Why do we find that those charged with the gravest offences are the least addicted to opium? May it not be that this class of criminal requires a certain ingenuity, an amount of method and calculation, and mental vigour and excitement of the passions, greater than the debased opium-smoker is possessed of, the want of which, therefore, unfits him for carrying out any such enterprise requiring such adjuncts, leaving him only capable of being a criminal on a small scale. It is well known that the Chinese are inveterate gamblers; but it is not in connexion with the pipe, but with the arrack-cup, that this vice is indulged in. The influences of opium are sedative and soothing, those of arrack stimulating and exciting; the latter, therefore, as may be supposed, is the companion of the gambler, rather than the former. There are other phases in which the two vices of opium-smoking and intoxication may be compared. The abuse of ardent spirits leads to crimes against the person; the abuse of opium leads to crimes against property. The victim of ardent spirits commits his crimes while under their influence; the devotee to opium, while under its influence, is at peace with all mankind, and dreams only of his own happiness. The drunkard, when not under the influence of liquor, may be a moral member of society, and often a contrite one; the opium-smoker at that time is often scheming the violation of moral and social laws, which, when effected, makes him a criminal, but enables him to gratify his appetite.[21]
De Quincey compares the two habits, not so much for the purpose of showing the tendency of either of them to crime, but for the proving that opium does not produce intoxication any more than would a rump steak. “The pleasure given by wine is always rapidly mounting, and tending to a crisis, after which as rapidly it declines; that from opium, when once generated, is stationary for eight or ten hours. The first—to borrow a technical distinction from medicine—is a case of acute, the second of chronic pleasure; the one is a flickering flame, the other a steady and equable glow. But the main distinction lies in this, that whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in a proper manner) introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of self-possession; opium sustains and reinforces it. Wine unsettles the judgment, and gives a preternatural brightness and a vivid exaltation to the contempts and the admirations, to the loves and the hatreds of the drinker; opium, on the contrary, communicates serenity and equipoise to all the faculties, active or passive, and with respect to the temper and moral feelings in general, it gives simply that sort of vital warmth which is approved by the judgment, and which would probably always accompany a bodily constitution of primeval or antediluvian health. Wine constantly leads a man to the brink of absurdity and extravagance, and beyond a certain point, it is sure to volatize and disperse the intellectual energies; whereas opium always seems to compose what had been agitated, and to concentrate what had been distracted. In short, to sum up all in one word, a man who is inebriated, or tending to inebriation is, and feels that he is in a condition which calls up into supremacy the merely human, too often the brutal part of his nature; but the opium-eater, simply as such, assuming that he is in a normal state of health, feels that the divine part of his nature is paramount, that is, the moral affections are in a state of cloudless serenity, and high over all, the great light of the majestic intellect.”
It is not to be wondered at that the abuse of opium should be a fertile source of poverty, when so much of the wages of many of its votaries are devoted to it. This diseased habit is progressive, and the quantity taken must be daily increased to produce the necessary effects; but the capability of furnishing the means does not keep pace with the desire of consumption. The cooly, who, when strong and vigorous, could earn twenty-five shillings per month, has only to commence opium-smoking, and in two years he will not receive more than two-thirds of that amount, whilst he still smokes his quantity of opium; and as years roll on, he finds that, mainly on account of the vice he has adopted, he can no longer endure the toil that formerly was to him only as child’s play, the amount of excitement having still to be kept up under a decreased income, he has to lessen his expenditure for clothes, and then for food, and lastly, the quantity of opium itself; until worn out, exhausted, and diseased, he finds himself the inmate of a jail or a poorhouse. A sad reflection, truly, but a history repeated over and over again, with but little variation, in the lives of thousands of Chinamen and Malays.
