Part 20
As before mentioned, the Roman Catholic missionaries have never complained that their missionary labours were impeded by the opium trade. I had the honour of being Solicitor at Hong Kong to a wealthy and important religious community of that persuasion which has missionary stations all over China, Formosa, and Tonquin, and might call the head of the order a personal friend, yet I never heard a complaint of the kind from him or any of his clergy. I was on very intimate terms with a Roman Catholic gentleman who was in the confidence of the Catholic Bishop at Hong Kong, and the Roman Catholic community generally, and I have had conversations with him on missionary matters. He has never uttered such a complaint, but, on the contrary, has always spoken of the success which attended the Roman Catholic missions throughout China. In this connection it should not be forgotten that the Chinese treat all foreigners alike; they know no distinction between them--English, French, German, Spanish, Americans, Portuguese, are to them one people. The victims of the Tientsin massacre were, with the exception, I think, of a Russian gentleman, a community of French nuns. The petition to the House of Commons set out in my first letter emanated from the Protestant missionaries alone, and it has not, I am well assured, been signed by a single Roman Catholic missionary. It is plain, therefore, that this alleged obstacle to the spread of the Gospel in China by the English and American missionaries is a monster of their own creation, and has no real existence. Bishop Burden, of Hong Kong, the missionary bishop for South China, who, although no authority on the opium question, ought, on this point at all events, to be well informed, estimates the number of Protestant converts in China at forty thousand, and of Roman Catholics at one million. The disparity is great, but then it should not be forgotten that Roman Catholic missions in China date from a period probably two centuries earlier than Protestant missions. If out of these forty thousand converts I allow five per cent., or two thousand, to be really sincere and able to give a reason for the faith that is in them, I believe that I am not underrating the precise number of true and _bona fide_ converts which these missionaries have made. But knowing this as I do, it is very far from my intention to cast blame upon the missionaries in consequence. To those who understand the difficulties those devoted men have to contend with in the progress of their labours, the wonder is not that they have done so little, but that they have achieved so much. Upon this point, I would say again, I am very far from attributing any blame to our missionaries, save in so far as they have allowed themselves to be cajoled by certain Chinese and others as to opium smoking. No one is more sensible of their piety, learning, zeal, and industry; and a very sad task it has been to me to impugn their conduct and controvert their views as I have done. A good cause, however, cannot and ought not to be promoted by falsehood; for such this Anti-Opium delusion amounts to, and nothing more, and there can be no hope for more solid results from the missionary field until it is swept from the missionaries' path. Two thousand sincere converts after all is, in my belief, a great and encouraging result, considering the tremendous obstacles our missionaries have to encounter in overcoming in the first instance the prejudice of the Chinese against foreigners, and then in displacing in their minds the idolatrous and sensuous creed that has taken such firm root there, and become, so to speak, engrained in the Chinese nature, and implanting in its stead the truths of the Gospel. Each of these two thousand converts will prove, I am well assured, like the grain of mustard seed that will fructify and in time bring forth much fruit. But it must not be forgotten that China, in the terse and apposite words of the Rev. Mr. Galpin, is "a world in itself," containing as it does about a fourth of the whole human race.
The custom of opium smoking has existed in the Empire of China from time immemorial. You might as well try to reverse the course of Niagara as to wean the Chinese from the use of their favourite drug. As to the Treaty of Tientsin, it is unfair and ungrateful of the missionaries to speak of it as they do. It did no more than reduce to a formal settlement a state of things that had been for several years tacitly acquiesced in and agreed to by the Chinese and British authorities and people. That treaty was prepared with the greatest deliberation by an eminent statesman who was singularly remarkable for his humanity and benevolence, assisted by able subordinates who were in no way deficient in those qualities. The missionaries seem to forget that this very Treaty of Tientsin, which they so denounce, is the charter by which they have now a footing in China, with liberty to preach the Gospel there. They would have no _locus standi_ in China but for this sorely abused treaty. There is a special clause in it drawn up by Lord Elgin himself, providing that we should be at liberty to propagate Christianity in the country. That treaty is the missionaries' protection. It is to it they would now appeal if molested by the Mandarins or people of China. They cry it down for one purpose, and rely upon it for another. I may here not inappropriately observe that the missionaries of Peking seem to have been under a misapprehension as to the nature of this treaty. From their petition to the House of Commons it would appear that they were under the impression that some special clause legalizing the importation of opium into China was introduced into it under pressure from the British Government; but that was a mistake. There is no "clause" whatever in the treaty on the subject of opium. The only place that the word "opium" appears is in the schedule, where it is set down amongst other dutiable articles, such as pepper and nutmegs, exactly as stated by Mr. H. N. Lay. It is plain, then, that these missionary gentlemen had not a copy of the Treaty of Tientsin before them when they drew up their petition, and I doubt very much if any of them ever read the treaty at all. They appear to have got the delusion so strongly into their heads that the legalization of opium was wrung from the Chinese Government that it seems they thought it quite unnecessary to read the treaty and took everything for granted.
