen.On their arrival at Hong Kong they will perhaps be shown over the Tung-Wah hospital, where they see a number of wretched objects labouring under all kinds of diseases; they will go away fully impressed with the belief that all the patients shown to them are victims of opium smoking.They are then taken to an opium shop, or as the missionaries like to call it, an “opium den”—though why an opium-smoking shop should be so termed, and a dram shop in London called a “gin palace,” I cannot understand—and are there shown half a dozen dirty-looking men, mostly thieves and blackguards, all smoking opium, and as they are quiet and motionless, they come to the conclusion that they are all in a dying state, having but a few days more to live. If they knew the facts, they would find perhaps that the very men they were commiserating were just then quietly planning a burglary or some piratical expedition for that very night. These kind of travellers go out to China with preconceived notions, and are quite prepared to believe anything and everything, however absurd or monstrous, about opium smoking. They will spend two days at Hong Kong, three at Canton, two or three at Shanghai. They will take copious notes at these places, omitting nothing, however incredible or absurd, that is told them, and return home with a full conviction that they have “done China,” when in reality they have only done themselves, and that, too, most completely. If they have the cacoethes scribendi strong upon them, they will probably write a book upon the subject; and so the miserable delusion is kept up.

Mr. Turner, in his volume, gives what he calls “a little apologue,” with the object of showing how the Indian Government injures China by supplying it with opium.If you will allow me, I will give you a short one, too.Let us suppose a young gentleman, well brought up, and a member of that excellent institution, the “Young Men’s Christian Association,” where he has heard the most eloquent speeches on the wickedness of this country in permitting the Indo-Chinese opium trade, and thus encouraging opium smoking—for your anti-opium agitator thinks it the height of virtue and propriety to drag his country through the mire on every occasion that presents itself.Let us call him Mr. Howard; it is a good name, and was once owned by a most benevolent man.He makes up his mind to go out to China and to see for himself the whole iniquity; for, despite his strong faith in his clerical mentors at Exeter Hall, he can hardly believe that his own countrymen could really be the perpetrators of such dreadful wickedness as he has been told. He takes a letter of introduction to a missionary gentleman at Hong Kong, and another to a mercantile firm there. He expects, on his arrival, to see the streets crowded with the wretched-looking victims of the opium-pipe, crawling onwards towards their graves, whilst the merchant who is making his princely fortune by this terrible opium trade drives by in his curricle, looking complacently at his victims, just as a slave-owner of old might be expected to have gazed at his gangs of serfs wending their way to their scene of toil. Not seeing any but active, healthy-looking people, he concludes that the miserable creatures he is looking out for are in hospital, or lying up in their own houses. He calls upon Messrs. Thompson and Co. , the mercantile firm to which he is accredited, and is well received by one of the partners, who invites him to stop at his house during his stay in Hong Kong—for our fellow-countrymen in China are the most hospitable people in the world. Mr. Howard declines, as he intends putting up at Mr. Jenkins’s, his missionary friend. The great subject on his mind is opium, so he comes to the point at once, and asks, “Is there much opium smoked in the colony?” “Oh, plenty,” answers Mr. Thompson; “two or three thousand chests arrive here every week.” “Do you sell much?” Mr. Howard asks. “No; we haven’t done anything in it these many years,” is the response. “Do many people smoke?” continues Howard, following up his subject. “Oh, yes: every Chinaman smokes.” “But where are all the people who are suffering from opium smoking?” again asks the inquirer, determined to get at the facts. “Ha, ha, ha!” laughs Mr. Thompson, but that gentleman is writing letters for the mail, and has not much time at his disposal. “Here, Compradore,” he says, addressing a Chinese who has been settling an account with one of the assistants, “this gentleman wants to know all about opium smoking.” The Compradore is the agent who conducts mercantile transactions between the foreign firms and the Chinese; he resides on his master’s premises, and is usually an intelligent and keen man of business, and, I may also add, an inveterate opium smoker. The two try to make themselves understood. Mr. Howard repeats the same questions to the Compradore that he had just put to Mr. Thompson, and receives similar replies. Disappointed and surprised, Howard calls with his letter of introduction upon the missionary, to whom he tells what he has heard from Messrs. Thompson & Co. “Ah,” says the missionary, “they wouldn’t give you any information there; they are in the opium trade themselves.” But Mr. Howard tells him that Thompson had assured him that they had not been in the trade for years. “Ah,” returns the missionary, “you must not believe what he says. His firm is making a princely fortune by opium.” “But where are the smokers?” asks Howard. “Oh, I will show them to you.” He then calls Achun his “boy.” “This gentleman,” he says to the latter, “wants to know about opium smoking. Take him to the Tung-Wah and to an opium shop, you savee?” “Yes, my savee” (meaning “I understand”), returns Achun, who is, of course, a devout convert, but who, notwithstanding, often in private indulges in the iniquity of the pipe. On they go to the Tung-Wah, which is the Chinese hospital before referred to, where he is shown some ghastly-looking men, all either smoking the “vile drug” or having opium pipes beside them. Two or three are shivering with ague; another is in the last stage of dropsy; another is in consumption, and so on. They are all pitiable-looking objects, wasted, dirty, and ragged. Poor Mr. Howard shrinks away in horror. “Are all these men dying from opium smoking?” he asks of his guide. “Yes, ebely one; two, tlee more day dey all die. Oh! velly bad! olla men dat smokee dat ting die,” says the person questioned, well knowing that what he has said is false, and that the poor creatures before him are only honest, decent coolies in the last stages of disease, who until they entered the hospital may never have had an opium pipe in their mouths. “Their poverty and not their will consented.” They had been admitted but a few days before to the Tung-Wah, where the Chinese doctor in charge had prescribed for them opium smoking as a remedy for their sickness and a relief for their pains. Poor Mr. Howard leaves the hospital bitterly reflecting upon the wickedness of the world and of his own countrymen in particular. As for Mr. Thompson, he is set down for a false deceitful man, a disgrace to his country, who should be made an example of. He and his guide then proceed to the opium shop. I shall, however, proceed there before them, and describe the place and its occupants. Opposite to the entrance door are two well-dressed men, their clothes quite new, their heads well shaven, and having attached to them long and splendid queues. These men are lying on their sides, vis-à-vis, with their heads slightly raised, smoking away. If it were not for their villainous countenances they might pass for respectable shopkeepers. They are two thieves, who have just committed a burglary in a European house, from which they carried off three or four hundred pounds’ worth of jewellery, and they are now indulging in their favourite luxury on the proceeds. They have also exchanged their rags for new clothes, got shaved and trimmed, as Mr. Howard sees them. Now, wherever an extreme opium smoker is met, he will in general be found to be one of the criminal classes. In this shop there are three other men smoking. They are stalwart fellows, but dirty-looking, as they have just finished coaling a steamer, and are begrimed with coal dust. As the daily expenses of a steamer are considerable, it is a great object with sea captains to get their vessels coaled as quickly as possible, so that they may not be delayed in port. The men employed upon this work are usually paid by the job, and probably each will receive half-a-dollar for his share. They work with extraordinary vigour, and by the time they have finished they are often much distressed, and are inclined to lie down; their hearts, perhaps, are beating irregularly, and their whole frame unhinged. Being flush of money, for half-a-dollar, or two shillings, is quite a round sum for them, they have decided to go to the opium shop, and, by having a quiet whiff or two, bring the action of their hearts into rhythm, and restore themselves to their ordinary state. These poor coolies are honest fellows enough. They work hard, and are peaceful, unoffending creatures. Hundreds of them are to be seen hard at work every day in Hong Kong.

