“Aye, aye,” returned van Rheijn; “but is all this true?”
“Why,” said Grenits, “I hope, Edward, you do not doubt my word?”
“Not in the least, my dear fellow, not in the least. I am quite ready to admit that your quotation is accurate; but was the Council properly informed when it gave that opinion?”
“Well,” replied Grenits, “if you go on like that, then we shall not be able to trust anybody or anything. Those people are paid, and most handsomely paid, to get the best and most trustworthy information. But independently altogether of the Council’s opinion, in which you seem to have but little faith, tell me, does not the constantly rising revenue from the farming of opium afford proof absolute of the truth of the Council’s word? Every successive year the estimate is higher and higher.”
“I know that,” said van Rheijn, “but estimate and actual produce are widely different things.”
“True enough, they are sometimes widely different; but in this particular case they are not. Heaven and earth are moved to reach the figure at which the minister has estimated the revenue, and means the most unfair, even the most criminal, are employed in order, if possible, to surpass the sum at which the revenue has been placed. How many a Netherland’s Lion has been given away because, in this district or in that, the produce of the opium contract has exceeded the figure at which the minister put it! How proudly must the ‘Virtus Nobilitat’ thus earned glitter upon the breast of its possessor!”
“But I want to know,” remarked August van Beneden, “is the use of opium really as injurious to the body as men say it is? We saw with our own eyes last night that as far as morality is concerned it has not much to recommend it; but how about its influence upon the material body? We sometimes hear the word poisoning used; that very term indeed was made use of last night, but it seems to me that it is a system of poisoning under which a man may attain to a very good old age, just as a man may grow old who drinks a glass or two of grog.”
“Listen to me,” said Verstork in a most serious tone. “We are sitting here together, all, I hope, honest trustworthy men I can therefore speak my mind freely and fearlessly before you, and I may without reserve give you the conclusion to which a long and richly varied experience has led me on the subject of opium.
“The habitual use of opium, even in comparatively moderate doses, invariably leads to vitiation of the blood and constriction of the vessels. This again gives rise to an asthmatic condition and to a permanent and wasting and almost always incurable dysentery. These are accompanied by the most distressing symptoms and intolerable suffering. Upon the opium smoker, moreover, medicines begin gradually to lose their effect, excepting the narcotic poisons in ever increasing quantities. Hence the sufferer is driven to seek relief in augmented doses of the poison, and if he cannot obtain these, his condition becomes utterly unbearable. Yet to this suffering he is doomed, unless he can pass from one fit of intoxication to the other. Opium smoking is the only thing to alleviate the miseries of the collapse which follows an opium debauch, and but few can afford the continual drain of so expensive a remedy. Where a sufficient quantity of good wholesome food is taken, these lamentable results may be slow in showing themselves; and a generous and strengthening diet has preserved many a man, for an entire lifetime, from the most serious consequences of his pernicious habit. But even in these cases, the state of the blood and the general condition of health are so bad, that trifling ailments, such as an ordinary boil or a slight wound, assume a most malignant character and often lead to fatal results; and who can venture to say how many diseases, which depend upon cachexia and which are so common in this country, are caused, or, at all events, are greatly aggravated by the habitual use of opium?
“I spoke just now of a sufficient quantity of nutritive food; but we know too well—and the Government also knows it—that but very few of the natives can afford a supply of food which can be called either sufficient or nutritious. It is well known how exceedingly meagre the diet of the Javanese is, even among those who are in tolerably good circumstances; and it is well known also that, even when he can afford it, he very seldom makes use of food which is really strengthening. And that diet, be it more or less generous, must of necessity become more and more meagre when every day a considerable, and ever more considerable portion of the wages is squandered in the purchase of opium. Thus the enjoyment itself tends to make impossible the only condition under which it might be indulged in with anything like impunity.