I have now, I think, shown and fully refuted the fallacies which within the past thirty years have crept into the minds of the opponents of the Indo-China opium trade, dimming the faculties, blinding the reason, warping the judgment, ministering to the prejudices, deluding the senses, gratifying the feelings, until these fallacies have become so interwoven and welded together as to form and culminate into one CONCRETE PLAUSIBLE, FASCINATING, DEFAMATORY LIE! A cruel, false, and treacherous lie, that misleads alike its votaries and its victims, and that, too, in the names of religion and charity.--A lie circumstantial,--so highly genteel and respectable,--so sentimental and pious,--so sleek and unctuous,--so caressed and flattered,--so bravely dressed, and so beflounced and trimmed with the trappings of truth, that even those who have bedecked the jade fail to see the imposture they have created, so that the tawdry quean struts along receiving homage as she goes, whilst plain honest TRUTH in her russet gown wends her way unnoticed.--I have shown that this Anti-Opium scare is a sham, a mockery, a delusion--a glittering piece of counterfeit coin, which I have broken to pieces and proved to you that, for all its silvery surface, there is nothing but base metal beneath.
Let me now recapitulate. I have, I think, made it irrefutably clear--
1. That the Chinese are a civilized people, very abstemious in their habits, especially as regards the use of opium, spirits, and stimulants of all kinds.
2. That there is and can be no analogy or comparison whatever between opium eating and opium smoking, as each stands separate and apart from the other, differing totally in the mode of use and their effects, and that opium eating is not a Chinese custom.
3. That an overdose of opium, like an excessive draught of spirits, is poisonous and produces immediate death.
4. That opium smoking is a harmless and perfectly innocuous practice, unless immoderately indulged in, which rarely happens, as seldom, indeed, as over-indulgence in tea or tobacco in England.
5. That even when immoderately indulged, any depressing effects resulting from opium smoking are removed simply by discontinuing the use of the drug for a short period.
6. That no death from opium smoking, whether indulged in moderately or excessively, has ever occurred, and that death from such cause is a physical impossibility.
7. That opium smoking is a custom far less enslaving and more easily discontinued than dram drinking or even tobacco smoking.
8. That opium smoking is a luxury which can only be indulged in by those who are well-to-do and is wholly out of the reach of the poor, and, save in Western China and certain other districts, where the poppy is very extensively cultivated and opium comparatively cheap, beyond the means of the working classes.
9. That opium smoking is a universal custom throughout the whole of the immense empire of China, just as tea, wine, or beer drinking is with the people of the United Kingdom, its use being limited only by the ability of the people to procure the drug.
10. That it is admitted by Sir Robert Hart, a high official of the Chinese Government, that the greatest quantity of Indian opium of late years imported into China is only sufficient to supply about one million of people with a modicum of the drug, and that, in his own words, "neither the finances of the State, nor the wealth of the people, nor the growth of its population," can be specially damaged by a luxury which only draws from five-pence to eleven-pence a-piece from the pockets of those who enjoy it, and which is indulged in by a comparatively small number of the Chinese people.
11. That the poppy is extensively cultivated in all the provinces of China proper as well as in Manchuria, and that there is probably three or four times as much native drug produced annually in China as is imported from abroad.
12. That in the western parts of China, where the poppy is more extensively cultivated and opium more generally smoked than in other parts of the empire, no decadence whatever is produced in the mental or bodily health, or the wealth, industry, and prosperity of the people, but on the contrary, that these very people are peculiarly strong and vigorous.
13. That the Chinese Government is not, and never was, sincere in its professed desire to put down the practice of opium smoking in the empire, which is evidenced by the fact that the poppy is largely cultivated throughout the country, and that a revenue is derived by the Government from the native drug.
14. That Hong Kong being the great depôt of Indian opium and the place where the drug is most largely prepared for smoking purposes, and where also the native population (about three-fourths of whom are adult males) are in good circumstances, and therefore better able to indulge in opium smoking than their countrymen in the mainland of China, is the place where the alleged evils of opium smoking, if they existed, would be found in their worst form, yet that _those evils are unknown there_.