The interior of the opium shop is as described when Mr. Howard enters with the missionary’s servant.The moment the two well-dressed thieves see them, their guilty consciences make them conclude that the one is a European, and the other a Chinese detective in search of them.They close their eyes and pretend to be in profound slumber.They are really in deadly fear of apprehension, for escape seems impossible.Mr. Howard asks his guide who they are.“Oh, dese plaupa good men numba one; dey come dis side to smokee. To-day dey smokee one pipe; to-mollow dey come and smokee two, tlee pipe; next dey five, six; den dey get sik and die. Oh, opium pipe veely bad; dat pipe kill plenty men.” “You say they are good, respectable men?” says Mr. Howard. “Yes, good plaupa men; numba one Chinee genlman.” “Oh, is not this a terrible thing?” says Mr. Howard, compressing his lips, breathing heavily, and vowing to bear witness, on his return to London, to all the villainy he fancies he has seen. The three men begrimed with coal-dust, although they appear only to be semi-conscious, are in reality taking the measure of Mr. Howard, and enjoying a quiet laugh at his expense. One exclaims, referring to his chimney-pot hat, “Ah ya! what a funny thing that Fan-Qui has got on his head!” The other replies, “It’s to keep the sun away.” “How funny!” retorts the first speaker, “we wear hats to keep our heads warm; they wear hats to keep their heads cool.” “Oh,” returns the other speaker, “the Fan-Qui have such soft heads that if they did not keep the sun off the little brains they have would melt away; and they would die, or become idiots.”[5] Mr. Howard, seeing them in their dirty condition, concludes that they are some of the wretched victims of opium smoking, in the last stage of disease, and leaves with his conductor, pitying them from the depths of his heart; his pity, however, is as nothing compared to the contempt with which these supposed victims to the opium pipe regard him and his chimney-pot hat. As he leaves he asks his guide, “Does the keeper of the opium shop expect a gratuity?” “Oh,” returns the other, “supposee you pay him one dolla, he say, tankee you.” Mr. Howard accordingly gives a dollar to the man, who looks more surprised than grateful, and he leaves the shop, satisfied that he has at last seen the true effects of opium smoking in China. He returns to the missionary, to whom he relates the horrors he has seen, makes copious notes of them, and vows to enlighten his countrymen at home upon the subject. As for his guide Achun, this person loses no time in returning to the opium shop, where he compels the keeper of it to share with him the dollar he has just received, and, having so easily earned two shillings, he quietly reclines on one of the couches and takes a whiff or two of the pipe, the more enjoyable because it is forbidden fruit. Thus the benevolent British public is befooled by these ridiculous stories about opium.

