III. OPIUM.
The largest and most interesting Chinese import—Peculiarities of the trade—Nominally contraband—But openly dealt in—Ships anchored in the Canton river—Or near the trading-ports—Wusung—Opium cargoes discharged into old hulks before entering Shanghai port—Importance of the opium traffic as a factor in foreign intercourse—The opium clippers—The opium market liable to much variation—Piracy—The clippers were armed—Occasionally attacked—Anomalous position—Alcock's aversion to the opium traffic—His reasons—Experience at Shanghai modifies his opinion—The trade being bound up with our Indian and Chinese commerce—No attempt to stop it could do other than aggravate the mischief—Still wishes to see the trade modified or abolished—Despatch to Sir J. Bowring—His desire to devise some scheme—His last proposal of 1870—Ambiguous attitude of the British Government—Inheritors of the East India Company's traditions—These forbad the carrying of opium in their ships—Question of legalising the traffic—1885 Chinese Government trebles the import duty and asks the help of the Hongkong Government for its collection.
The most interesting constituent of trade in China has always been opium, especially since the product of British India was so much improved and stimulated by the Government as practically to supersede in the China market the demand for the production of other countries. The value of the opium imported exceeded that of all other articles, the figures being returned at $23,000,000 and $20,000,000 respectively for the year 1845. As the exports of Chinese produce were at that time estimated at $37,000,000, it is evident that opium played a most important part in the adjustment of the balance of trade; and as it came from India and the returns from it had to go thither, opium and raw cotton, which also came from India, formed the pivot of exchange. As the opium was paid for in silver and not by the barter of produce, it was natural to charge it with the loss of the silver which was annually shipped away from China, and which was assumed to reach the amount of £2,000,000 sterling, though that seems to be an exaggeration.
The trade in this commodity differs from all ordinary commerce in the conditions under which it has been carried on, and in the sentiments which have grown up concerning it. Until the treaty made by Lord Elgin in 1858 the importation of opium had been for many years nominally contraband, while yet the trade in it was as open as that in any other commodity and was as little interfered with by the Government. Laxity and connivance being the characteristics of Chinese officialdom, there would be nothing extraordinary even in the official patronage of a traffic which was forbidden by the State, so that it would not be safe to infer from the outward show what the real mind of the responsible Government was on that or any other subject. The necessity of saving appearances, an object always so dear to the Chinese heart, necessitated a special machinery for conducting the trade in opium. Before the war, as has been already said, the ships carrying the drug anchored at certain rendezvous in the estuary of the Canton river, where they delivered their goods on the order of the merchants who were located in Canton or Macao. The vessels also made excursions up the coast, where they had direct dealings with the Chinese, the master acting as agent for the owners. And when the northern ports were opened, after the treaty of Nanking, the opium depot ships were stationed at convenient points on the coast in the vicinity of the trading-ports. The most important of these stations was at Wusung, on the Hwangpu river, nine miles by road from Shanghai. There were sometimes a dozen, and never less than half-a-dozen, hulks moored there, dismantled, housed-in, and unfit for sea. The supply was kept up in the earlier days by fast schooners and latterly by steamers, which in the period before the treaty of 1858 discharged their opium into these hulks without surveillance of any kind, and then proceeded up the river to Shanghai with the rest of their cargo, which, though often consisting of but a few odd packages, was taken charge of by the custom-house with the utmost punctilio, while the valuable cargo of opium was ignored as if it did not exist.
The opium trade was a ruling factor in the general scheme of foreign intercourse and residence in China. The postal communication, for example, on the coast and between India and China was practically dependent on it; for, being a precious commodity, it could afford to pay very high charges for freight, and the opium clippers could be run regardless of expense, as will be more fully described in the [Chapter] on "Shipping."
