Part 8

[36] _Times_, Jan. 26, 1881. To the same effect is the evidence of Don Sinibaldo, who says (p. 3), "On pretend que l'opium produit chez lui une delicieuse ivresse, un doux sommeil, une vive surexcitation qui deviennent necessaires a l'existence, et qu'on ne peut obtenir qu'en augmentant progressivement la dose journaliere. Pour moi, j'ai souvent fume de l'opium, et je n'ai eprouve rien de semblable; un grand nombre d'Europeens qui avaient fait la meme epreuve m'ont assure qu'elle avait eu pour eux les memes resultats que pour moi." Perhaps a remark of Dr. Moore (p. 34) may explain these statements. He says, "If the opium-pipe is smoked as the tobacco-pipe is smoked, the effects are very inconsiderable as compared with the results when the novice has attained to perfection in his practice"--_i.e._ can pass the smoke through his lungs.

[37] Colonel Tod, in his book on the Rajpoots, draws a strong picture of the evil effects of opium consumption among them. Of this Sir Henry Lawrence, in a letter to Sir John Kaye, 1854, says, "There is little, if any, truth in it."

[38] Comm. on E. I. Finance, 1871, evidence of Sir Cecil Beadon. Dr. Birdwood, in a letter to the _Times_, Jan. 20, 1882, says: "The Rajpoots, though they are all from youth upward literally saturated with opium, are one of the finest, most truthful, and bravest people in the world. The same may be said of the Sikhs."

[39] _The Other Side of the Opium Question_, pp. 13, 42.

[40] Similarly the Hurkarah, who carries letters and runs messages in India, provided with a small piece of opium, a bag of rice and a lump of bread, will perform incredible journeys.--Sir Rutherford Alcock, Paper before Society of Arts, p. 223.

[41] The extract of hemp drunk as a decoction or swallowed as a drug. See _Report on Excise in the Punjaub_, 1880-1881, sect. 24.

[42] Moore, p. 90.

[43] A sear = 2 lbs.

[44] See Memorandum by Sir Charles Aitchison, _passim_, especially App. to Report, p. 13.

[45] Report by Mr. Weidemann, deputy-commissioner in Henzada, in Parliamentary paper relating to opium in British Burmah, sect. 11.

[46] "British Burmah," an article in the _Times_ for Aug. 20, 1882.

[47] See a note appended to Sir Charles Aitchison's Report by Mr. C. Bernard, officiating Chief Commissioner in British Burmah.

[48] _Times_, Aug. 20, 1882.

[49] Memorandum, sect. 9.

[50] _Cf._ the havoc wrought by the "blue flame," introduced by Europeans, among the Red Indians of America.

[51] Memorandum, sect. 4.

[52] Memorandum, sect. 13.

[53] Bringing in a revenue of L175,000.

[54] Dr. Christlieb.

[55] _Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_, p. 5.

[56] Dr. Moore, p. 11, 48, 55.

[57] _Ibid._, p. 56.

[58] July 12, 1883. This has now been further reduced.

[59] Dr. Christlieb says 1,033,000 acres--an obvious exaggeration.

[60] The districts of Indore, Bhopal, &c.

[61] Mr. Storrs Turner himself, the secretary of the Society, allows that this is a difficult part of the question. See his article in the _Nineteenth Century_, Feb. 1882.

[62] Mr. Brereton (p. 74) estimates the amount consumed in California alone to be worth L100,000.

[63] Mr. Acheson, in a memorandum to the Custom inspectorate from Canton, says it amounts to 5,000 piculs.

[64] This, however, does not fairly represent the difference, as Indian opium yields twenty per cent. more extract.

[65] Brereton, p. 139.

[66] Financial Statement, 1882, sect. 172.

[67] The Right Hon. J. Whittaker Ellis.

[68] Dr. Christlieb, a German professor, says 400,000; but Dr. Medhurst, a medical man resident for years in China, with all his life-long experience and knowledge would not even hazard a conjecture as to the annual death-rate. Dr. Lockhart says, "It is impossible to say what is the number of such victims either among the higher or lower classes." _Ait Varius, negat Scaurus. Utri creditis, Quirites?_

[69] Don Sinibaldo (p. 11). To prohibit opium, he says, because some people kill themselves with it, is as bad as if we prohibited razors because some people cut their throats with them. He also says that he considers the number of deaths by opium in China to be less in proportion than the number of deaths self-inflicted by firearms in France--_i.e._ that they do not number 3,500 in all.