Now as Achun is a representative character, many like him being in the service of missionaries and other foreigners throughout China, I will give you a further specimen of the way such persons cheat and delude their masters.Achun, in whom Mr. Jenkins, the missionary, places implicit confidence, has of late been much exercised as to his “vails,” for Chinese servants are quite as much alive to the perquisites of their office as Jeames, John Thomas, or any others of our domestics here in England.Indeed, I may safely lay it down as a rule that, like cabmen, domestic servants will be found the same all over the world, “one touch of nature makes the whole world kin,” and no sooner have you engaged your Chinese “boy” than his mind is at once set working as to the amount of drawbacks, clippings, and parings over and above his wages he may safely count upon in his new place.Achun is dissatisfied with the commission or drawback allowed him by Chook Aloong, the shopkeeper or compradore, who supplies Mr. Jenkins’s family with provisions and other household necessaries; he is allowed only ten per cent.of the monthly bill, and he considers that in all fairness he should get double that amount.Thus impressed, he makes energetic remonstrances on the subject to Chook Aloong, who is firm and will give no more than ten per cent.Achun is equal to the occasion.Now Mr. Jenkins and his family are simple and frugal in their dietary, but there are some articles of food they insist upon having of the best kind, in consequence of which their compradore sends them those articles and, indeed, all others of unobjectionable quality.Eggs which are not absolutely fresh, and meat, though it be game, if in the slightest degree “up,” they will have none of.Achun well knows all this, and he has determined to have Chook Aloong displaced.Having himself a partiality for eggs, he begins operations by daily appropriating to his own use some of those fresh eggs and substituting stale ones in their stead.In the like manner, instead of letting the family have the beef, mutton, and fowls nice and fresh as they are delivered, he holds them over until the bloom of freshness has departed. This state of affairs occasions some commotion in the family circle. The boy is sent for and shown that the eggs are bad and the meat “high”; he expresses great concern, and declares that he will forthwith call upon the compradore and compel him to make good the damage already done, and supply proper provisions in future. Mr. Jenkins, though angry, is not implacable, and is willing to believe that some mishap has occurred; for how could his old and trusted compradore treat him so badly? His hopes are, however, disappointed, for again and yet again the meat is bad, and, worse still, the eggs are—well, not fresh. The climax is reached one morning when poor Mr. Jenkins, in breaking his egg, finds, not the usual bright yellow yolk and spotless albumen within, but a young chick almost fledged. Horror and disgust seize him, the old Adam over-masters him for a moment, and, full of wrath, he roars for the boy. Achun appears the very picture of innocence, when Mr. Jenkins, ashamed of his outburst of wrath and now quite calm explains the contretempsHe has even in the reaction regained some of his good humour.“Look here, Achun,” he says, showing the chick, “this is too bad, you know.Supposee I wanchee egg,—can catchee him; supposee I wanchee chicken—can catchee chicken.No wanchee egg and chicken alla same together.”Achun perceives the joke, and knowing his master’s weakness, says, “Oh, ho, massa, velly good, dat belong numba one.‘No wanchee egg and chicken alla same togedda,’” continues the cunning rascal, repeating his master’s words, “Oh velly funny, velly good, massa, ho!ho!ho!”Mr. Jenkins is pleased at the mild flattery of his boy, who has now advanced a step or two in his estimation.“Oh, massa, dat man, Chook Aloong, velly bad man,” continues Achun when his merriment had subsided.“Him smokee too much opium pipe; he no mind his pidgin plaupa, he smokee alla day.”“Oh!ho!is that the way?”asks the missionary, a new light dawning for the first time upon him.“And so Chook Aloong is an opium smoker?”“Ye-s,” replies Achun, prolonging the word.“Too much opium, plenty opium.More betta you get anoda compado sah—some good plaupa man dat no smokee.”“Very well, Achun,” says Mr. Jenkins with a sigh.“It is plain I must get somebody else.Find me out some other man, and, mind, he must not smoke opium.” “Hab got, massa,” returns the boy delighted with his success. “Hab got velly good man, him numba one good compado”; and in walks the person indicated, who has been listening outside all the time. “This belong Sam Afoong, him do all ting plaupa,” the fact being that this very Sam Afoong is the greatest cheat in the whole market. “Oh, you’re the man,” says Mr. Jenkins. “I hope you don’t use opium.” “Oh no, sah,” returns the other, who is in fact an inveterate smoker, “my neba smokee; dat opium pipe velly bad. It hab kill my fadda, my six bludda, my——.” But here he is stopped by a signal from Achun, who saw that his friend, in familiar parlance, was “laying it on too thickly.” Sam Afoong vows to supply the best of good things, and does so, and the Jenkins family are no longer troubled with bad provisions; but had the lady of the establishment gone through the formality of weighing every joint of meat that her new compradore supplied, she would have found that every pound was short of two or three ounces, for thus Sam Afoong recouped himself for the large per-centage bestowed on Achun.

To prove that the missionaries are deceived in the way I have described I will refer you to a passage in Mr. Storrs Turner’s own book, where even he admits that one of his own converts, who had assured him that he never smoked, and no doubt had pledged himself never to do so, was found regaling himself with the iniquity. At p. 32 Mr. Turner says, “I have caught a man smoking who had only half an hour before denied to me that he was a smoker, and condemned the habit.” Yet such are the men from whom the missionaries derive their information about opium smoking. For further proof of this I will quote again from Dr. Ayres’ article, in The Friend of ChinaThis is what he says:—

Thus, as I have shown, it has come to pass that whilst the missionary clergymen, owing to their sacred calling and their unquestionably high character, are accepted in England as the most reliable witnesses and entitled to the greatest credit, they are really the men who are the very worst informed upon the opium question which they profess to understand so thoroughly.They are, in fact, the victims of their own delusions.But saddest fact of all, these missionary gentlemen, with the best intentions and in the devout belief that by carrying on this anti-opium agitation they are helping to remove an obstacle to the dissemination of the Gospel in China, are of necessity by so doing obliged to neglect more or less the very Gospel work they are really so desirous to spread, leaving the missionary field open to their Roman Catholic rivals.

