Here is the principal anchorage of the opium-hulks; and Great Britain, a party to the “holy alliance,” that said that no member of the Bonaparte family should sit on the throne of France, and yet has her legions side by side with those of Louis Napoleon—who keeps a squadron on the coast of Africa for the suppression of the slave-trade, here displays more of her boasted consistency, and covers with her flag, a traffic more iniquitous. It is nothing to England, that opium is an article contraband of the laws of China; from the enticing poison produced in her possessions, she gets a large income in revenue; her ships bring the drug to China, and smuggle it in armed vessels along its coasts; and with her protection, the vile poppy has medicined thousands to a sleep that knows no waking. She cares for syce silver, not for bodies or souls. But it must be said, that the Parsees with their “Benares” opium, and even Jonathan, though he does not fly his flag, have a share in the traffic; that some of the drug is even grown in China, and that a trade thrust upon that country by the throats of English cannon, is now connived at, and embarked in by corrupt mandarins, who share in the profits of its smuggling, while their duties require them to discover such offenders, and bring their heads under the executioner’s sword.
CHINA.
A considerable portion of the opium consumed in China, is produced in its southern departments. Its growth is as much a violation of the imperial law, as its introduction into the Cinque ports by foreigners is violative of treaty stipulation. The bribed mandarin governors derive a large income, by looking another way in their official perambulations when a poppy-seed field is reached; or it may be that the papaver somniferum has such an effect upon them, that they go past in a somnambulic state. There being no edict requiring of mandarins a knowledge of botany, they have no desire to learn the difference between a poppy-flower and any other. Add to this the demoralized condition, or rather the moral-less condition, of a large infanticide-practising population, who once having gotten the habit, become willing victims of the drug, and its introduction and continued consumption, becomes an easy matter;—they first endured, they now embrace.
There are Chinese who contend that opium is good for the health. It may, like intoxicating liquors, be used in moderation, but its use once acquired, its strides upon the appetite of its votary, are far more speedy, and fatal in results.
The story of opium-using—which is synonymous with its excessive use, need hardly be repeated here; how, instead of the brains out, and the man dying, the brain dies and the man may still live on; how the robustness of youth is suddenly changed into the infirmity of old age; the limbs shrivel, the chest sinks, the shoulders stoop, the bones protrude—the sunken cheeks, the ghastly hue of the complexion, the extreme attenuation of the neck, causing the head to sink between the shoulders, and appear disproportionate, and the man to move about a walking skeleton; or how the debauchee once accustomed to the use of the drug, becomes as secure in its grasp as an ox in the coils of the huge serpent of Brazil—the successive stages gone through, when in its power; the victim wrapped in dreamy hallucination is fiendishly mocked with the imaginary enjoyment of a seventh heaven;—the alternation to a supernatural excitement; the eye glaring demoniacally, and all the brutish passions of human nature possessing him, or the look changing to the listless, leaden, dull, inane leer of idiocy, when the curtain falls upon the death-rattles of agony. Two instances of the excessive use of opium came more immediately under my observation; one a jeweller at Macao, who was a hale, hearty-looking man upon the occasion of our first visit, yet on our return from Japan, had undergone frightful emaciation from its effects. The other was a Chinese teacher, who had been employed for the purpose of putting communications into the mandarin dialect. He was buried at sea, on the passage of the Susquehanna from Loo-Choo to Bonin, and those who witnessed his death, represent it as one of terrible contortion and suffering.
The opium stored on the hulks at Cum-sing-moon, comprises the Benares, the Patna, and Malwa. It is put up in balls and packed in chests. On its receipt, the custodian of the hulk proceeds to assort it, and with a view of testing its quality, and preparing its samples for the examination of the purchaser, small quantities of each case are boiled in water, strained through brown paper, and then, by the heat of a fire, reduced to the consistency of thick paste or molasses, which it somewhat resembles, when it is placed in little cups.
The owners generally reside in Canton, where most of the sales are made; and it is a specie business. A case may sometimes sell for six hundred dollars, and there have been times, when it would sell for double that amount. The article, like our most southern staple, is liable to great fluctuation in price, and large fortunes have been made and lost by it.
The following extracts from some old letters, nearly obliterated, found floating about the harbor, from houses in Canton to their agents on the hulks at “the Moon,” as it is briefly called, will give an idea of the business operandi:—
“To-day I have passed two delivery letters on you, each for three (3) chests of Malwa opium, both in favor of the Chinaman Ehing, wherefore you will take no suspicion about the delivery. Both these letters are drawn by me for six chests of Malwa.