“Oh! ho! ho! Yow goo into druggist’s shop o’ market day, into Cambridge, and you’ll see the little boxes, doozens and doozens, a’ ready on the counter; and never a ven-man’s wife goo by, but what calls in for her pennord o’ elevation, to last her out the week. Oh! ho! ho! Well, it keeps women folk quiet, it do; and it’s mortal good agin ago pains.”
“But what is it?”
“Opium, bor’ alive, opium!”
“But doesn’t it ruin their health? I should think it the very worst sort of drunkenness.”
“Ow, well, yow moi say that—mak’th ‘em cruel thin, then, it do; but what can bodies do i’ th’ ago? But it’s a bad thing, it is.”
The fact is well known, that in the Fen country, opium is extensively used under the presumption or excuse that it is good for the ague. In Wisbeach, as we ascertained from certain official medical documents, more opium is sold and consumed, in proportion to the population, than in any other part of the kingdom. In other parts of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, large quantities of opium are regularly and habitually sold in small doses amongst the labouring population. In Manchester some years ago, a similar run upon opium was experienced, but not as a cure for ague. Several cotton manufacturers stated to our authority, that their work-people were rapidly getting into the practice of opium-eating; so much so, that on a Saturday afternoon the counters of the druggists were strewed with pills of one, two, or three grains, in preparation for the known demand of the evening. The immediate occasion of this practice was stated to be the lowness of wages, which, at that time, would not allow them to indulge in ale or spirits; hence they adopted opium as a substitute.
There was a sin of which we were guilty in the age of Butler, and from which we are not yet freed; probably, it is somewhat of a universal one. Whether or no, there are certainly not a few who—
“Compound for sins they are inclined to,
By damning those they have no mind to.”
Opium indulgence is, after all, very un-English, and never has been, nor ever will be, remarkably popular; and if we smoke our pipes of tobacco ourselves, while in the midst of the clouds, we cannot forbear expressing our astonishment at the Chinese and others who indulge in opium. Pity them we may, perhaps, looking upon them as miserable wretches the while, but they do not obtain our sympathies. Philanthropists at crowded assemblies denounce, in no measured terms, “the iniquities of the opium trade,” and then go home to their pipe or cigar, thinking them perfectly legitimate, whether the produce of slave labour or free. It is the same sort of feeling that the Hashasheens of the East inspire, and indeed all, who have a predilection for other narcotics than those which Johnny Englishman delights in, come in for a share of his contempt.