"To a government, its people's industries must be of higher importance than revenue. I would, therefore, advise that taxes be remitted, in order that industries may be preserved. Think for the people, and forego revenue. Export duties ought to be light, in order that the surplus production of a people may go for sale elsewhere. Import duties, on the contrary, are the duties which ought to be retained; but the use to be made of each commodity ought to be well weighed. If it is something people cannot do without, it ought to be exempt from duty; but if it is a luxury, it ought to be heavily taxed. On the right application of these principles depend the nation's wealth, and the people's too."
Nothing whatever has been done. From Foochow the export has declined by one-half in ten years, and deprived the revenue of a million taels a year, and the people of five million taels in wages. The opinion is indeed general "that the gradual extinction of the China tea trade is practically assured, unless something retards Indian and Ceylon production, or drastic measures are adopted."
The "Shanli," or hill tax; the "Likin," or war tax, and the export duty, are all maintained intact, and the unfortunate Chinese growers have to compete with the untaxed tea of India and Ceylon. What distress is likely soon to ensue may be gathered from the fact that the production of one-half only of the output of the Assam Company, with its few hundred employés, affords the main sustenance of 4500 Chinese families, or, say, about 20,000 persons. They are themselves, moreover, so apprehensive that the introduction of the machinery in vogue in India and Ceylon will diminish employment that the Government has not felt itself strong enough to protect its use.
Foreign Opium Traffic.
37.—The opium question excites much interest in England. Some philanthropists have feared that the revenue of over 5,000,000l. a year, derived by the Indian Government from the licensed and carefully-restricted cultivation of the raw material of the valuable drug, is in major degree responsible for the reported influence upon the Chinese of opium smoking. They may be somewhat reassured by the result of a careful European inquiry, officially instituted throughout the Empire. It shows that imported opium is only smoked by the affluent, the luxurious, and well-to-do, or, at most, by one-third of one per cent. of the population; that is, by about three per thousand.
The annual importation used to amount to an average of 100,000 chests, yielding, for smoking, about 4000 tons of boiled opium. They cost the consumers upwards of 17,000,000l., of which 3,000,000l. went to the Chinese revenue. But it is a rapidly declining element in Chinese finances, and the deficit may, before long, have to be made up by increasing the duties upon other imports.
Native Opium.
38.—Native opium was known, produced, and used in China long before any Europeans began the sale of the foreign drug. The records of the 10th century prove this; and opium figures as an item in the tariff of 1589, and again in a customs list of the 17th century. Hundreds of square miles are devoted to the cultivation of the poppy, which, according to the late Dr. Williams, "is now grown in every province, without any real restraint being anywhere put on it." Native opium sells for half the price of the foreign article, and its smokers are consequently more numerous among the people and younger practitioners (i.e., those from 25 to 35 years of age). It is, in short, say the latest reports, "forcing foreign opium out of consumption with triple energy."
Number of Opium Smokers.
39.—The best authorities concur that the whole of the smokers, of either foreign or native opium, do not exceed two-thirds of one per cent. of the population, or adding a margin, say, seven per thousand (Replies to Circular No. 64, Second Series, Inspectorate General of Customs)—a state of affairs which is corroborated from the great town of Tientsin, with its million of inhabitants. The Commissioner of Customs reports "that but little opium is consumed, owing to the growing influence of Abstention Societies, the 40,000 members of which neither smoke the drug or tobacco, nor drink liquors of any kind."