[70] Swinhoe's _Campaign of 1860_, p. 248.

[71] Dr. Ayres, _Friend of China_, 1878, p. 217.

[72] Comm. on E. I. Finance, Q. 5980. Mr. Winchester says: "I should say the balance was in favour of the relief given by the stimulant over the actual misery created by its abuse." Also Dr. Moore, p. 86.

[73] Dr. Ayres, _Friend of China_, 1878, p. 217.

[74] Dr. Myers, _Health of Takow_, p. 8. A recent article in the Times, from a Singapore correspondent, fully bears this out. He says that all allow the Chinese of the Straits Settlements to be the _finest specimens of their race_, and yet these very Chinese, a million in number, smoke 12,000 chests of opium a year; and the deaths from opium registered in the annual medical report were last year _five_.

[75] Mr. Brereton (p. 8) says: "I have known numbers, certainly not less than 500 in all, who have smoked opium from their earliest days, young men, middle-aged, and men of advanced years, some of them probably excessive smokers; but I have never observed any symptoms of decay in one of them." Again: "I have tried to find the victims of the dreadful drug, but have never succeeded."

[76] From a letter to the _London and China Telegraph_, June 19, 1882.

[77] The estimate of one million given in a preceding note includes the Chinese population of the neighbouring islands and of Cochin China.

[78] Dr. Myers: "It is surprising how few among the hard-working class indulge to excess; and case after case will be met with, even in the lowest ranks of life, of men who have smoked regularly from ten to twenty or thirty years, and show little or no signs of mental or physical deterioration."

[79] Dr. Myers, _Health of Takow_, p. 10.

[80] Correspondent to _North China Herald_. See Brereton, p. 135.

[81] Of this the Indian Government is only responsible for 40,000 chests. The rest is Malwa opium.

[82] It may be said that those who smoke _Indian_ opium are the richer classes, and therefore more prone to excess; but, on the other hand, the native drug is more deleterious.

[83] _Health of Takow_, p. 6.

[84] _Ibid._, p. 5.

[85] Mr. Cooper's coolies carried him twenty miles a day for months.

[86] Coleridge.

[87] Aug. 19, 1882.

[88] "Most remarkable for industry and usefulness."--Sir F. Halliday.

[89] See Johnston's _Chemistry of Common Life_.

[90] "Stimulants are weak narcotics: narcotics are strong stimulants."--_Modern Thought_, Aug. 1882.

[91] Sir George Birdwood calls this the greatest temperance triumph of any age or nation.

[92] It has only recently been discovered that the aborigines of Australia also have a narcotic of their own, which has qualities akin to opium and tobacco.

[93] Capt. Hall's _Nemesis_.

[94] _Opium Question Solved_, p. 15. _Cf._ Sir Charles Trevelyan, Comm. on E. I. Finance, Qu. 1532-40.

[95] And in this connection it might occur to us that if, in the wake of our civilization, instead of the "blue ruin" which we gave him, we had brought to the Red Indian the marvellous gift of opium, "that noble race and brave" would not have "passed away," but be still surviving to smoke the calumet of peace with the divine opium in the bowl.

[96] Parliamentary Papers 1842-56, No. 26.

[97] Letter to Sir W. Parker, 1843. He adds that "personally he had not been able to discover a _single_ instance of its decidedly bad effects."

[98] _China and the Chinese._

[99] "No one," says Mr. Gardner, "is maddened by smoking opium to crimes of violence, nor does the habit of smoking increase the criminal returns or swell the number of prison inmates."

[100] Dr. Pereira, _Materia Medica_. Dr. Andrew Clarke estimated on one occasion that seven-tenths of the patients in St. Bartholomew's Hospital owed their ill-health to alcohol.

[101] Dr. Tanner's _Practice of Medicine_. Dr. Moore. For an interesting comparison between opium and alcohol, we may refer our readers to De Quincey's _Confessions of an Opium Eater_.

