Part 5

No doubt these most estimable and respectable but infatuated gentlemen suppose that their petition will have some weight with the Legislature. I believe and hope it will, but not exactly of the kind expected; for I shall be surprised indeed, if it be not treated as it deserves, _i.e._ as a downright contempt of the House of Commons; for it seems to me to be an insult to the common sense not only of the House in its collective capacity, but of every individual member. In saying this I am far from attributing to these missionary clergymen a wilful intention to state what they knew to be untrue, nor to insult or mislead the Legislature, for I am assured that one and all of them would be incapable of so doing. I am sure they thoroughly believe every word they have stated to be true; but then it must be remembered that the effect upon the public mind and the injury done to society by the publication of fallacious and untrue statements, are in no way lessened because their authors suppose those statements to be, in fact, true and correct.

I have shown you that Mr. Turner admits that opium smoking is common all over China. But, he says, the Chinese do not all smoke. In his book he affirms that it is only in recent years that opium has been grown in China. This is the passage, it occurs at page 2:--"Indigenous in Asia, the first abode of the human species, the poppy has long been cultivated in Egypt, Turkey, Persia, and _recently_ in China and Manchuria. It is well known in our gardens, grows wild in some parts of England, and is cultivated in Surrey for the supply of poppy heads to the London market. From the time of Hippocrates to the present day _it has been the physician's invaluable ally in his struggles against disease and death_."

This is about the most remarkable statement I have ever read. The greater includes the less, and if the poppy is indigenous to Asia it is, of course, indigenous also to China and Manchuria, which with the other dominions of China comprise fully one-fourth of the entire Asiatic continent. This, indeed, Mr. Storrs Turner does not deny in terms, but it is plain he wished his readers to believe that the poppy was _not_ indigenous to those countries, and was only recently introduced there. The passage involves that sort of fallacy which Lord Palmerston termed "a distinction without a difference." As to the poppy being indigenous to the whole of Asia and notably to the most fertile parts of it, _e.g._ China and Manchuria, there can be no doubt, and therefore no difference, but the distinction is that it is only of late years that it has been _cultivated_ in those countries. The poppy may grow wild over a continent, but be cultivated only in a part. I will show you by-and-by, upon excellent authority and by the strongest grounds for inference, that the poppy is not only indigenous to China, but has been cultivated there for various purposes other than for medical ones and for smoking, certainly for two thousand, and probably for four or five thousand years. An ordinary reader, especially one not familiar with the geography of Asia, would conclude from this passage in Mr. Turner's book that China and Manchuria were not in Asia at all, but that of late years the poppy had been introduced into those countries from that continent. Thus much for the Gospel of the Anti-opiumists.

I now confront Mr. Storrs Turner with another book, which everyone must admit is of greater authority than his. It is a book published towards the close of 1881 by a high official of the Chinese Government, then Mr. but now Sir Robert Hart, G.C.M.G., the Inspector-General of Chinese Customs, a man who knows China and the Chinese better, perhaps, than any living European. That gentleman tells a very different tale about opium to what the Anti-Opium Society has hitherto regaled the world with. This book is an official one, issued from the Statistical Department of the Inspector-General of Chinese Customs at Shanghai for the use and guidance of the Chinese Government. It stands upon a very different footing to the volume published by Mr. Turner, the paid secretary and strenuous advocate of the Anti-Opium Society. Sir Robert Hart has entire control over the revenue of China as far as regards foreign trade. At every treaty port open to foreign vessels there is a foreign Commissioner of Customs, and Sir Robert Hart is the supreme head of these commissioners. He is a man deservedly trusted and respected by the Chinese Government; a man of learning and talents, and I need hardly add of the very highest character, and, I believe, he is one of the most accomplished Chinese scholars that could be found. He says that opium has been grown in China from a remote period, and was smoked there before a particle of foreign opium ever came into the country. This is the passage from his--the now famous yellow-book:--

In addition to the foreign drug there is also the native product. Reliable statistics cannot be obtained respecting the total quantity produced. Ichang, the port nearest to Szechwan, the province which is generally believed to be the chief producer and chief consumer of native opium, estimates the total production of native opium at twenty-five thousand chests annually; while another port, Ningpo, far away on the coast, estimates it at two hundred and sixty-five thousand. Treating all such replies as merely so many guesses, there are, it is to be remarked, two statements which may be taken as facts in this connection: the one is that, so far as we know to-day, the native opium produced does not exceed the foreign import in quantity; _and the other that native opium was known, produced, and used long before any Europeans began the sale of the foreign drug along the coast_.

