“Well, my good friend Grenits, you must pardon me for saying so; but I also am one of those who not only silently approve of the argument, but who are prepared openly and loudly to maintain that gin and opium, inasmuch as they are both intoxicants, stand on precisely the same level. I maintain that the abuse of either is injurious, and that the one does not much more harm than the other.”
It was August van Beneden who thus came to the rescue of van Rheijn. The latter looked round triumphantly, as he exclaimed:
“Hear, hear! You see, gentlemen, I am not the only one who holds those views. Bravo, August!”
“Of course,” said Grenits, quickly, “you are quite right in saying that spirituous liquors are injurious for—”
“I say, Grenits,” cried Grashuis, with a laugh, “mind the members of your club at the Hague don’t hear that.”
“For,” continued Grenits, without paying any heed to the interruption, “for the abuse of spirits also arises from a craving after pleasure and oblivion and proves a want of will-power to resist that craving, even when its satisfaction is purchased at the price of self-respect, domestic happiness and health. To deny that, would be to prove myself ignorant of the labours of Father Matthew, and so many other friends of total abstinence. But, you will pardon me if I adhere to the opinion I have already expressed, that in thus placing the abuse of opium on the same level with the abuse of alcohol shows an ignorance of established facts and an ignorance also of the literature of our colonies with regard to opium. For, remember, my friends, our own countrymen, such men as van Linschoten, Valentijn, Band, van Dedem and I do not know how many more stigmatise opium as an aphrodisiac—as a powerful means of exciting unclean passions. Van Linschoten in the account of his travels, plainly speaks of certain effects of the abuse of opium which, though we are men together here, I could not venture to repeat; and foreign travellers most fully confirm his testimony. The learned Chinaman Li Schi Ischin in his Chinese Pharmacopœia, which was written as early as 1596, tells us that the common people in China, made use of opium chiefly as an aphrodisiac. The German traveller Miklucho-Maclay in 1873, after he had made personal experiments at Hong Kong in opium smoking, has noted down certain details with which I cannot bring myself to pollute your ears. Now all this ought, I think, to give us much food for reflection. And when we find men like Rochussen, Loudon, Hasselman, van Bosse, and many others, who, the one as Governor General, and the other as Colonial Secretary, some of them in both capacities, have stood up in their place in parliament, and have openly spoken of opium as an evil, as a most terrible evil, indeed as a poison and a pest, why then, I think, it will not be very difficult to come to the conclusion, that the effects and the consequences of the abuse of opium are of a different nature altogether, and are infinitely more fatal than those which result from the abuse of alcohol.”
“Would you not like,” said van Beneden, “just merely for the sake of experiment, to try opium smoking? I, for myself, very much wish to know what its effects really are.”
“So would I,” said van Rheijn, “and we could make the experiment easily enough.”
“How so?” asked Grashuis. “For us Europeans, opium is not easy to get, and surely we could not go to the opium den and smoke there, and make ourselves a laughing-stock of the people.”
“No, we could hardly do that,” said van Rheijn; “but among my acquaintances, I count one Lim Ho the son of the great opium-farmer. I know, if I ask him, he will procure me a few madat balls.”