[102] Twenty-five drops of laudanum = 1 grain of opium [therefore] 8,000 drops = 320 grains; but Dr. Myers tells us that 2 grains of opium swallowed = 1 mace (58 grains) smoked, so that De Quincey took what was equivalent to 160 _mace_ smoked.

[103] Theodore Gautier maintains that "the love of the ideal is so innate in man that he attempts, as far as he can, to relax the ties which bind body to soul; and as the means of being in an ecstatic state are not in the power of all, one drinks for gaiety, another smokes for forgetfulness, a third devours momentary madness."

[104] It is indeed said of Ennius that he sought inspiration in the flowing bowl; that he never

"Nisi potus ad arma Exsiluit dicenda."--_Hor._

But then, as Praed says, "poets tell confounded lies," and this may be one of them. Coleridge, in later times, is said to have sought the same inspiration from opium; and poems like "Kubla Khan" testify that he found it.

[105] Enough, as Mr. Brereton says, to form a devil's punchbowl huge enough for all the population of the British Isles to swim in at the same time.

[106] Dr. Norman Kerr in a paper read at the Social Science Congress.

[107] "Any serious attempt to check the evil must originate with the people themselves," said the Chinese Commissioners to Sir Thomas Wade.

[108] To chastise the insolent barbarian, as Lord Palmerston put it to his electors at Tiverton.

[109] A similar proposal to establish a Russian protectorate over the members of the Greek Church in Turkey is thus spoken of by Lord Clarendon: "No sovereign, having a due regard for his own dignity and independence, could admit proposals which conferred upon a foreign and more powerful sovereign a right of protection over his own subjects."

[110] pp. 35-37.

[111] From the latest Parliamentary Paper, containing the correspondence between the Indian and English Governments on the subject of the negotiations with China, it appears (sects. 43-50) that neither the British nor Indian Government has any objection to the ratification of the Chefoo Convention. The _difficulty is to get the other Powers to agree_.

[112] Sir Evelyn Baring. Financial Statement on India for 1882.

[113] A late medical missionary.

[114] Brereton, p. 50. It appears, however, that there are 6,000 Christians already in Japan, the result of fourteen years' preaching.

[115] Intense dislike to foreigners and foreign intercourse was an ever-present reason for condemning a drug which, more than anything else, kept the gates of the empire ajar to the "foreign devils."--_Opium Question Solved._

[116] Comm. on E. I. Finance 1871, Q. 5831.

[117] The same who has lately been in correspondence with the leaders of the Anti-Opium League.

[118] Comm. on E. I. Finance, Q. 5834.

[119] _Ibid._, Q. 5817.

[120] _Story of the Fuh-kien Mission_, p. 188.

[121] Capt. Hall, _Nemesis_, p. 375.

[122] _Story of the Fuh-kien Mission_, p. 252.

[123] _Times_, Aug. 22, 1882.

[124] _Times_, Aug. 22, 1882.

[125] _Times_, Aug. 22, 1882.

[126] Brereton, p. 68.

[127] See minute by Sir William Muir, Feb. 1868.

[128] Speech at Newcastle, 1880.

[129] Malwa bears a duty of 650, but the consistence of Malwa chest is 90-95, of Bengal 70-75.

[130] Owing to bad crops the revenue from opium _has_ considerably diminished in the last two years, but the present (1884) crop promises exceedingly well.

[131] 1882.

[132] Consul Medhurst, 1872.

[133] Sir Rutherford Alcock's paper before the Society of Arts, p. 225.

[134] Justin McCarthy, _History of Our Own Times_, vol. i., p. 181.

[135] Parliamentary Paper, 1882.

[136] The organ of the Society.

[137] Sir Wilfrid Lawson on the Egyptian War.

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.

Footnote marker [52] does not appear in the original text. The placement is a best guess based on the spacing of the text.

In footnote 102, the symbol representing "therefore" has been replaced by [therefore].

Punctuation has been corrected without note.

The following misprints have been corrected: "potitical" corrected to "political" (page 52) "are are" corrected to "are" (page 59)