The information placed before the public here in England upon the opium question, tainted as it is at the very fountain head, is sent forward from hand to hand, meeting in its filtrations from China to this country with impurity after impurity, until it reaches the form of the miserable trash retailed at Exeter Hall, or by the agents of the Anti-Opium Society.It is an accepted adage that “a story loses nothing by the carriage.”The maxim becomes, more strongly pointed when it is remembered that the opium tales partake so much of the marvellous, and that the various transmitters of those accounts are, in almost every instance, fanatical believers in the supposed wickedness of the Indo-Chinese opium trade.I am quite sure that out of every thousand people who believe in the anti-opium delusion, you will not find two who have ever set their foot in China, or know anything with respect to the alleged evils they denounce, except from the unreliable sources I have mentioned.Such people, as a rule, are by far the most violent and uncompromising opponents of the Indo-Chinese opium trade.The people I describe generally speak with such an air of authority on the question, that an ordinary person would suppose they had personally witnessed all the evils they describe.If you ask one of them in what part of China he has lived, or when and where he has seen the horrors he speaks of, he will jauntily tell you, “Oh, I have heard Mr. A.or the Rev.Mr. B.explain the whole villainy at Exeter Hall.” Another will say he has read Mr. Storrs Turner’s great work upon opium smoking, with which I have already made you somewhat acquainted. When General Choke rebuked Martin Chuzzlewit for denying that the Queen lived in the Tower of London when she was at the Court of St. James, Martin inquired if the speaker had ever lived in England. “In writing I have, not otherwise,” responded the General, adding, “We air a reading people here, Sir; you will meet with much information among us that will surprise you Sir.” Just so. These anti-opium enthusiasts have been in China in writing, and understand the opium question upon paper only—a few months in Hong Kong or Canton, freed from missionary influence, would soon disillusionize them. I remember hearing a story once of a most estimable gentleman who had the misfortune to be the defendant in an action for breach of promise. The plaintiff’s counsel, who had a fluent tongue and a fertile imagination, painted him in such dreadful colours, and so belaboured him for his alleged heartless conduct towards the lady that the gentleman so denounced, persuaded for the moment that he was really guilty, rushed out of court, exclaiming, “I never thought I was so terrible a villain before.” That is just the kind of feeling that first comes over one upon hearing of those opium-smoking horrors; for it must not be forgotten that the indictment of the Anti-Opium Society, and of its secretary Mr. Storrs Turner in particular, not only includes the Imperial Government, and the Government of India, during the past forty years, but all the British merchants connected with the Chinese trade, and, indeed, the entire British nation.

Before proceeding to deal with the fallacies I have enumerated, it is necessary that I should again address a few words to you on the subject of evidence, so as to enable you to discriminate between the value of the various witnesses who have attempted to enlighten public opinion on the subject before us.I dislike very much to trouble the reader with dry professional matters, but, under the circumstances, I cannot avoid doing so.It is a rule of law which will, I think, commend itself to the common sense of everybody, that the evidence to be adduced on a trial should be the best that the nature of the case is susceptible of, rather than evidence of a subsidiary or secondary nature, unless, indeed, no better be forthcoming. In determining matters of fact, the best witnesses would be held to be those who have become acquainted with those facts in the course of their ordinary employment, or in the performance of their professional duties, rather than mere amateurs or volunteers, whose knowledge is derived from accident or casual observation only. For illustration, let us suppose the case of a collision at sea between two steamers, A and B,—that previous to and at the time of the collision, besides the usual officers and seamen in charge of A, there were on deck the steward of the vessel and a passenger. Now, the best witnesses on board of A as to the catastrophe would not be the two latter, although they saw the whole occurrence, but the men who were in actual charge of the navigation of the ship, viz. the look-out man in the bows—whose duty it would be to watch for rocks or shoals, or any ship or vessel ahead, and to give immediate notice to the officer of the watch and the man at the wheel of the presence of such object;—the officer of the watch, usually stationed on the bridge;—and the man at the wheel. Why? Because, it being the peculiar duty of the first two men to look out for and avoid striking on rocks or shoals, or coming into collision with any other vessel, and the duty of the third man not only to keep a look out but to steer as directed by the officer on the bridge, they necessarily paid more attention to, and had their intellects better sharpened in respect to such matters than the others, who had no such duty cast upon them. The next best witnesses would be the other seamen during whose watch the accident occurred, their duty being generally to attend to the management of the ship, her sails and cordage, and obey the orders of the officer of the watch, but who, not having immediate connection with the steering and course of the vessel, would not be expected to have the same accurate knowledge of the circumstances that led to and occurred up to the time of the collision as the first three. The least valuable witnesses would be the steward and the passenger, for the reasons already mentioned. Applying these rules to the question now before us, it follows that the testimony of such a man as Dr. Ayres—some of which I have given you already—and of others which I shall lay before you, should have far greater weight and be more reliable than that of ordinary persons having no special knowledge or experience of opium or its effects, nor any opportunity of obtaining such knowledge, much less any duty cast upon them to acquire it, e.g. missionaries and other persons unconnected with native and foreign merchants, and having no duties to perform which would bring them into constant intercourse with the Chinese community.

