Part 12

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:--

As we had such vague ideas of the distance before us we were anxious to make an early start, but we were now in Yunnan, the province of China in which there is more opium smoked than in any other, and in which it is proportionately difficult to move the people in the morning. There is a Chinese proverb to the effect that there is an opium pipe in every house in the province of Kweichow, but one in every room in Yunnan, which means that men and women smoke opium universally.

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:

Much difficulty has been experienced in eliciting answers to the various questions put to the native opium shops and others, all viewing with suspicion any inquiries made, evidently fearing that some prohibition is about to be put on the trade, or that their interests are in some way to suffer. _Hence some of the figures given in the return can scarcely be considered reliable, although every pains has been taken to collect information._

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:

Owing to the entire absence of all reliable figures, the amount of opium put down as produced within the province and within the empire yearly, must be taken as approximate only. I have been careful to collect information from various sources, and this has been as carefully compared and verified as means will allow.

Mr. Holwell, the Commissioner at Kiukiang, wrote:

The total quantity of unprepared native opium, said to be produced yearly in the province of Kiangsi, I find it next to impossible to ascertain with any degree of certainty. Native testimony differs.

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:--

Before giving an estimate of the amount of opium produced in Szechuan, I must refer, in explanation of the large figures I shall be obliged to use, to the extraordinary prevalence of the habit of opium smoking in Western Hupei, in Szechuan, and in Yunnan. It prevails to an extent undreamt of in other parts of China. The Roman Catholic missionaries, who are stationed all over Szechuan to the number of nearly one hundred, and who, living amongst the people, have opportunities of observation denied to travellers, estimate that one-tenth of the whole male adult population of the province smoke opium. Mr. Parker, after travelling all over the thickly-settled parts of the province, estimates the proportion of smokers thus:--

Per cent. Labourers and small farmers 10 Small shopkeepers 20 Hawkers, soldiers 30 Merchants, gentry 80 Officials and their staffs 90 Actors, prostitutes, thieves, vagabonds 95

I agree with Mr. Parker that the proportion of smokers varies in different classes according to their means and leisure, but I feel sure his estimate of the per-centage amongst the labouring classes is much too low. One of the most numerous class of labourers in China is the coolie class, day labourers who live by picking up odd jobs, turning their hands to any kind of unskilled work that may be offered. Certainly more than half of them smoke. Of the labouring classes who are not "coolies," as a whole this much may be said--they only have money at stated intervals; and when out of a gang of forty or fifty workmen or sailors only four or five smoke opium, it does not mean that only ten per cent. are smokers. In all probability half of the whole gang squandered their wages the day they got the money, and have nothing left to buy opium or anything else until the job or voyage for which they have been engaged is finished.

For example, of my junk crew on my voyage to Chungking, only four smoked opium regularly, but seven others who had spent all their wages before we started smoked whenever I gave them a few cash. The total abstinence of a British sailor at sea for months on end proves nothing; it is what he will do when he has ten pounds in his pocket, and is in a street with fifteen public-houses, that decides his sobriety. So of workmen in the west of China, a large number smoke opium when they have money, and do the best they can when they have none. Whatever be the exact per-centage of the opium smokers in Szechuan in the whole population, it is many times larger than in the east.

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:--

I may say here, that although most of the staple arguments and misleading opinions on opium and its disastrous effects come from the missionaries in China, whose good faith I do not question, there is no stronger protest against exaggerated and sensational statements on record than has been supplied by one of their number, the late Dr. Medhurst, of whom it has been truly said, he was "one of the most able, experienced, zealous missionaries in China." Opposed in principle to the opium trade in all its aspects, his statements will be readily accepted as unimpeachable evidence. The following remark appears in an official paper, forwarded to the Chief Superintendent of Trade of Hong Kong in 1855. Alluding to a speech of an American missionary who had visited England, and was reported to have told the British public "that the smokers of the contraband article have increased from eight to fifteen millions, yielding an annual death harvest of more than a million," and further characterizing the traffic as "staining the British name in China with the deepest disgrace," Dr. Medhurst observes, "_such statements do great harm; they produce a fictitious and groundless excitement in the minds of the religious and philanthropic public at home, while they steel against all reasonable and moderate representations the minds of the political and mercantile body abroad. The estimate given has not even the semblance of truth; it is an outrageous exaggeration._" And yet in a memorial presented to Lord Clarendon by two distinguished and justly respected noblemen, the Earls of Shaftesbury and Chichester, on the extent of the opium trade in 1855, these, and still more "outrageous exaggerations" appear with the authority of their names. Lord Shaftesbury officializes the estimate that twenty millions of Chinese are opium smokers, and assumes that of this number one-tenth, that is, two millions, die yearly, and states it as "an appalling fact." Appalling, indeed! But what if it be a mere figment of the imagination, and absolutely devoid, as Dr. Medhurst says, of a semblance of truth?

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.

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:--

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

This is the description given of opium in Dr. Quain's _Dictionary of Medicine_ recently published:--

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

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