If the case of Burma in respect of liquor is serious, that of opium is more so. It presents in a vivid manner some of the most frightful evils of the traffic in this drug, and it shows clearly the gross inconsistency of any Christian nation, especially when it is the ruling power, deliberately introducing and maintaining such an evil and profiting largely in the revenue by it, when it is eating the very vitals of the subject nation that has implored us again and again to remove it.
The whole question of the opium policy of our Indian Government in the East is now prominently under the view of the nation. Parliament has already declared in the abstract that our opium policy is indefensible, and the conscience of the British public, never quite easy on the subject, is at present feeling keenly about it. It seems not unlikely that the consideration of Burma, our latest, and in some respects our worst development of the policy, may greatly aid in shaping the views of the public on this question, and may decide us, at the earliest possible moment, to wash our hands of the whole sad business.
It ought, in the first place, to be understood that the opium business is not like liquor in England, a matter of private enterprise. It is one big monopoly of the Indian Government from first to last, and no one else is allowed to manufacture it. Government assumes the entire responsibility for the growth, manufacture, sale and export of opium, and sells licences for the permission to retail it in British India. Government is the proprietor of the whole concern. The greater part of the Indian opium is exported to China, and there, as everybody knows, we added to our delinquencies by compelling the Chinese, at the point of the sword, to allow us to import opium into China, to the lasting detriment and ruin of untold multitudes of that people. Some of the opium, a constantly increasing quantity, is disposed of in the different provinces of India, this part of the business also being under Government management and licence.
As regards Upper Burma, the law we found on annexing the country was, and had ever been, the law of prohibition. Government knew and fully admitted this. From the despatch already quoted of October 1886, it would appear at first sight that on taking over the country they had fully resolved to continue that policy.
“No shops whatever will be licensed for the sale of opium, inasmuch as all respectable classes of Burmans are against legalising the consumption of opium in the new province.... As the traffic in opium was prohibited under the Burmese Government, there will be no hardship in thus proscribing opium dealings.”
But the very next sentence goes on to make an exception in favour of Chinamen, to whom, and to whom only, it shall be lawful to sell opium, and this clause at once lets in the mischief.
I know a small town in Upper Burma where a Chinaman obtained a licence to sell opium to his countrymen under this regulation, on his representing that there were two hundred of them in the town, when, as a matter of fact, there were not more than half a dozen. He meant, of course, to sell to the Burmans. I had this from the township officer, who knew all the circumstances; not, however, the officer who had helped him to get his licence. It is well known that the restriction is merely nominal and ineffectual, and the Government officers freely admit the fact. A recent Government officer of standing reports that—
“The consumption of liquors and opium is theoretically confined to the non-Burman population. But there can be no doubt that a considerable amount of both finds its way into the hands of Burmans.”
Of course it does. The temptations are there in the shape of licensed shops, and the tempters in the shape of cunning Chinamen with an eye to the main chance; and so long as this is the case the Burmans will fall into the snare in ever-increasing numbers, for they are, like the Chinese, peculiarly liable to yield to the opium habit. The following is the testimony of Mr. Gregory, a gentleman who travelled through Burma to see for himself what the facts of the case were; and whatever may be said by the apologists for opium against alleged exaggerations, I think we may, at any rate, receive the testimony of a Christian man concerning what he saw himself. I quote what he says of Upper Burma. It fully proves how ineffectual the restrictive legislation is, and how powerful the temptation:—