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A VINDICATION OF ENGLAND'S POLICY WITH REGARD TO THE OPIUM TRADE.

BY C. R. HAINES.

LONDON: W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE, PALL MALL. S.W.

1884.

(_All rights reserved._)

LONDON: PRINTED BY W. H. ALLEN AND CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE. S.W.

_Victrix causa deis placuit sed victa Catoni._

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

About two years ago I had occasion to go thoroughly into the question of the opium-trade between India and China. Up to that time, knowing practically nothing about the matter except what the Anti-Opium Society and their supporters had to say on the subject, I was as zealous an opponent of the traffic as any of them could wish. But as soon as I came to read both sides of the question, and consult original authorities, I felt myself forced, much against my will at first, to abandon my previous opinions. And I may as well say at once that I have no personal interest whatever, direct or indirect, in the maintenance or defence of the traffic. My only wish has been to treat the question on the broad principles of practical justice, and not in deference to that cosmopolitan patriotism which would have us love our neighbour not indeed as ourselves, but much more than ourselves. The object therefore of this little work is to clear the fair name of England from the foul aspersions cast upon it by a comparatively small body of well-meaning but misguided philanthropists.

C. R. HAINES.

DOVER, _June 16, 1884_.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

The Anti-Opium Society.--Its Origin.--By whom supported.--How far successful.--Its Conclusions not to be accepted.--The Indictment against England pp. 1-6

The original _habitat_ of the Poppy-Plant.--Opium known in China from the earliest times.--Not consumed much till Eighteenth Century.--First imported by Portuguese.--By East India Company in 1773.--Prohibited in 1796.--War in 1839.--Causes of War.--Treaty of Nankin.--No mention of Opium.--Lord Palmerston's instructions on the subject.-- War of 1856 and 1860.--Treaty of Tientsin.--Opium legalized.--Native growth long-established in spite of Edicts.--Reason of this.--Chefoo Convention pp. 6-37

Opium a powerful Medicine.--Its Alkaloid constituents.--How used.--Distinction between eating and smoking it.-- Consumed in India, Turkey, Armenia, England pp. 37-52

Indian Opium of two kinds, Bengal and Malwa.--Monopoly in 1773.--Vacillations in Policy.--Hence fluctuations in Revenue.--Reserve Stock.--Land under Cultivation.--Chests exported.--Policy towards Native States.--Prices.-- Quality.--Competition with Chinese Opium pp. 52-59

Abolition of the Traffic.--How far desirable.-- Difficulties.--England not likely to help with a Money-grant.--Charges made by Anti-Opiumists.--1. "Opium a poison and Opium-smoking universally baneful."-- Evidence on this point breaks down.--Not so fatal as Spirits with us.--Number of Smokers of Indian drug.--Use of Opium in the Straits Settlements pp. 59-75

2. "England responsible for its introduction."--Opium certainly known in China previous to foreign importation.--The Portuguese before us.--Demand not _created_ by us.--Every Nation has its Stimulant or Narcotic.--Enumeration of these.--Opium specially suited to the Chinese.--Opium and Spirits pp. 75-91

3. "We force Opium on China."--Chinese _not_ forced either to admit or smoke Opium--but compelled to keep to their own Tariff pp. 91-95

4. "Monopoly indefensible."--Monopolies are a part of the System of Indian Government.--This particular Monopoly limits the export pp. 95-97

5. "Opium an Obstacle to Missionary effort."--Failure of Missionaries not due to Opium.--Real reasons of their ill-success.--Exterritorialization of Converts very objectionable to Chinese.--Roman Catholic Missionaries most detested, but more successful.--Reasons of this.--Our Missionaries, how far successful.--Their duty and ours pp. 97-114

Remedies suggested.--Firstly, Abolition of Monopoly.-- Objections to this.--Secondly, Prohibition of Poppy-culture in all India.--Difficulties with Native States.--Legitimate requirements of India.--Financial objections.--Curtailment of Expenditure difficult.-- Increase of Taxation impossible.--Thirdly, England to ask for an equivalent from China for giving up the Opium Revenue.--No compensation to India.--Fourthly, Li Hung Chang's proposal pp. 114-129

Feasible remedies.--Either, England and China to agree to stop the cultivation of the Poppy gradually in _both_ countries.--A test of Chinese sincerity.--Effect, if carried out.--_Or_, to free China from all obligations in regard to Opium.--This would cut away the ground from under the Agitators.--India would not lose all her Revenue.--The Agitation the outcome of mistaken Philanthropy.--Their method of propagandism most objectionable.--Conclusion pp. 129-139

A VINDICATION OF ENGLAND'S POLICY WITH REGARD TO THE OPIUM TRADE.