The high value of the article influenced the conduct of the trade in a variety of ways, one in particular being that the vessels carrying it had to go heavily armed. The coast of China before the war and after swarmed with pirates, to whom so portable an article as opium offered an irresistible temptation. The clippers on the coast were usually small schooners from 100 to 200 tons burthen, and though with their superior sailing powers they could always take care of themselves in a breeze, they would have been helpless in a calm unless prepared to stand to their guns. It was sometimes alleged by those opposed to the traffic that these vessels were little better than pirates themselves, inasmuch as they were forcing a trade prohibited by the laws of the empire, and were armed to resist the authorities. The opium-carriers were not unfrequently attacked by pirates, sometimes captured and destroyed by them; but there never seems to have been any interference or complaint on the part of the Government, even when prompted thereto by British consuls. Nevertheless it was an anomalous state of things, though one far from unusual in the first third of the century, that European vessels should ply their trade armed like privateers.
The attitude of Consul Alcock towards the opium trade was, from the earliest days of his consulship in Foochow until his final departure from China in 1870, one of consistent aversion, so decided, indeed, that in some of the arguments adduced in his Foochow reports against the trade the conclusion somewhat outran the premisses, as he in after years acknowledged by marginal notes on those earlier despatches:—
A trade prohibited and denounced alike as illegal and injurious by the Chinese authority constitutes a very anomalous position both for British subjects and British authorities, giving to the latter an appearance of collusion or connivance at the infraction of the laws of China, which must be held to reflect upon their integrity and good faith by the Chinese.
No small portion of the odium attaching to the illicit traffic in China falls upon the consular authorities under whose jurisdiction the sales take place, and upon the whole nation whose subjects are engaged in the trade; and the foundations of the largest smuggling trade in the world are largely extended, carrying with them a habit of violating the laws of another country.
The opium is of necessity inimical and opposed to the enlargement of our manufacturing trade.
That which has been said of war may with still greater force apply to the illicit traffic in opium, "It is the loss of the many that is the gain of the few."
Whichever way we turn, evil of some kind connected with this monstrous trade and monopoly of large houses meets our eye.
In order to do justice to the agents in the traffic, he adds in the same report on the trade for 1845—
While the cultivation and sale of opium are sanctioned and encouraged for the purposes of revenue in India, and those who purchase the drug deriving wealth and importance from the disposal of it in China are free from blame, it is vain to attempt to throw exclusive opprobrium upon the last agents in the transaction.
These were the impressions of a fresh and presumably unprejudiced mind taking its first survey of the state of our commercial intercourse with China. They were reflections necessarily of a somewhat abstract character, formed on a very limited acquaintance with the actualities of a trade which did not yet exist in Foochow. A few years' experience at the great commercial mart of Shanghai widened the views of the consul materially, and showed him that there was more in this opium question than meets the eye of the mere philosopher. A confidential report on the subject made in 1852 treats the matter from a more statesman-like as well as a more businesslike point of view. In that paper he does more than deplore the evil, and while seeking earnestly for a remedy, fully recognises the practical difficulties and the danger of curing that which is bad by something which is worse.
The opium trade [he observes in a despatch to Sir John Bowring] is not simply a question of commerce but first and chiefly one of revenue—or, in other words, of finance, of national government and taxation—in which a ninth of the whole income of Great Britain and a seventh of that of British India is engaged.
The trade of Great Britain with India in the year 1850 showed by the official returns an export of manufactures to the value of £8,000,000, leaving a large balance of trade against that country. A portion of the revenue of India has also to be annually remitted to England in addition, for payment of the dividends on Indian stock and a portion of the Government expenses. These remittances are now profitably made viâ China, by means of the opium sold there; and failing this, serious charges would have to be incurred which must curtail both the trade and the resources of the Indian Exchequer.
In China, again, scarcely a million and a half of manufactured goods can find a market; yet we buy of tea and silk for shipment to Great Britain not less than five millions, and the difference is paid by opium.
A trade of £10,000,000 in British manufactures is therefore at stake, and a revenue of £9,000,000—six to the British and three to the Indian Treasury.