So much for Mr. Storrs Turner's bold assertion that it is only recently that opium has been cultivated in China; the obvious inference which he wished the reader to draw from it being that it was the importation of the Indian drug into China that induced the natives to plant opium there. Now, with respect to that most unfounded charge of the Chinese disliking the English for introducing opium into their country, and British commerce declining in consequence, I assure you that all that is simply moonshine. These statements are not merely false assumptions, they are simply untrue. No one who has had any experience of China and its people, does not know perfectly well, that of the whole foreign trade with China the British do at least four-fifths; not only have we the lion's share of the trade, but it is an unquestionable fact that of all the nations who have made treaties and had dealings with China, the British are and have been for many years the most respected by the Chinese people. It is, I say, an indisputable fact, that notwithstanding all our past troubles about smuggling and our wars with China, which Mr. Turner is so fond of dilating upon, that at this day, by high and low, rich and poor, from the mandarin to the humble coolie, England is held in higher regard than any other nation. If trade with China has in any way declined, the fact is traceable to other and different causes, which it is not my province to enter upon.

Now, why are England and Englishmen thought so well of by the Chinese? It is simply because the British merchants and British people in China have acted towards the Chinese, with whom they have been brought into contact, with honour and rectitude--because in their intercourse with the natives they have been kind, considerate, and obliging--because, instead of resenting the old rude and overbearing manners of the Chinese officials and others, they have returned good for evil, and shown by their conciliatory bearing, and gentlemanly and straightforward conduct, that the British people are not the barbarians they had been taught to believe. By such means the British residents in China have gone far to break down the barrier of prejudice towards foreigners behind which the people of that country had hedged themselves, thus preparing the way for the labours of the missionaries and making, in fact, missionary work possible. If further proof were wanting that the British are held in high estimation by the people and the Government of China, it will be found in the fact, that our own countryman, Sir Robert Hart, who before entering the service of the Chinese Government had been in the diplomatic service of his own country, now occupies the high and honourable position of Inspector-General of Chinese Customs, and is, I may add, the trusted counsellor of the Government of China.

It is not very long since the Governor of Canton paid a visit to the Governor of Hong Kong; such an act of courtesy to Her Majesty's representative on the part of so great a Chinese magnate was until then, I believe, unprecedented. The constant exclamation of the great mandarin as he was being driven through the streets of Hong Kong was--"What a wonderful place! What a wonderful place!" in allusion to the fine buildings, the wide and clean streets,--a strong contrast to those of Canton--and the dense and busy population around him. And yet more recently, that is during the summer of 1882, a greater personage still paid an official visit to the Hon. W. H. Marsh, who during the absence of Sir George Bowen, the Governor, worthily administers the affairs of the colony--I refer to the present viceroy of the provinces of Kwantung and Kwangsi, commonly called the "two Kwangs," an official only next in importance to His Excellency Li Hung Chang, the Governor of Petchili. Do you think we should have such a state of things if we were demoralizing and ruining the people of China, as is alleged by the Anti-Opium Society, or if, indeed, the Chinese people or Government had any real grievance against us.

Upon this point I cannot refrain from mentioning an incident that occurred soon after I arrived in China. A respectable Chinaman asked me to prepare his will. He gave me for the purpose, written instructions in Chinese characters, which I had translated. On reading the translation I found his instructions very clearly drawn up, but what was gratifying to me, and what is pertinent to my subject, was the following passage, with which he commenced them:--"Having," said he, "under the just and merciful laws administered by the English Government of Hong Kong, amassed in commerce considerable wealth, I now, feeling myself in failing health, wish to make a distribution of the same." There are thousands like that Chinaman in Hong Kong, and also in Shanghai, and in all the treaty ports of China. In speaking as this man did, he was only giving expression to the feelings of all his countrymen who have had dealings with the English in China. Are such feelings on the part of these Chinese consistent with the consciousness that we are enriching ourselves by ruining the health and morals of their countrymen, as is most wrongfully put forward by the Anti-Opium Society and its allies the Protestant missionaries? No; they bespeak perfect confidence, respect, and gratitude towards us; for oppressed and plundered as the Chinese have been by their own officials, there is no other people on the face of the earth who more thoroughly appreciate justice and equity in the administration of public affairs; thus it is that they respect the British rule, which they have found by experience to be the embodiment of both.

