The truth about opium

by William H. Brereton

No doubt these most estimable and respectable but infatuated gentlemen suppose that their petition will have some weight with the Legislature. I believe and hope it will, but not exactly of the kind expected; for I shall be surprised indeed, if it be not treated as it deserves, i.e. as a downright contempt of the House of Commons; for it seems to me to be an insult to the common sense not only of the House in its collective capacity, but of every individual member. In saying this I am far from attributing to these missionary clergymen a wilful intention to state what they knew to be untrue, nor to insult or mislead the Legislature, for I am assured that one and all of them would be incapable of so doing. I am sure they thoroughly believe every word they have stated to be true; but then it must be remembered that the effect upon the public mind and the injury done to society by the publication of fallacious and untrue statements, are in no way lessened because their authors suppose those statements to be, in fact, true and correct.

I have shown you that Mr. Turner admits that opium smoking is common all over China. But, he says, the Chinese do not all smoke. In his book he affirms that it is only in recent years that opium has been grown in China. This is the passage, it occurs at page 2:—“Indigenous in Asia, the first abode of the human species, the poppy has long been cultivated in Egypt, Turkey, Persia, and recently in China and Manchuria. It is well known in our gardens, grows wild in some parts of England, and is cultivated in Surrey for the supply of poppy heads to the London market. From the time of Hippocrates to the present day it has been the physician’s invaluable ally in his struggles against disease and death.”

This is about the most remarkable statement I have ever read. The greater includes the less, and if the poppy is indigenous to Asia it is, of course, indigenous also to China and Manchuria, which with the other dominions of China comprise fully one-fourth of the entire Asiatic continent. This, indeed, Mr. Storrs Turner does not deny in terms, but it is plain he wished his readers to believe that the poppy was not indigenous to those countries, and was only recently introduced there. The passage involves that sort of fallacy which Lord Palmerston termed “a distinction without a difference.” As to the poppy being indigenous to the whole of Asia and notably to the most fertile parts of it, e.g. China and Manchuria, there can be no doubt, and therefore no difference, but the distinction is that it is only of late years that it has been cultivated in those countries. The poppy may grow wild over a continent, but be cultivated only in a part. I will show you by-and-by, upon excellent authority and by the strongest grounds for inference, that the poppy is not only indigenous to China, but has been cultivated there for various purposes other than for medical ones and for smoking, certainly for two thousand, and probably for four or five thousand years. An ordinary reader, especially one not familiar with the geography of Asia, would conclude from this passage in Mr. Turner’s book that China and Manchuria were not in Asia at all, but that of late years the poppy had been introduced into those countries from that continent. Thus much for the Gospel of the Anti-opiumists.

I now confront Mr. Storrs Turner with another book, which everyone must admit is of greater authority than his. It is a book published towards the close of 1881 by a high official of the Chinese Government, then Mr. but now Sir Robert Hart, G.C.M.G., the Inspector-General of Chinese Customs, a man who knows China and the Chinese better, perhaps, than any living European. That gentleman tells a very different tale about opium to what the Anti-Opium Society has hitherto regaled the world with. This book is an official one, issued from the Statistical Department of the Inspector-General of Chinese Customs at Shanghai for the use and guidance of the Chinese Government. It stands upon a very different footing to the volume published by Mr. Turner, the paid secretary and strenuous advocate of the Anti-Opium Society. Sir Robert Hart has entire control over the revenue of China as far as regards foreign trade. At every treaty port open to foreign vessels there is a foreign Commissioner of Customs, and Sir Robert Hart is the supreme head of these commissioners. He is a man deservedly trusted and respected by the Chinese Government; a man of learning and talents, and I need hardly add of the very highest character, and, I believe, he is one of the most accomplished Chinese scholars that could be found. He says that opium has been grown in China from a remote period, and was smoked there before a particle of foreign opium ever came into the country. This is the passage from his—the now famous yellow-book:—

In addition to the foreign drug there is also the native product. Reliable statistics cannot be obtained respecting the total quantity produced. Ichang, the port nearest to Szechwan, the province which is generally believed to be the chief producer and chief consumer of native opium, estimates the total production of native opium at twenty-five thousand chests annually; while another port, Ningpo, far away on the coast, estimates it at two hundred and sixty-five thousand. Treating all such replies as merely so many guesses, there are, it is to be remarked, two statements which may be taken as facts in this connection: the one is that, so far as we know to-day, the native opium produced does not exceed the foreign import in quantity; and the other that native opium was known, produced, and used long before any Europeans began the sale of the foreign drug along the coast.