Which of these is the more important in a national point of view,—the commerce, or the revenue derived from it? Both are, however, so essential to our interests, imperial and commercial, that any risk to either has long been regarded with distrust and alarm, and tends to give a character of timidity to our policy and measures for the maintenance of our relations with China—the more disastrous in its results, that to the oriental mind it is a sure indication of weakness, and to the weak the Chinese are both inexorable and faithless.
That the opium trade, illegal as it is, forms an essential element, interference with which would derange the whole circle of operations, must be too apparent to require further demonstration.
Reference to the practical details of the colossal trade in which it plays so prominent a part shows that it is inextricably mixed up with every trading operation between the three countries, and that to recognise the one and ignore the other is about as difficult in any practical sense as to accept the acquaintance of one of the Siamese twins and deny all knowledge of his brother.
No attempt of the British Government to stop or materially diminish the consumption could possibly avail, or be otherwise than productive of aggravated mischief to India, to China, and to the whole world, by giving a motive for its forced production where it is now unknown, and throwing the trade into hands less scrupulous, and relieved of all those checks which under the British flag prevent the trade from taking the worst characters of smuggling, and being confounded with other acts of a lawless and piratical nature affecting life and property, to the destruction of all friendly or commercial relations between the two races. It is also sufficient to bear in mind that it is a traffic, as has been shown, which vitalises the whole of our commerce in the East; that without such means of laying down funds the whole trade would languish, and its present proportions, colossal as they are, soon shrink into other and insignificant dimensions; that the two branches of trade are otherwise so inextricably interwoven, that no means could be devised (were they less essential to each other) of separating them. And finally, although Great Britain has much to lose, China in such a quixotic enterprise has little or nothing to gain.
Notwithstanding all these weighty considerations, Mr Alcock never swerved in his desire to see "the opium trade, with all its train of contradictions, anomalies, and falsifying conditions," modified, if not done away with. In a careful despatch to Sir John Bowring dated May 6, 1854, reviewing our whole position in China, he thus expresses himself:—
Any modification for the better in our relations must, I believe, begin here. We must either find means of inducing the Chinese Government to diminish the evil by legalising the trade, or enter the field of discussion ... with a stone wall before us.... The legalisation would go far to diminish the obstacle such an outrider to our treaty creates; but far better would it be, and more profitable in the end in view of what China might become commercially to Europe, America, and to Great Britain specially, if the Indian Government abandoned their three million sterling revenue from the cultivation of opium, and our merchants submitted to the temporary prejudice or inconvenience of importing silver for the balance of trade.
Nearly twenty years afterwards we find Mr Alcock still engaged on the problem how to diminish the trade in opium without dislocating both the trade and finance of India, his last act on retiring from China in 1870 having been to propose a fiscal scheme of rearrangement by which the opium trade might undergo a process of slow and painless extinction.[23]
The attitude of the British Government towards the opium trade has always been ambiguous. Succeeding to the inheritance of the East India Company as the great growers of opium, they had to carry on its traditions. These had led the Company in its trading days into some striking inconsistencies, for though they cultivated the poppy expressly for the China market, employing all the intelligence at their command to adapt their product to the special tastes of the Chinese, they yet refused to carry a single chest of it in their own ships which traded to China. By this policy they thought they could exonerate themselves in face of the Chinese authorities from participation in a trade which was under the ban of that Government. The importation of the drug was thus thrown upon private adventurers, and whenever the subject was agitated in Canton and Macao, none were so warm in their denunciations of the trade as the servants of the East India Company. This was notably the case with Captain Elliot, who, after leaving the Company's service and becoming representative of the Crown, never wearied in his strictures on the opium traffic.
The question of legalising the traffic had frequently before been considered by the Chinese Government,[24] and it was fully expected that this was the policy which would prevail in Peking in 1837. The pendulum swung to the opposite side, namely, that of prohibition, and legalisation was not adopted until 1858. But once adopted, the idea made such progress that in 1885 the Chinese Government made a successful appeal to the British Government to be allowed to treble the import duty authorised in 1858, and that the Colonial Government of Hongkong should render them special assistance in collecting it.