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purposes, and to support the Chinese Government in its efforts to suppress the traffic.' I should like to know whether any one of those present ever seriously endeavoured to realise with what result to the Chinese population, and that of India, these measures could be, I will not say carried out, but attempted; or whether it was in the power of one, or even of both Governments united, 'to put an end' to the trade, and prevent the culture of the poppy in their respective dominions. Of course, the object contemplated was moral and philanthropic, for the benefit of the Chinese under both aspects.

But statesmen and ministers, on whom the responsibility of administration and government rests, are not able to proceed on such lines without reference to the means and the probable results. And not only is it necessary that in such a case as this they should carefully consider by what practical means the end could be attained, but whether other and worse evils than those denounced might not follow their adoption. Under these circumstances, and in view of the important bearing of this trade on our relations with China, and the material interests of our Indian Empire, it would seem desirable that the chief arguments and facts on both sides should be placed at this time before the public in a compact and readable form. It is true that these may be found in various Blue Books, and minutes of the evidence obtained by Special Committees of both Houses of Parliament, and other public documents. But many of these, going back over a series of years, are virtually buried; and, judging from the speeches at the Mansion House and the successive debates on the opium question in Parliament, there would appear to be great need of some more accessible information on the whole subject of our relations with China and this vexed question of opium. I propose, therefore, in the following pages to review briefly all the leading facts most necessary to a right understanding of the points at issue.

Some recent information of a valuable and reliable nature has quite recently been afforded by a Yellow Book on 'Opium,' emanating from the Inspector-General of Maritime Customs in China; and, like all that proceeds from that source under the able and energetic administration of Mr. Hart, it leaves little to be desired in lucid arrangement. The Statistical Department of the India Office has also opportunely furnished valuable papers bringing our knowledge up to the latest date as to the opium revenue, culture, &c. In addition, a further correspondence between Sir Thomas Wade, our Minister in China, and Prince Kung, respecting the delay in ratifying the Convention of 1878-the latest attempt on the part of the two Governments to deal with this burning question-has just appeared. Under these circumstances, agreeing with one of the most strenuous advocates of anti-opium agitation, that few are acquainted with the facts, and one of the first things is to spread relevant information,' I proceed to do my part in this good work.

To understand the present state of the opium question and our relations with China in respect to it, something must be known of the past history of both.

The foreign trade in opium is comparatively of recent growth. In 1767 the importation of opium did not exceed 1,000 chests, and it continued at that rate in Portuguese hands for some years. It was not until 1773 that the East India Company made its first shipment in a very small way. In 1781, exactly a century ago, they freighted a vessel with 1,600 chests. Sold at a loss to one of the Hong merchants at Canton, and found unsaleable, it was finally reshipped by him for the Archipelago. A depôt of two small vessels had the same year been formed by the English in the Canton waters.

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In 1793 only, the Chinese authorities began to object to this proceeding. A single vessel was then sent to Whampoa (an anchorage twelve miles from Canton), in no way connected with the East India Company, and does not appear to have been molested. This state of things continued without any noticeable incident until 1820, during an interval therefore of some twenty-seven years, when an order was issued by the Governor of Canton forbidding any vessel entering the port with opium on board. To judge by the language-a very uncertain guide, however-His Excellency was quite in earnest. Be careful,' he concludes, and do not read this proclamation as a mere matter of form, and so tread within the net of the law, for you will find your escape as impracticable as it is for a man to bite his own navel.' The appearance of this document was no doubt in consequence of an edict emanating from Peking, prohibiting the drug under heavy penalties, for the alleged reason that it wasted the time and property of the people of the Innerland, leading them to exchange their silver and commodities for the vile dirt of the foreigner.' Notwithstanding these official acts, however, from this time to the close of the East India Company's monopoly in 1834, so far from escape from the net of the law' being impracticable, the contraband trade in opium off the Bogue, at the mouth of the Canton River, and along the coast northward for some distance, continued uninterruptedly and assumed something of a regular character: so far as an established tariff of fees to be paid for the undisguised connivance of the authorities at Canton could regularise an officially prohibited, and therefore technically a contraband trade. During the eighteen months before Commissioner Lin's raid in 1839, the trade at Canton was actually carried on in four boats carrying the Viceroy's flag, commonly called 'Postcrabs' and 'Scrambling Dragons,' which paid a regular fee to the Custom House and military posts.