The first of these fallacies which have so much tended to warp the understanding of these Anti-Opium people is this: “That the poppy is not indigenous to China, but has been recently introduced there, presumably by British agency.”With this let us take the second fallacy, viz.: “That opium smoking in China is now and has always been confined to a small per-centage of the population, but which, owing to the introduction of Indian opium, is constantly increasing.”Here I would first inquire—what is the poppy?To this question one person would say, It is the plant that produces that deadly drug, morphia.Another would answer, It is the herb from which laudanum is made; and a third would say, It is the plant which supplies opium, smoked so much in China and eaten so largely in India.These answers would all be correct enough, so far as they go; but they would not be complete, for there are many other uses to which the poppy is applied besides all these.That valuable plant produces not only opium, but an oil used for lighting and for edible purposes, the Chinese using the oil to mollify their daily rice and other food, mixing it also very commonly with another and richer quality of oil.The seeds, when the oil is expressed, are given to cattle, or allowed to rot and form manure.If the oil is not expressed, the seeds can be worked up into cakes.From the capsules medicine is made, and lastly, the stalks and leaves when burnt produce potash.Mr. William Donald Spence, one of Her Majesty’s Consuls in China, to whose valuable “Report on the Trade of the Port of Ichang, and the Opium-culture in the Provinces of Szechuan and Yunnan,” I shall presently introduce you, knows all this as matter of fact, and, indeed, I am mainly indebted to him for the information I now give you.It is admitted by Mr. Storrs Turner that the poppy is indigenous to China, and when it is remembered that the people of that country are and have been for thousands of years the most civilized in Asia,—that agriculture is considered the most honourable industry in the country, as evidenced by the annual practice of the Emperor to turn over the earth with the plough at the beginning of Spring,—that the Chinese are skilled husbandmen, and of most frugal and thrifty habits, it becomes a matter of irresistible inference that those people must have known that most useful plant, the poppy, and must have cultivated it for economic purposes long before opium was known in Europe. Sir Robert Hart, in his Yellow Book, says “that native opium was known, produced, and used long before any Europeans began the sale of the foreign drug along the coast.” Compare that with the misleading passage at page 2 of Mr. Storrs Turner’s book, where he says “that the poppy had long been cultivated in Egypt, Turkey, Persia, India, and recently in China and Manchuria,” and ask yourselves what credit you can give to that gentleman as a trustworthy guide on the subject of opium. Here is Sir Robert Hart, a great Chinese authority, practically admitting that three or four hundred years ago at the least native opium was grown and produced in China, and Mr. Storrs Turner, in this fallacious statement of his, trying to induce his readers to infer that the drug was only recently produced in that Empire! The reader can choose between these authorities for himself. Now the fact is, that in very ancient Chinese works mention is made of the poppy. In the “History of the Later Han Dynasty” (A.D. 25-220), the brilliant colour of the poppy blossom, of the charms of the juice, and the strengthening qualities of the seeds of the plant, formed the themes of Chinese poets as far back as a thousand years, and probably much farther. The poet Yung T’aou, of the T’ang dynasty (A.D. 618-907), celebrates the beauty of the flower. The poet Soo Cheh (A.D. 1039-1112), dwells, in an ode, on the curative and invigorating effects of the poppy seeds and juice, and another poet, Soo Sung, of the same period, praises the beauty of the plant, which he speaks of as being grown everywhere in China. I am not a Chinese scholar, but I have high authority for these statements. You will thus clearly perceive that opium is a native plant, that its various uses have for many centuries been known to the Chinese, and that the British are in no way responsible for the introduction of opium into China, much less for the practice of smoking the drug.

I have mentioned Mr. W.Donald Spence as one of Her Majesty’s Consuls in China.Now, every foreign resident in that country knows who and what those consular gentlemen are; but I do not think the public here in England are equally well informed upon the subject, because it is only natural that they should confound them with the ordinary British Consuls at the European and American ports; but that would be a very great mistake, for the two sets of Consuls form quite distinct and separate bodies.The Consuls at the latter ports are no doubt highly respectable gentlemen, often indeed, men who have distinguished themselves in science and literature, or in the army or navy, but still they are simply commercial agents of the British Government, and no more, having little or no diplomatic or other duties to discharge.The Consular Service of China stands upon a totally different footing.In this country Her Majesty’s Consuls are not only commercial agents, but are trained diplomatists, entering the service in the first instance as cadets, after passing most difficult competitive examinations.They are always Chinese scholars, many of them holding high rank as such.The Consuls have very important diplomatic duties to discharge, and have also magisterial duties to perform towards their countrymen in China, all of which demand qualities of a high order, and which only superior education and careful training enable them to discharge.England has acquired by treaty ex-territorial rights, as regards her own subjects, in the ports of China thrown open to her commerce, known as “Treaty ports,” the most important of which are the exclusive right to hear and determine all civil and criminal cases against British subjects.These onerous and important duties are performed by Her Majesty’s Consuls at those ports.These gentlemen, indeed, have more power in many respects than is possessed by the Queen’s Ambassadors and Ministers Plenipotentiary at the various Courts in Europe.They have, in fact, all the powers now vested in the Judges of Her Majesty’s High Court of Judicature here in England, as well as the powers possessed by the Judges of the Admiralty, Probate, and Bankruptcy Courts.Further, and in addition to all these multifarious duties, they are Her Majesty’s special commercial agents at these treaty ports, with the usual jurisdiction over British ships, their officers, and crew. It is, therefore, a matter of the first necessity that the persons in whom such tremendous powers are placed should not only be gentlemen of the very highest characters and assured abilities, but men of superior education specially trained to fill these important positions and discharge the varied and onerous duties appertaining to them. Such are the present British Consuls in China, and such they have been in the past. There is not, I believe, in this or any other country, a more highly-educated, intelligent, and efficient body of men to be found. If any proof of these high qualities is required, it will be furnished in the fact that notwithstanding the difficult, delicate, and onerous duties cast upon them, no instance of their abuse of these powers has ever occurred. I certainly know of none. I am only here stating, I assure you, what is actually true. It has, indeed, always been to me a marvel that no complaints—no political entanglements, no troubles—have arisen from the abnormal state of things arising out of our commercial and political relations with China, and the extraordinary and exceptional powers necessarily entrusted to our Consular Agents in that Empire in consequence. We can now look back, after a quarter of a century of experience, and congratulate ourselves that all our complicated machinery has worked so well, that no clouds obscure the vista, and that our present position in China is one of serenity and sunshine; that we stand upon the very best terms with the Chinese Government from the central authority at Peking to all its ramifications throughout the vast empire. Nothing, in fact, blurs the landscape, save the miserable opium phantom created by our own countrymen, the missionaries, and magnified to a monster of large dimensions by the “Chinese jugglers,” who here in England keep the machinery of the Anti-Opium Society in motion. These happy results are due to Her Majesty’s Diplomatic and Consular Service in China, controlled by Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in England. And here I cannot but remind you of that distinguished veteran statesman Sir Rutherford Alcock, formerly Her Majesty’s Minister to the Court of Peking, to whose wise and far-seeing policy much of the present happy relations with China is due. There is not an English resident in China who cannot bear testimony to the splendid talents and genuine patriotism which has marked his career in that vast and interesting country. There is no greater authority living upon Anglo-Chinese affairs than he, especially as regards the period of the famous treaty of Tientsin, some of whose testimony on these points I will lay before you. After a long and honourable career he is now in England enjoying his well-earned repose, and is, happily, a powerful living witness to the fallacies I am now trying to efface.