Again there has been a debate in Parliament on the opium traffic:[1] again has the same weary series of platitudes and misrepresentations been repeated, and no one has taken the trouble to defend the policy of England as it should and can be defended. But it is high time that the falsities and the fallacies of the statements of the Anti-opium Society should be exposed, and that everyone to the best of his ability should enlighten the people of England on a subject which so nearly concerns the honour of our country. Isolated voices have indeed been raised to protest against the views disseminated by the Society for the Abolition of the Opium Trade; but these efforts have been too few and far between to reach the mass of the nation. At present the agitators have it all their own way. The majority of people, having heard nothing but what the agitators have told them, denounce the iniquitous traffic with a fervour that varies proportionately with their ignorance. In contemplating the success of this misdirected enthusiasm we are irresistibly reminded of a very "judicious" remark of Hooker's, who says: "Because such as openly reprove supposed disorders of State are taken for principal friends to the common benefit of all, and for men that carry singular freedom of mind; under this fair and plausible colour whatsoever they utter passeth for good and current."

For more than forty years the opium trade between India and China has been a subject for keen discussion and hostile comment in England. Being as it was the _immediate_ cause of our first war with China in 1840, the opium traffic could not fail, in Parliament and elsewhere, to be brought prominently before the notice of the people of England, and of course there were not wanting public men to denounce the policy pursued by this country towards China in that matter. This denunciation, at first of a vague and desultory character, took a definite shape in the memorial presented to Her Majesty's Government in the Earl of Shaftesbury's name, and backed by all his great personal authority. The specific charges contained in this document will be noticed hereafter, when we come to sketch the present position of the "Society." Suffice it here to say that it teemed with misstatements and exaggerations of the grossest and most palpable kind, which, having been exposed and refuted again and again, need not detain us now. But so far were those random statements from furthering the cause which the memorialists had at heart, that they only served to steel the minds of unprejudiced people against further representations, however just, from the same quarter.

Since then, however, the agitation has taken a more organized form, and there is now a society for the suppression of the trade, numbering its hundreds of supporters, and linked with the names of such men as Lord Shaftesbury, Cardinal Manning, Sir J. W. Pease, and Sir Wilfrid Lawson. Nearly the whole of the clergy from the Archbishops downwards, and ministers of every denomination, have declared for the same side. Add to this that the Society has a large income, derived from voluntary subscriptions, which is assiduously employed in the dissemination of its peculiar doctrines. The country is flooded with tracts, pamphlets, reports of addresses, speeches, and petitions, all inculcating the same extreme opinions.

Under these conditions it is not surprising that the anti-opiumists have succeeded in enlisting popular sympathy to a certain extent on their side. But, with the single exception of missionaries, they have against them the vast majority of those who, from personal knowledge and experience, are competent to form an opinion on the subject. Sir Rutherford Alcock, for twenty years Her Majesty's Minister in China, who has had opportunities for forming a correct judgment on the subject such as have fallen to the lot of few, and who can have no bias[2] or prejudice in the matter, has recently before the Society of Arts, in a paper of singular ability and fairness, vindicated the policy of the British Government. Mr. Brereton, for fifteen years resident in Hongkong, has challenged and, on the authority of his own experience, denied _every_ assertion of the Anti-opiumists. As to the missionaries, from whom the majority of the arguments against the trade are drawn, no one doubts their good faith, and everyone gives them credit for the best of motives; but, for reasons to be afterwards given, their evidence is likely to be biassed, and in any case cannot be considered worthy to be set against that of all the other residents in China.

But what are the enormities of which England has been guilty? Here is the indictment, stated with all the energy of conviction: That England, and England only, is responsible for the introduction into China of a highly deleterious, if not wholly poisonous, drug, for which, till India took upon herself to supply it, there was in China no demand whatever; that she is responsible, further, for forcing this opium _vi et armis_ upon the Chinese, contrary to all obligations of international morality, and in the face of the sincere and determined opposition of the Chinese people; that, in fine, Christian England, with a single eye to gain, is wilfully and deliberately compassing the ruin of heathen China. Such is the indictment brought against England by her own sons; and the tribunal which they would arraign her before is the public opinion of their own countrymen and of Europe.

The original habitat of the poppy plant, which is now extensively cultivated in Asia Minor, Persia, Egypt, India, China, and even in Africa, was probably Central Asia. It must have made its way very early into India, as it is mentioned in the _Laws of Manu_. But it was not till the tenth century that the Hindoos learnt from the Mohammedans the narcotic qualities of the plant.

In China there can be no doubt that opium has been known from the _earliest_[3] times; even if the poppy be not indigenous to that country, as we might be led to suppose from its mention in a Chinese[4] herbal compiled more than two centuries ago. In the _General History of South Yuennan_, published in 1736, opium is noted as a common product of Yung-chang-foo; and it is remarked by Mr. Hobson, Commissioner of Customs at Hankow,[5] that, "if 134 years ago so much opium was produced as to deserve notice in such a work, the production could have been no novelty to the Chinese population at the beginning of the present century, when we began to import it in small quantities." Moreover, it is well known that the seeds of the poppy have been used from time immemorial in the preparation of cakes and confections. Two Court officials were even appointed specially to superintend the making of these for the Emperors' use.[6] Dr. Edkins, in a recent pamphlet on the subject of opium-smoking in China, quotes an edict against the habit published as early as A.D. 1728, and consequently some forty years before the British took any part in the trade. Dr. Wells Williams is of opinion that opium may have been introduced into China from Assam, where it has been used time out of mind. However that may be, the Chinese may be credited with having improved upon their use of it by smoking instead of swallowing it; though this, too, is attributed to the Assamese by Don Sinibaldo de Mas, Spanish Consul in China.[7]

It may, then, be taken for granted that opium-smoking was known to the Chinese long before European nations took to importing opium into China. But at the same time no one will deny that the habit has become enormously more prevalent than it used to be.