In the interval, however, after the end of the East India Company's monopoly, Her Majesty's Government had taken over the direction, and sent out a Commission, with Lord Napier as its chief. From this change, not very wisely inaugurated without any previous com

munication, either with the Chinese Government at Peking or its chief authority at Canton, a violent contention had arisen between. the Chief Commissioner and the Viceroy. Lord Napier was instructed to proceed to Canton and announce his arrival by letter to the Viceroy. His Lordship not only began inauspiciously by having proceeded to Canton without the license or permission, theretofore required from the Viceroy, but insisted on addressing this High officer by letter direct and on equal terms, as the British representative, instead of by humble 'petition' sent through the Chinese Hong merchants, the usual course followed by the Select Committee of the East India Company. This was treated by the Chinese as an unheard-of act of presumption; and the Viceroy indignantly refused to receive, or let any of his subordinates receive, such a communication, and finally ordered a blockade of the factory, the stoppage of trade, provisions, and various other menacing measures. Lord Napier styled him a presumptuous savage,' and the Viceroy in his proclamations spoke of his Lordship as a Barbarian Eye' on whom it was incumbent to obey and keep the laws and statutes.' There has never been such a thing as outside barbarians sending in a letter,' wrote the Governor in great wrath to the Hong merchants.

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It was evident the two pretensions-the one to the supremacy of a Suzerain State, and the other equality-could not be reconciled, and in effect admitted, under the circumstances, of no compromise. Lord Napier accordingly, in order to prevent further injury to the trade, and personal danger to those in the factory, was compelled to return to Macao, surrounded by an insulting guard of Chinese soldiers, where he shortly after died, harassed in mind and worn out by fever brought on by confinement during several weeks at the factory in a tropical heat.

The Chinese were jubilant and triumphant, and graciously allowed the trade to proceed again as usual. From this time, however, to Lin's proceedings in 1839, all our relations became more and more strained, and in an unsettled condition. As regards opium, the depôt ships continued without serious interference at Lintus or elsewhere, between Macao, Hongkong, and Canton. But the authorities of both countries, after Lord Napier's mission, were in a false position, and frequent difficulties and threats of interruption to the trade were the consequence; that being the usual resource, in those days of the Chinese local authorities, to compel obedience from the outside barbarians.'

This troubled period culminated in Commissioner Lin's imprisoning the foreigners in Canton until he extorted the surrender of all opium in Chinese waters, though quite beyond his reach, and otherwise out of his power to seize, by any other exercise of force or authority. The war which followed and terminated in the Treaty of Nanking, in 1842, established our relations, official and commercial, for the first time on a reasonable and well-defined footing. It has

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commonly been called the 'Opium war;' and it was, no doubt, as so often asserted, intimately connected with the illegal traffic in opium '—and yet, had there been no opium or illegal trade of any kind in question, the same causes would have led to the same result. These causes were in operation during the whole period the foreign trade at Canton existed. Violent and arbitrary measures of a kind both oppressive and utterly unjustifiable, were so frequent that they must have led to a total rupture and war, sooner or later, as the only way of remedying a condition of things altogether intolerable.

