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.