The foreign trade in opium is of comparatively recent growth. The Portuguese were the first European nation to import it into China. For some years previous to 1767 they imported from Goa some 200 chests of Turkey opium to Macao. This they would scarcely have done had there been no demand for the drug. It was not till 1773 that the East India Company appeared upon the scene as exporters of opium in very small quantities. In that year the Company assumed the monopoly of the opium culture in India, and, according to the existing Mongol practice, farmed it out for an annual payment in advance. In 1781 a cargo of 1,600 chests was found unsaleable, and re-exported. By 1790, however, the importation into China amounted to 4,054 chests yearly, at which number it remained nearly stationary for thirty years. It was in 1793 first that the ships engaged in the traffic began to be molested, chiefly by pirates, but partly also through the hostility of the Chinese officials. One ship was then sent to Whampoa, an island twelve miles from Canton, where she lay for fifteen months entirely unmolested.

In 1796, however, the first year of Keaking's reign, the importation of opium was prohibited by the Government at Pekin, under heavy penalties, for the alleged reason "that it wasted the time and property of the people of the Inner Land, leading them to exchange their silver and commodities for the vile dirt of the foreigner."

Up to this time, though opium was being imported for the space of more than forty years, not a word had been said against it, and now, when exception _was_ taken to it, it was on the ground of the worthless, not the poisonous, nature of the drug, for which so much sycee silver was bartered. This law, like sumptuary laws in general, proved wholly inoperative as far as the Chinese were concerned. The East India Company, however, did so far regard it as to forbid their own ships from engaging in the trade, and their mandate was obeyed. Nevertheless, the trade went on in private ships, and from Whampoa, the headquarters of the trade, the smuggling (if what went on under the very eyes of the custom-house officials can be called smuggling) continued uninterruptedly along the coast, being carried on openly and in the light of day. For though the Government might fulminate against it from Pekin, the officials on the spot, by their undisguised connivance,[8] caused the trade to be established on something like a regular footing. Under which conditions the trade continued for the next twenty years or so with little variation.

In 1816 the Bengal drug first began to suffer from competition with Malwa and Turkey opium, the latter brought from Madeira in American as well as British ships. In 1821 the exportation of Bengal opium had sunk to 2,320 chests, when the Chinese commenced vigorous proceedings against smugglers, and drove the contraband trade to Lintin, an island forty miles from Canton.[9] This seems to have given a fresh impetus to the trade, for the export rose at once to 6,428 chests, and by 1831 to more than 20,000: at which number it remained till Lin's raid in 1839, when 20,291 chests were delivered up and destroyed in the Canton waters.

This violent action of Lin was the outcome of the ascendancy[10] of the Protective party in China; for there can be no doubt that even in Conservative China there was at this time a reform party, headed by the young and accomplished Empress, who advocated enlarged intercourse with foreign states, and, as a step towards this, a less protective policy in trade, including a legalization of the importation of opium. A memorial was even drawn up and presented to the Emperor by Heu Naetze, Vice-President of the Sacrificial Board, in 1829, advocating the legalization of opium. But even the influence of the Empress could not prevail against the prejudices of the Court, and the memorials of Choo Tsun[11] and Heu Kew, who, like Cleon of old, argued for the dignity of the Empire and the danger of instability in maintaining the laws, carried the day. It is not quite clear what grounds of objection to the traffic were held by the Chinese Government, but the _moral_ ground, now made so much of, was certainly not one. Between 1836 and 1839 several Imperial edicts were published prohibiting the importation of opium, in which "there is little if any reference to the evils of opium, but very clear language as to the export of bullion."[12] This drain of silver was no doubt the great reason for the Chinese hostility to the traffic. As late as 1829 the balance of trade had been in favour of China, and silver had accumulated; but this state of things had now been reversed, and the increased export of silver--for opium was a very expensive article and had to be paid for clandestinely in hard silver--had begun to cause a great depreciation of cash,[13] the only copper coin of the realm, and to occasion serious alarm at Pekin. Accordingly the Emperor, in pursuance of several memorials on the subject, forbad the export of sycee, at the same time that he took more energetic measures to put a stop to the traffic which was chiefly responsible for this loss of bullion. In 1836 opium ships were prohibited from entering the inner waters of Kunsing-moon, while all foreign ships were detained at Lintin; and the local revenue officers began to show more vigilance in putting down smuggling. In the following year an edict was published prohibiting the continuance of receiving ships in the outer waters, to which Captain Elliott, our Superintendent of Trade, paid little attention, seeing that the Chinese themselves openly disregarded it; and it is even stated that the trade was carried on by four boats under the Viceroy's flag, which paid regular fees to the custom-house and military stations.[14]