"The net revenue from opium is about £10,000,000, or $50,000,000, annually. This money is raised on 100,000 chests, weighing 160 pounds each, and the tax on the article is considerably more than the cost of production. There has been much criticism among enlightened Englishmen of the means by which England raises her revenues in India. The total revenue from all sources is £50,000,000, or $250,000,000, in round figures, of which opium pays £10,000,000, salt £6,000,000, and land £20,000,000, while the rest comes from customs, excise, and stamp duties. You observe that opium pays a fifth of the entire revenue, and it is the struggle for this fifth of the revenue that has involved England in disgraceful ware. The land tax of £20,000,000 is a heavy burden on the population, and the salt tax falls on the poorer classes, to whom that article is a greater necessity than to the rich.
COOLIES GOING TO THE POPPY-FIELDS.
"We will drop the political bearings of opium, and look at the way the drug is made. The plants grow broadcast in the fields, and the laborers thin them out just as cotton-plants are thinned in America. When they are of the proper age the capsule or bulb is gashed with a knife having several parallel blades; this work must be done very skilfully, so as to prevent the knife going through the skin of the capsule, which would cause the total loss of the juice. The cutting is done in the afternoon; the next morning the juice that has exuded is scraped off with an iron spoon and collected into an earthen jar, and the operation is repeated five or six times in succession at intervals of two or three days.
SHOP OF AN OPIUM MERCHANT.
"The juice when collected is like thick cream; a dark liquid called pasewa is drained from it and carefully kept, while the more solid mass settles to the bottom of the jar, and is slowly dried in the shade. When it has reached the consistency of freshly-kneaded dough it is formed into balls, and thickly covered on the outside with a mass composed of pasewa and the leaves and stalks of the poppy plant, which have been dried and pounded to powder. These balls or cakes are about six inches in diameter, and weigh a little less than five pounds; they are dried in the sun, and afterward in the shade, till the outside is like a thick crust of bread, when they are packed in the chests, and are ready for market."