There are very few, perhaps, in this country who know what Hong Kong really is. It is now a flourishing and beautiful city, standing upon a site which, but the other day, was a barren rock. Commerce with its civilising influence has transformed it into a "thing of beauty," "an emerald gem of the _eastern_ world." Forty years ago, the English Government sent out a commissioner to report upon the capabilities of the place for a town or settlement. He sent home word that there was just room there for _one_ house. He little dreamt that upon that barren inhospitable spot within a few years would be realised the poet's dream when he wrote:--

Oh, had we some bright little isle of our own In a blue summer ocean far off alone, Where a leaf never dies, midst the still blooming bowers, And the bee banquets on through a whole year of flowers.

He little thought that on that very site there would soon be many thousands of houses, some of them palatial buildings, including many Christian churches and some heathen temples, for liberty of conscience reigns there supreme; with a Chinese population of over one hundred and fifty thousand. These people are all doing well. Some of them are wealthy merchants; many of them are shop-keepers; others are artificers; and a very large number of them are labourers or coolies. There is no pauperism in the colony. The people there are all well-to-do, or able to live comfortably, and, what is more, they are all happy and contented. A comparatively small body of police preserves the peace of the colony; for, thanks to a succession of wise and able governors, local crime has been reduced to a minimum; serious offences are very rare amongst the regular inhabitants. It is the criminal classes from the mainland which really give trouble, for Hong Kong labours under the disadvantage of being close to two large cities on the Pearl River--Canton and Fatchan, notorious for piratical and other criminal classes. You might send a child from one end of the town to the other without fear of molestation. Indeed, the natives themselves are the very best police; for, take the Chinese all round, they are the most orderly and law-abiding people in the world. They respect the British Government as much as the British people do themselves. They bring their families to Hong Kong, settle down there, and make themselves perfectly at home, finding more security and happiness there than they ever could attain in their own country; because in Hong Kong there is and has always been perfect equality before the law for every man, irrespective of race, colour, or nationality. The life and property of every man there is secure. This is not the case in China.

These are the fruits of commerce which brings peace and plenty in its train, which sweeps aside the dust of ignorance, fanaticism, and superstition--which has reclaimed the deserts of Australia and North America, and spread flourishing cities there, where law and order, truth and justice, peace and happiness, religion and piety are established. These are the achievements of British merchants who have won for our Sovereign the Imperial diadem she wears, and made their country the mistress of the world. These are the people who have done all this, and better still, made the name of England honoured and respected throughout the whole world, and sent the Gospel into every land. Yet those very men Mr. Storrs Turner and other anti-opium fanatics would cover with obloquy, because, forsooth, some British merchants have been concerned in this perfectly justifiable Indo-Chinese opium trade.

Mr. Turner in his book speaks of the Chinese Government as a paternal Government, which, the moment it finds any practices on foot injurious to the people, at once takes steps to put them down. I tell you, as a fact, that a more corrupt Government,[2] so far at least as the Judges and high Mandarins downwards are concerned, never existed in the whole world. There is no such thing as justice to be had without paying for it; if it is not a misnomer to say so, for this so-called justice is bought and sold every day. Corruption pervades the whole official class. I could detail facts as to the punishment of the innocent and the escape of the guilty, which came under my own observation, that would make one's flesh creep. This is why the Chinese of Hong Kong respect so much the British Government, whose rule is just and equitable.

Now there is another point which I wish more particularly to impress upon you, it is this: Anyone hearing of the alleged dreadful effects upon the Chinese of opium smoking, and our wicked conduct in forcing the drug upon them, and making them buy it whether they wish to do so or not, would think that these Chinese were a simple, unsophisticated people, something like the natives of Madagascar,--a people lately rescued from barbarism by missionaries; that they were a weak race, without mental stamina or strength of mind--a soft simple, easily-persuaded race. These are some more of the erroneous views which the Anti-Opium Society tries to impress upon the public mind, and which its Secretary, Mr. Storrs Turner, in particular, artfully endeavours to inculcate. To prove that this is so, I have only to read you a passage from his work. But before doing so, let me assure you that there is not a more astute, active-minded, and knowing race of people under the sun than the Chinese. For craft and subtlety I will back one of them against any European. At page 3 you will read:--