Were poverty to be succoured in places where this description of persons most do congregate, as it is at home, thousands would become public burdens; but there the hand of charity has been closed, and the springs of compassion for the poor dried up. In Singapore, it was not until the horrid spectacle of miserable Chinese daily crawling in front of their doors, exposing their loathsome sores and leprous bodies, and polluting the air they breathed; it was not until these wretched beings, without food or friends, and deprived of the power of supporting themselves, laid them down to die in the streets, of disease and starvation, that by the active philanthropy of two or three individuals a shed was erected to keep these paupers out of sight. When the novelty passed away, the philanthropy declined, and the monthly contribution dwindled down to about three pounds, which was the sum total of the public charity of the European residents in behalf of the diseased poor of Singapore. In this shed were to be found two classes of persons, united in the same individuals, the diseased poor. These are the only kind of poor that excite any sympathy in such places, and an examination of the inmates of the shed will give some insight into the propensities of this class. Out of 125 under relief at the time, 70 were opium-smokers and 55 were not (or would not acknowledge it). Of these 70, some before their admission, were reduced to the alternative of Tye or Samshing, or no opium at all. The total consumption of these paupers before their admission amounted to upwards of four pounds (2022 grains) daily, giving an average daily consumption to each smoker of upwards of 28 grains, being nearly the average consumption of the opium-smoker in general, under more favourable circumstances. The greatest consumption of any one of these individuals had amounted to 120 grains, but at that rate his finances soon failed him, and he had to be content with one fourth of that amount shortly before he became an invalid. Sixty-two of these men consumed opium to the monthly value of £38 7s. 6d., while their aggregate income amounted in the same period to but £50 11s. 3d.; or, individually, the value of each man’s monthly consumption of opium was 12s. 4½d., and his income was but 16s. 6d., leaving only about 4s. monthly, or 1s. per week to feed, clothe, and house himself, and in fact, for every other purpose for which money is required. Some of these did not confine themselves to this. Fifteen of them (as will be seen from Table XVI.) consuming all, or more than their income in opium. Surely such men were worthy not only of a pauper hospital, but also of a jail.
These paupers at one time all received even more than the average amount of wages, sufficient to have clothed and fed them and their families, and kept them comfortable, whilst at that time they were dependent on a charity which allowed them to exist on the rice which was supplied to them, and five doits a day or about a shilling per month. Thousands more, not incapacitated so much by disease as to be unable to work and not therefore inmates of the hospital, were no better off, for what they had they spent in chandu.
The Dutch Commissioners report that, “the use of opium is so much more dangerous, because a person who is once addicted to it can never leave it off. To satisfy that inclination he will sacrifice everything, his own welfare—the subsistence of his wife and children, and neglect his work. Poverty is the natural consequence, and then it becomes indifferent to him by what means he may content his insatiable desire after opium; so that at last he no longer respects either the property or life of his fellow creature.”
A Chinaman, who himself is a smoker and consumes opium to the monthly value of £2, says, that in one hundred Chinese about Hong-Kong and Singapore, seventy of them smoke, and that all the coolies do so more or less. If a cooly earns £1 monthly, 4s. goes for food, l0d. for house rent, a small outlay for a jacket and trowsers once in six months, and all the rest goes in opium. From his own experience, and what he has seen of others, he would say if a man had been accustomed to smoke opium for seven or eight years, and gives it up for a day he is attacked with diarrhœa, while during the time he is smoking the opposite is the case. And he who uses six grains a day will soon require twelve.
To give up opium-smoking, after it has once been commenced, all declare to be a very difficult achievement. A Malay who was apprehended on some criminal charge some years ago, when locked up, previous to examination was, as a matter of course, deprived of opium for some days, he pined away so rapidly that, although only four or five days in the lock-up house, he could not leave it when released, but was carried out, having entered the place as strong and muscular a man as can be met with.
Dr. Oxley states, “that the lower class of Chinese when deprived of their allowance, are very liable to become dropsical. The effect of deprivation at first appears to produce desperation, a heart-rending despondency, something like the low state of delirium tremens, but differing in many respects from that malady. Death certainly does occur from deprivation, and generally by dropsy.”
A great many women smoke, generally the wives of opium-smokers. A woman was discovered by a surgeon in Singapore in an opium shop up stairs smoking away, as she had done for three years, at the rate of thirty-six grains a day. She stated that she had two children, but that they were very sickly and always crying. And how did she stifle their cries? She conveyed from her lips to those of the child the fresh drawn opium vapour, which the babe inspired. This was repeated twice, when it fell back a senseless mass into its mother’s arms, and allowed her quietly to finish her unholy repast. This practice she had often recourse to, as her child was very troublesome, adding that it was no uncommon thing for mothers to do so.