15. That the outcry, got up and disseminated for so many years past in England against the Indo-China opium trade has not, and never had, any substantial foundation; that such outcry has arisen from the complaints, of the Protestant missionaries in China, which also are equally baseless, those missionaries having been simply made dupes of by certain designing and mendacious natives for purposes of their own, or of the Government of China.
16. That opium was inserted into the Schedule to the Treaty of Tientsin at the express desire and request of the Chinese authorities; that Lord Elgin wished and proposed to those authorities by his Secretary, Mr. Laurence Oliphant, to place a higher duty than thirty taels on the drug, but that the Chinese officials declined to do so, fearing that, if the duty were raised, an impetus would be given to smuggling.
17. That the career of the Anti-Opium Society has been signalized by a continuous series of mistakes and blunders--commencing with the monstrous figment (the invention of an American missionary) that there were twenty millions of opium smokers in China supplied by the Indian drug, and that _two millions of these smokers died annually from the practice_,--and that the Anti-Opium confederacy is only kept alive by the continued reiteration of exploded fallacies, sophistries, and mis-statements of the same nature.
18. That the British merchants connected with China in the past and the present were and are wholly free from the stigmas cast upon them by the Anti-Opium Society, anent smuggling and the opium trade;[12] that, so far from having acted wrongfully towards China and the Chinese, their conduct towards both has been, and still is, emphatically characterized by honour and rectitude, and by uniform courtesy and kindness; and that those merchants, have deserved well of their country.
19. That the Anti-Opium Society, from its formation to the present time, has wrought nothing but mischief, crippling by its pragmatical efforts the action of Her Majesty's Government, both here and in India and China, abstracting by its mis-statements enormous sums of money from the charitable and benevolent, and squandering that money in the propagation of unfounded theories and injurious reflections against our fellow-countrymen in China; and that the public should withdraw their confidence from the Society, and cease to supply it with one farthing more.
20. That, save in respect of the blockade of Hong Kong by the armed cruisers of the Hoppo or Revenue Farmer of the provinces of the two Kwangs, which inflict great and bitter hardship upon the Chinese merchants of Hong Kong and the junk owners who trade to that place, the British nation, by its Government and people, has amply redeemed the promises made to the people of China by Her Majesty's representative, Sir Henry Elliott, on taking over Hong Kong, which is amply verified by the flourishing state of that Colony, and its large, thriving, and contented Chinese population.
21. That, whilst it is desirable to maintain the most amicable and cordial relations with the Government of China and its various viceroyalties, that most unjustifiable blockade by the Hoppo or Revenue Farmer of Canton should be promptly suppressed; a matter which has only to be taken in hand by Her Majesty's Consul at Canton, supported, if necessary, by the British Minister at Peking, and firmly but courteously pressed upon the Viceroy of the two Kwangs, who cannot but acknowledge the gross injustice and cruel wrong inflicted on Hong Kong and its native merchants by those cruisers, and who has the power and only wants the will to let right be done.
In the course of these lectures I have spoken of some of the vices of the Chinese, and of our own also. The people of England have, however, many virtues, the growth of centuries; one of these is a broad and liberal charity, that pours forth a continuous stream of benevolence over the whole world. It is a virtue that pervades all classes, from our honoured Queen to the humblest of her subjects. It is not without a swelling heart that one can walk through the streets of London and see the noble charitable institutions surrounding him upon all sides, such as hospitals, convalescent institutions, homes for aged and infirm people, educational institutes, and such like, _supported by voluntary contributions_--living evidences of the charity and benevolence of our people in the past and present. Yet these splendid monuments but faintly testify to the flow of munificence perpetually running its course around us. Observe how liberally the public respond to the appeals made to it almost daily. Look at the case of the persecution of the Jews in Russia, the famine in the North of China, the distress and troubles in Ireland. Then, again, there is the charity "that lets not the left hand know what the right hand doeth," of which the world sees nothing, but which is known to go on unceasingly, and which probably is the most liberal of all. The history of the world, so far as I am aware, does not record a parallel to this in any other nation or people. With such an active and unceasing charity going on amongst us, we should take care that this beneficent stream is not diverted into worthless channels, for that would be a matter concerning the whole public.