Now, one of the ablest and most accomplished men at present in the Diplomatic and Consular Service of China is Mr. W.Donald Spence, Her Majesty’s Consul at Ichang, a port on the Yangtze, to whom I have before shortly referred.This gentleman, in the year 1881, paid a visit to Chungking, the commercial capital of Szechuan in Western China.Whilst there he availed himself of the opportunity to make inquiries and investigations into the commercial products of that immense province, and especially into the cultivation of native opium, the extent and condition of opium culture in Western China, and the attitude respecting it of the Chinese Government, and on the effect of opium smoking on the people of those provinces where it appears that habit is all but universal.It was his especial duty to make these investigations.No better proof could be produced as to the abilities of this gentleman than this valuable document on the subject presented by him to Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs which Mr. Spence, in his covering letter to Lord Granville modestly styles “his Report on the Trade of the Port of Ichang for the Year 1881.”If anyone will read the whole of this Report—and it will well repay careful perusal—he will pronounce it, I think, one of the ablest and most admirable State papers that have ever been penned.In giving you some extracts from it I will, therefore, ask you to treat the author of it, not as a mere hireling, having an interest in certain matters which it is desirable to place in a particular light, as the agents of the Anti-Opium Society would, no doubt, have you believe, but as the honest statement of an upright, high-minded, honourable English gentleman, of superior talents and a cultivated mind, who values truth above everything, who can have no other object in the matter but to do what is honest, just, and right, and who on this question of opium smoking tells the truth and nothing but the truth to Her Majesty’s Minister. This is what he says as to the cultivation of the poppy in Szechuan:—

Now you will remember that this very province of Szechuan, where such extensive cultivation of the poppy is carried on, is the largest and most distant of all the provinces of China; it is one of the westernmost of the eighteen provinces of the empire, being bordered on the west by Thibet. Until quite recently Szechuan was about as accessible to Englishmen as Moscow was fifty years ago, a terra incognita, in fact, to Europeans, so that it cannot be pretended for one moment that the introduction into China of Indian opium has had anything to do with the cultivation of the drug there.Indian opium could hardly ever have found its way into the province, which is not less than one thousand two hundred miles from the sea.It is only since the opening of the port of Ichang in the adjoining province of Hupeh, which took place in April 1877, that the district has become at all accessible.But let us return to Mr. W.Donald Spence.This is another extract from his report:—

Mr. Spence then goes on to compare the value of the wheat with the opium crop, showing that the cultivation of the latter is just twice as profitable as the former. Space will not allow me to give you full extracts on this subject, but, as some portion of it is germane to this part of my lecture, I give a short extract on the point:—

I will now give you a short account of opium-culture in the province of Yunnan, a more inaccessible part of China still perhaps than Szechuan.Mr. E.Colborne Baber, like Mr. Spence, belongs to the diplomatic service, and is now the secretary of the British Legation at Peking.All that I have stated as to Mr. Spence applies alike to him.He is a gentleman in whom the most implicit confidence should be placed.In 1877 he travelled through Western Szechuan, having, in his own words, on the morning of the 8th July in that year, passed the western gate of Ch’ung-Ch’ung “full of the pleasurable anticipations which precede a plunge into the unknown.”Having finished his journey through Szechuan, he struck into Yunnan, following the route of Mr. Grosvenor’s mission.He has recounted his adventures in a most valuable and interesting book, written in such a pleasing and graphic style, that the reader, when looking at it for reference only, is irresistibly compelled to read further.His book has been published by the Royal Geographical Society, and is well worthy of general perusal.It is one of the few readable books of travel to be met with nowadays.There is very little respecting opium culture in the volume, but what there is upon the subject is very much to the point.This is what he says:—

Now I have given you some very important evidence upon the two fallacies before us; but perhaps, after all, the best testimony upon the subject is that of Mr. Turner himself.He says, at page 13 of his book:—

I quite agree with him on this point.But here the question arises, where is the drug procured which is smoked in every part of the eighteen provinces of this vast Empire, equal in extent to Europe? Surely not from abroad, because that great China authority, Sir Robert Hart, tells us in his Yellow Book that all the Indian and Persian opium imported into China is sufficient only to supply one third of one per cent. of the population with a small portion annually of the drug. Not from India, because there are many provinces in China—and a province there means a territory as large as Great Britain—into which a particle of the Indian drug has seldom or never been introduced. Whence, then, comes the great bulk of the drug to satisfy all these smokers? Surely it must be from Chinese soil, from the opium fields surrounding their own homes, which are to be seen in every province of the Empire.