More opium is consumed in China than in all the rest of the world, and nearly the whole of the opium imported into China is shipped from Calcutta and Bombay. The East and the West, England, India, and China, act and re-act upon each other through the medium of poppy-juice. Simple mention of the relations which these three great countries bear to the drug is enough to show that a very grave question is involved in the trade. England is the grower, manufacturer, and seller; India furnishes the farm and the factory; China is buyer and consumer. The question which obviously arises is this, Is it morally justifiable and politically expedient for the English nation to continue the production and sale of a drug so deleterious to its consumers? Before, however, we enter upon a consideration of this question, we must explain how it has come to pass that the British nation has got into this unseemly position. Otherwise, the fact that the British Government is actually implicated in such a trade may well appear incredible. If, for instance, any minister could be shameless enough to suggest that England should embark on a vast scale into the business of distillers, and with national funds, by servants of Government, under inspection and control of Parliament, _produce and export annually ten or twenty millions' worth of gin and whisky to intoxicate the populous tribes of Central Africa, he would be greeted by a general outcry of indignation. Yet the very thing which we scout as an imagination, we consent to as a reality._ We are maintaining our Indian Empire by our profits as wholesale dealers in an article which, to say the best of it, is as bad as gin.

Now, is that a fair parallel? Is it honest or just to place the civilized, wise, and educated Chinese in the same category with the barbarous natives of Central Africa? This, I assure you is but a fair specimen of the misleading character of Mr. Turner's book and an example of the teaching by which people are made the dupes of the Anti-Opium Society. This is the language which Mr. Storrs Turner applies to his country and countrymen to gratify himself and his fanatical followers. China, though a heathen, is a civilized nation. The civilization of the Chinese does not date from yesterday. When England was inhabited by painted savages, China was a civilized and flourishing Empire. When ancient Greece was struggling into existence, China was a settled nation, with a religion and with laws and literature dating back to a period lost in the mist of ages. When Alexander, miscalled the Great, fancied he had conquered the world, and sighed that there was no other country to subdue, the mighty Empire of China, with its teeming millions, and a civilization far superior, taken altogether, to any that he had yet known, was a flourishing nation, and happily far away from the assaults of him and his conquering force. Five thousand years ago, as the Rev. Dr. Legge, the Professor of Chinese at Oxford, tells us, the Chinese believed in one God and had, in fact, a theology and a system of ethics known now as Confucianism, certainly superior to that of Greece or Rome. They had then and still have a written language of their own, in which the works of their sages and philosophers are recorded. There are books extant in that language for more than three thousand years ago. In a learned and very interesting book, written by Dr. Legge, entitled "The Religions of China," it is shown that the Chinese, not only of to-day, but of five thousand years ago, were a great nation. Was it then, I again ask, honest or fair of the Rev. Storrs Turner, who is himself no mean Chinese scholar, to mislead his readers by making use of so forced and inapplicable a comparison? Can there, in fact, be any analogy whatever between the Indo-China opium trade, even supposing that the smoking of the drug were as deleterious to the system as is alleged, and sending whisky from England to the savages of Central Africa? No man could have known better than Mr. Turner that his simile was false and misleading, for he has lived in China for many years. An ordinary person reading that gentleman's book would swallow this simile as one precisely in point, and end by feeling horrified at the iniquities we were perpetrating in China, which is, no doubt, the exact result that he looked for. I recently met a lady with whom I had been in correspondence for some time on professional business. In the course of conversation we happened to speak about opium, and the moment the subject was mentioned she turned up her eyes in horror and declared that she was ashamed of her country for the wrong it was inflicting upon the natives of China. Mr. Turner's wonderful parallel between the civilized Chinese and the African savages had plainly produced its desired effect upon her. I very soon, however, undeceived her on the point, as I have since had the pleasure of doing with many others labouring under the like delusions. I am sorry to say that it is with the gentler sex that our Anti-Opium fanatics make their most profitable converts. I honour those ladies for their fond delusion, which shows that their hearts are better than their heads; that their good intentions run in advance of them, and make them ready victims. Well, well, I trust their charity will soon be diverted into worthier channels. Unfortunately, the minds of many in England have become imbued with the same erroneous belief, which is entirely owing to the mischievous teaching of the Anti-Opium Society, and to the powerful machinery that this Society has available for disseminating its doctrines. I am sorry, indeed, to have to allude thus to Mr. Storrs Turner and his book, for I respect him as a clergyman, a scholar, and a gentleman; but I cannot avoid doing so, for certain it is that if you mean to refute Mahomedanism you cannot spare Mahomed or the Alkoran.