The war and the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 left the trade in opium on the same footing as before-an unrecognised, and therefore, so far as Chinese legislation was concerned, a prohibited and illegal trade, with power untouched to deal with it as the Government of China might deem best-by the seizure of ships in their waters, or of the drug, when landed on their shores;-and any other repressive and penal measures they might see fit to apply to their own subjects. What they did under these circumstances we shall see presently. If we now trace the progress of the trade in opium, from the year 1790 to 1820, during which the import of the drug had never exceeded 5,000 chests, and rarely amounted to more than 4,000; and thence on to 1840, when the war commenced, we find that in 1830 the importation had increased to 16,873 chests; and thenceforth each decade to the present date has shown a continuous and large increase. In 1840 it had reached 20,619 chests (the quantity destroyed by Lin in the Canton waters), and from that year to 1850 it increased to 52,925 chests. In 1860 the quantity imported into China' was 59,405 chests, according to the best statistics attainable by Mr. Commissioner Dick, without Custom House returns, Hongkong being a free port. In 1870 it increased to 95,045 piculs, and in 1880 to 96,839 piculs. This last amount is slightly over the average quantity sent annually to China during the whole decade preceding; the smallest quantity in any one of these being (in 1875) 84,619 piculs, and the highest (in 1879) 107,970. The average for the whole decade is 88,590 piculs, showing the fluctuation to have been from 84,619 to 107,970, with a variable tendency to increase.

From this retrospect it will be seen it was not the English, as so constantly assumed, but the Portuguese, who first imported opium into China. Secondly, that in 1781 the foreign trade in the drug

1 See Report of Imperial Maritime Customs, ii. Special series, No. 4, on Opium (Hongkong Statistics '), published by order of the Inspector-General of Customs-just issued.

2 The Malwa opium chests are equivalent to one picul, but Patna and Benares to one picul twenty catties-that is, twenty catties more; but only 40 per cent. of the total imports in the last ten years consisted of Patna and Benares (the Government opium), Malwa being the production of native States, and amounts to 60 per cent. of the whole quantity imported into China from India.

was so insignificant that 1,600 chests could not be sold. At this date, then, we may fairly conclude that, if the Chinese had any acquaintance with opium, otherwise than as a medicine, they did not derive their supplies from abroad-from India or elsewhere. Dr. Wells Williams, who doubts whether the Chinese had long known opium, even as a medicine, admits that, from the way the poppy is mentioned in the Chinese Herbal, compiled more than two centuries ago, there is reason to suppose it to be indigenous. And as both the plant and the inspissated juice, together with the mode of collecting the latter, is mentioned, the inference is clearly that it was well known at this period, and in common use otherwise than as a medicine. We know, further, that in the General History of the Southern Province of Yunnan, which was revised and republished in the first year of Kien-Lung's reign3 (A.D. 1736), opium is noted as a common product of Yung-Chang-Foo, and Mr. Hobson, the Commissioner of Customs, says truly, if 134 years ago so much opium was produced as to deserve it notice in such a work,' it may well have increased since, and could be no novelty at the beginning of the present century. Dr. Williams, in his exhaustive chapter on the opium trade, hazards a guess that, as the natives of Assam and the adjoining region have used opium for a long period, it is not unlikely that it was made known to the Chinese from that quarter.' Whether it be likely or not, there is no evidence of the fact. And, if so derived, the Chinese must have bettered their instruction by inventing the opium pipe, and smoking instead of eating or drinking it, as they do yet in India and the adjoining countries. He readily admits, at all events, that none was imported coast-wise for scores of years after that date.' It is beyond all doubt that the use of opium has been general amongst Asiatic nations as a stimulant and narcotic from a time unknown, and consumed in one form or other, much as wine, beer, and spirits are used by Europeans. We cannot even say what country is the original habitat of the poppy. It is cultivated in India, Asia Minor, Persia, and Egypt, and, if not indigenous in China, it has certainly for a very long time been cultivated there by the natives.

For our present purpose it is unimportant how far back in the last century-that is, before any foreign opium was imported-the cultivation and consumption of the produce became common. In 1792, the date of Lord Macartney's embassy, Barrow mentions the prevalent use of the drug by officials and others in the upper ranks of society; and yet at that date, and for thirty years later, the whole amount of imported opium did not exceed 4,000 chests, and without showing any tendency in that period to increase. It is important to know in this long interval what the Chinese themselves were doing in the

3 See Mr. Hobson's Report for 1868 in Reports on Trade, published by the Inspector-General of Maritime Customs.

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