Let us now return to the Yellow-book of Sir Robert Hart, to which I have referred in the former lecture, and which seems to me to afford all the evidence on this subject that is really wanted.It is admitted on both sides that opium smoking is more or less prevalent throughout every province of China, on every soil, whether in the valleys or on the hills and mountains.Sir Robert Hart sent out a circular to the foreign Commissioners of Customs at all the Treaty Ports in China, Hainan, and Formosa,—two large islands lying respectively off the south and south-east coast of China,—and the returns show that there are many opium-smoking shops in each of these Treaty Ports, and that the gross quantity of Indian and other foreign opium imported into China is about one hundred thousand chests.Those returns also reveal the fact that in almost every case foreign opium is used for mixing with the native drug, which is of inferior quality and, there can be no doubt, invariably adulterated; that a large amount of native opium is grown and sold; and that the custom of opium smoking is more or less universal.Suppose we take the case of Canton, as being a very large city.We may find, perhaps, two or three hundred opium shops there, but the people who attend them are not the better class of Chinese.They are exactly the same class of people who frequent the drinking shops of London and other large cities in England.The respectable, well-to-do people in Canton, who can afford to keep the drug in their own houses, would not enter an opium shop any more than a respectable person here would frequent a public-house. If a stranger in London looked into the public-houses and saw men and women drinking there, he would come to a false conclusion if he thought that none but such people drank beer, spirits, or wine. We know that in almost every private house here there is more or less liquor of all kinds kept and consumed. The drinking shops furnish a mere indication of the amount of alcoholic liquors drunk in a town. It is exactly the same with the opium shops. They show the prevalence of the custom throughout the country. If you find two hundred opium shops in Canton, and I am sure there are not fewer there, you may be not less certain that opium is smoked in the great majority of private and business houses in Canton. It is the same in all the Treaty Ports. The opium-smoking shops in China may be counted by hundreds and thousands, because China is as large as Europe, and more populous.

Sir Robert Hart’s Report, although to a certain extent an anti-opium one, is in this and other respects very valuable, and forms in itself a complete answer to the false and unfounded allegations of the Anti-Opium Society.It is not likely that he would exaggerate the amount of opium grown or smoked in China; the inference, indeed, would be that he, as an official of the Chinese Government, would do just the contrary.There are a great many other important ports in China besides the twenty ports with which foreigners are not allowed to trade, and from which, indeed, they are rigidly excluded; and in the interior of the country there are immense and numerous cities and towns, large, thriving and densely populated, where the opium pipe is used as freely as the tobacco pipe is with us.The provinces in which opium is most grown are Szechuan and Yun-Nan, two of the largest of the eighteen provinces constituting China proper.They are the two great western provinces; but it is also grown in the eastern and central provinces, in fact, more or less, all over the country.Though there are no certain statistics, there cannot be a doubt that opium smoking is more prevalent in the interior provinces than on the coast, because it is there that the most opium is grown, and it is but reasonable to infer that where opium is largely cultivated, especially in a country like China, having no railroads, and few ordinary roads, there you will find it to be most cheap and abundant, and therefore most consumed. Upon this point I would refer to a most authoritative work by the late lamented Captain Gill, R. E. ,[6] whose barbarous murder the whole country deplored. At page 235 of vol. ii. Captain Gill says:—

That is the report of a man who was not only a sagacious and close observer of all that he saw in his interesting journey, but who was wholly impartial and disinterested on the subject of opium smoking.Sir Robert Hart does not purport to give in this book correct returns of the quantity of opium smoked or imported, much less of the quantity grown in China.The replies of his subordinates at the different ports, many of them seven hundred or a thousand miles apart, all concur in speaking of the great difficulties they had in getting any figures at all.They are, therefore, not to be taken as absolutely trustworthy, and Sir Robert candidly admits that they are mere approximations.Before I had seen his book I had made a calculation of the probable number of opium smokers in China, on the assumption that the population of China proper was three hundred and sixty millions, and that the custom was universal, limited only by the means of procuring the drug; and I arrived at the conclusion that there were in China three millions of habitual smokers, and about the same number of occasional smokers.Mr. Lennox Simpson, Commissioner at Chefoo, in reply to Sir Robert Hart’s circular, says, at page 13 of the Yellow Book:

These commissioners are all gentlemen of good standing and education, and they have a great many subordinates under them, so that they possess means of collecting information such as no foreigner, not engaged in the public service of China, could possibly command.Mr. Francis W.White, the Commissioner at Hankow, replied:

Mr. Holwell, the Commissioner at Kiukiang, wrote:

I will point out by-and-by the reason why these returns are so unreliable.The most extraordinary of them all are the returns of Mr. E.B.Drew, the Commissioner at Ningpo, and Mr. H.Edgar, the Commissioner at Ichang.The former estimates the entire quantity of native opium grown and consumed in China at two hundred and sixty-five thousand chests, the latter at only twenty-five thousand—less than a tenth of Mr. Drew’s estimate.In the face of all these discrepancies, Sir Robert Hart takes an arbitrary figure, and says, in effect, there is at least as much opium produced in China itself as is imported into China.With the knowledge I have of the Chinese and the opium trade generally, from the calculations I have made, and by the light thrown upon the question by Sir Robert Hart’s Yellow Book, and the Reports of Messrs.Spence and Baber and others, I am induced to come to the conclusion that two hundred and sixty-five thousand chests is much nearer the mark than a hundred thousand chests.