Now, though I hold in respect all the officers and supporters of the Anti-Opium Society, who are actuated, I admit, by the best motives, and whose characters for benevolence and good faith I do not question, I cannot forbear from repeating that their crusade against the Indo-China opium trade is as unjustifiable as it is mischievous, and is well calculated to produce the results I have deprecated. It encourages the Chinese Government to make untenable demands upon us, under false pretences, and it is an unwarranted interference with an industry, wholly unobjectionable on any but sentimental grounds, affording subsistence to millions of our fellow-subjects in India. It aims, also, at cutting off some eight or ten millions sterling from the revenue of that vast dependency, now expended in ameliorating the condition of its dense population. Furthermore, it offers to useful and legitimate legislation an opposition and obstruction of the worst kind, seeing that it obtrudes upon the Legislature its unfounded and exploded theories, to the displacement or delay of really useful measures.
I say that the Anti-Opium Society, in the course of its agitation for the abolition of this Indo-China opium trade, is vilifying its countrymen and blackening this country in the eyes of the whole world, so that the foreigner can convict us out of our own mouths, and jibe at us for hypocrisy and turpitude we are wholly innocent of, and for crimes we have never committed.[13] I say that the history of this Society presents nothing but a dreary record of energies wasted, talents misapplied, wealth uselessly squandered, charity perverted, and philanthropy run mad. The members of this Society never think, perhaps, of the mischief they have done and are doing. Here has our Government been trying for the past seven or eight years to agree upon a revised commercial treaty with the Government of China, and here also, side by side, is an irresponsible political body doing its utmost to cripple, paralyse, and defeat our Government in its efforts, taking up, in fact, a downright hostile attitude to the action of the Imperial and Indian Governments, by carrying on an unauthorized unofficial correspondence with Li Hung Chang, the Prime Minister, and the most influential public man in China, who is a master of the arts of diplomacy, and who is doing his utmost to get the better of us if he can in the matter of the Chefoo Convention. Here, I say, is this society putting forward Li's audacious and misleading letter to its secretary, Mr. Storrs Turner, as an embodiment of truth and justice. Is this patriotic or proper on the part of this Anti-Opium Society? Should that body, instead of setting itself up as a junto, with a quasi-official standing, having a monopoly of all the virtues, be allowed by the Government to carry on its mischievous organization any longer? I think not. I believe there is no other country in the world--not even America, where liberty has run to seed--where such an intermeddling, anti-national and mischievous confederacy would be permitted to exist. Instead of trying to thwart Her Majesty's Government, as it is doing, it should be the duty of its members, of every Englishman interested in China, and, indeed, of the whole country, to strengthen as far as possible the hands of the Government in its endeavour to bring the pending negotiations for a commercial treaty with China to a successful close. Yet what are the present plans of this pragmatical body? In its latest publication, a compilation of the most fallacious and misleading matter, bearing a title meanly plagiarized from this book, it is announced that the following motion stands upon the Order Book of the House of Commons, and is intended to be moved in the Session for 1883, viz:--
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that in the event of negotiations taking place between the Governments of Her Majesty and China, having reference to the duties levied on opium under the Treaty of Tientsin, the Government of Her Majesty will be pleased to intimate to the Government of China that in any such revision of that treaty _the Government of China will be met as that of an independent State, having the full right to arrange its own import duties as may be deemed expedient_.
What a modest proposition! The Queen's Ministers, it appears, cannot be trusted in their negotiations with the Government of China, and Her Majesty in consequence is to be asked to ignore her constitutional advisers, and personally inform the Chinese Minister that his Government shall be treated as an independent state, and so forth. In fact, this proposal is tantamount to a vote, _pro tanto_ at least, of want of confidence in the Government, which, I have little doubt, would be rejected by an overwhelming majority of both sides of the House. I only hope it will be pressed to a division, as the result, I believe, will show to the country in an unmistakable manner, once and for all, the utter insignificance of the Anti-Opium confederacy as a political body, the falsity and mischief of its teaching, and prove the knell of its existence. If motions like this were to be passed, it would be impossible to carry on Her Majesty's Government. The matter is really too absurd to be seriously dealt with by Parliament, and I bring it before my readers more for the purpose of showing the downright folly, infatuation and fanaticism which characterize this Anti-Opium confederation than for any other purpose. To these political philanthropists and amateur statesmen I would recommend these lines, which seem to me to meet their case exactly:--
"No narrow bigot he, his reasoned view Thy interest, England, ranks with thine, Peru; War at our doors, he sees no danger nigh, But heaves for all alike the impartial sigh; A steady patron of the world alone, The friend of every country--save his own."