[61] Mr. Storrs Turner himself, the secretary of the Society, allows that this is a difficult part of the question. See his article in the Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1882.
[62] Mr. Brereton (p. 74) estimates the amount consumed in California alone to be worth £100,000.
[63] Mr. Acheson, in a memorandum to the Custom inspectorate from Canton, says it amounts to 5,000 piculs.
[64] This, however, does not fairly represent the difference, as Indian opium yields twenty per cent. more extract.
[65] Brereton, p. 139.
[66] Financial Statement, 1882, sect. 172.
[67] The Right Hon. J. Whittaker Ellis.
[68] Dr. Christlieb, a German professor, says 400,000; but Dr. Medhurst, a medical man resident for years in China, with all his life-long experience and knowledge would not even hazard a conjecture as to the annual death-rate. Dr. Lockhart says, “It is impossible to say what is the number of such victims either among the higher or lower classes.” Ait Varius, negat Scaurus. Utri creditis, Quirites?
[69] Don Sinibaldo (p. 11). To prohibit opium, he says, because some people kill themselves with it, is as bad as if we prohibited razors because some people cut their throats with them. He also says that he considers the number of deaths by opium in China to be less in proportion than the number of deaths self-inflicted by firearms in France—i.e. that they do not number 3,500 in all.
[70] Swinhoe’s Campaign of 1860, p. 248.