The reason the Chinese opium dealers have been so reticent in affording information to the Commissioners of Customs at these Treaty Ports is, that they are afraid to do so, fearing if they gave correct information, they might in so doing furnish to the Mandarins reasons for “squeezing” them, or for placing taxes and other restrictions on their trade; for the Government officials in China, from the highest to the lowest, are, as I have before said, the most corrupt, cruel, and unscrupulous body of men in the whole world. Mr. Storrs Turner has told us that the Chinese Government is a paternal one, exercising a fatherly care of its people, and always exhorting them to virtue. Nothing can be more fallacious than this. Theoretically, there is much that is good in the system of government in China, but practically it is quite the reverse. There is little sympathy between the supreme Government and the great body of the people. The Emperor, his family, and immediate suite, are all Tartars, quite another race from the Chinese, differing totally in customs, manners, dress, and social habits. The Governors or Viceroys are pretty much absolute sovereigns within their own provinces. Each has under him a host of officials, commonly known as Mandarins, who are generally the most rapacious and corrupt of men; their salaries, in most cases, are purely nominal, for they are expected to pay themselves, which they well understand how to do. Their system of taxation is irregular and incomplete, and the process of squeezing is openly followed all over the country. There is nothing a Chinese dreads so much as disclosing his pecuniary means, or, indeed, any information that might furnish a clue to them. If he admitted that he cultivated fifty acres of opium, or bought a hundred pikuls of opium in a year, his means and his profits could be arrived at by a simple process of arithmetic, and although he might feel sure that, so far as Sir Robert Hart and the foreign Commissioners under him were concerned, no wrong need be apprehended, yet he is so distrustful and suspicious, that he would fear lest the facts should reach the ears of the higher Chinese officials through the native subordinates in the Commissioners’ Offices.

A Chinaman, therefore, will never tell the amount or value of his property, or the profits he is making by his business.He fears being plundered; that is the simple fact.I know a respectable man in Hong Kong, the possessor of considerable house property there, a man who would be called wealthy even in England.Some years ago, when at Canton, where he had a house, a Mandarin suddenly arrested and put him into prison.What a Chinese prison is you will find in Dr. Gray’s book.It is not the place where a paternal Government ought to house the worst of criminals, or even a wild beast.The man had committed no crime, and had done nothing whatever to warrant this treatment; in vain he asked what he had been imprisoned for, and demanded to be confronted with his accusers, if there were any. His gaolers shrugged their shoulders and gave him no answer. He was kept there for two or three months. Ultimately he received a hint, which he recognized as an official intimation, that unless he came down handsomely, as the phrase is, and that speedily, he would lose his head. He took the hint, made the best bargain he could, and ultimately had to pay seventy thousand dollars, or about fourteen thousand pounds, for his release. There never was any accusation brought against him.

I knew another man, living at Swatow, who had made a great deal of money in trade.He bought a large piece of foreshore at that place, which he reclaimed and turned into profitable land.A military Mandarin living there thought him a fair object for a squeeze; the same process was gone through as in the case I have before mentioned; but this man, not having the same wisdom as the other, held fast to his dollars.The result was that a false charge of kidnapping, alleged to have been committed twenty years before, was brought against him, and he was taken out and beheaded.That is the way money is raised by the governors and their subordinates in China.So much for Mr. Turner’s benign and paternal Government.There is no regular Income Tax in China, but there is a Property Tax levied in the way I have mentioned.The Chinese authorities will let a man go on making money for many years, and when they think he has accumulated sufficient wealth for their purpose, they pounce down upon him and demand as much as they think they can extort.That is the reason the Chinese opium dealers are so reticent when inquiries are made concerning opium.If the Commissioners at the Treaty Ports had got fair returns, I have no doubt that it is not a hundred thousand pikuls of native opium that Sir Robert Hart would have estimated as the quantity of opium grown in China, but probably four or five times that amount.

Here, again, I must quote from Mr. Spence’s report.Nothing can possibly show better the prevalence of opium smoking in the provinces of Szechuan and Yunnan and Hupah, they being about equal in extent to France, Spain, and Portugal. This is what he says on the prevalence of opium smoking in those provinces:—

Now, after all this absolutely irrefutable testimony, many might think it unnecessary to go further. They little know, however, how strong a hold fanaticism takes of the human mind; they little think how difficult it is to eradicate a fascinating LIE from the mind, once its glittering meretricious form has got hold of it and supplanted wholesome truth. I have, therefore, to deal not only with those whose minds are as a sheet of white paper, but with those in whom the fallacious seeds that beget error and fanaticism have been sown and taken firm root. I will now give you an extract from Sir Rutherford Alcock’s paper, which is deserving of careful study:—

This is the way the benevolent British public have been cajoled and misled for the last twenty years, or more, by opium-phobists.No wonder that the Anti-Opium Society can raise fifty thousand pounds so easily, for the British public is a benevolent one, and will subscribe its gold readily where what they believe a proper object presents itself.Sad, indeed it is, that in the present case its munificence represents, not merely so much money lost, but vast sums recklessly squandered in a mischievous agitation, that whilst it tends to sap and ruin one of the loveliest of all virtues—that charity that endureth long and is kind—paralyses missionary labour, prejudices the trade and revenue of our great Indian Empire, and defames our country in the eyes of the whole world. Sad, sad also to see that venerated nobleman, Lord Shaftesbury, after his long and honourable career, and so many other good and eminent men, made the victims of such miserable delusions.

I think it is now clear, both from the testimony I have adduced, and from Mr. Turner’s own admission, that the poppy is not only indigenous to China, but that it has been cultivated there from time immemorial, and that opium is smoked generally throughout China, the only limit to its use being the means of procuring the drug.

 

 

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LECTURE III.

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:—

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

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:—

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:—

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:—