So much for Mr. Storrs Turner’s bold assertion that it is only recently that opium has been cultivated in China; the obvious inference which he wished the reader to draw from it being that it was the importation of the Indian drug into China that induced the natives to plant opium there. Now, with respect to that most unfounded charge of the Chinese disliking the English for introducing opium into their country, and British commerce declining in consequence, I assure you that all that is simply moonshine. These statements are not merely false assumptions, they are simply untrue. No one who has had any experience of China and its people, does not know perfectly well, that of the whole foreign trade with China the British do at least four-fifths; not only have we the lion’s share of the trade, but it is an unquestionable fact that of all the nations who have made treaties and had dealings with China, the British are and have been for many years the most respected by the Chinese people. It is, I say, an indisputable fact, that notwithstanding all our past troubles about smuggling and our wars with China, which Mr. Turner is so fond of dilating upon, that at this day, by high and low, rich and poor, from the mandarin to the humble coolie, England is held in higher regard than any other nation. If trade with China has in any way declined, the fact is traceable to other and different causes, which it is not my province to enter upon.

Now, why are England and Englishmen thought so well of by the Chinese? It is simply because the British merchants and British people in China have acted towards the Chinese, with whom they have been brought into contact, with honour and rectitude—because in their intercourse with the natives they have been kind, considerate, and obliging—because, instead of resenting the old rude and overbearing manners of the Chinese officials and others, they have returned good for evil, and shown by their conciliatory bearing, and gentlemanly and straightforward conduct, that the British people are not the barbarians they had been taught to believe. By such means the British residents in China have gone far to break down the barrier of prejudice towards foreigners behind which the people of that country had hedged themselves, thus preparing the way for the labours of the missionaries and making, in fact, missionary work possible. If further proof were wanting that the British are held in high estimation by the people and the Government of China, it will be found in the fact, that our own countryman, Sir Robert Hart, who before entering the service of the Chinese Government had been in the diplomatic service of his own country, now occupies the high and honourable position of Inspector-General of Chinese Customs, and is, I may add, the trusted counsellor of the Government of China.

It is not very long since the Governor of Canton paid a visit to the Governor of Hong Kong; such an act of courtesy to Her Majesty’s representative on the part of so great a Chinese magnate was until then, I believe, unprecedented. The constant exclamation of the great mandarin as he was being driven through the streets of Hong Kong was—“What a wonderful place! What a wonderful place!” in allusion to the fine buildings, the wide and clean streets,—a strong contrast to those of Canton—and the dense and busy population around him. And yet more recently, that is during the summer of 1882, a greater personage still paid an official visit to the Hon. W. H. Marsh, who during the absence of Sir George Bowen, the Governor, worthily administers the affairs of the colony—I refer to the present viceroy of the provinces of Kwantung and Kwangsi, commonly called the “two Kwangs,” an official only next in importance to His Excellency Li Hung Chang, the Governor of Petchili. Do you think we should have such a state of things if we were demoralizing and ruining the people of China, as is alleged by the Anti-Opium Society, or if, indeed, the Chinese people or Government had any real grievance against us.

Upon this point I cannot refrain from mentioning an incident that occurred soon after I arrived in China. A respectable Chinaman asked me to prepare his will. He gave me for the purpose, written instructions in Chinese characters, which I had translated. On reading the translation I found his instructions very clearly drawn up, but what was gratifying to me, and what is pertinent to my subject, was the following passage, with which he commenced them:—“Having,” said he, “under the just and merciful laws administered by the English Government of Hong Kong, amassed in commerce considerable wealth, I now, feeling myself in failing health, wish to make a distribution of the same.” There are thousands like that Chinaman in Hong Kong, and also in Shanghai, and in all the treaty ports of China. In speaking as this man did, he was only giving expression to the feelings of all his countrymen who have had dealings with the English in China. Are such feelings on the part of these Chinese consistent with the consciousness that we are enriching ourselves by ruining the health and morals of their countrymen, as is most wrongfully put forward by the Anti-Opium Society and its allies the Protestant missionaries? No; they bespeak perfect confidence, respect, and gratitude towards us; for oppressed and plundered as the Chinese have been by their own officials, there is no other people on the face of the earth who more thoroughly appreciate justice and equity in the administration of public affairs; thus it is that they respect the British rule, which they have found by experience to be the embodiment of both.

There are very few, perhaps, in this country who know what Hong Kong really is. It is now a flourishing and beautiful city, standing upon a site which, but the other day, was a barren rock. Commerce with its civilising influence has transformed it into a “thing of beauty,” “an emerald gem of the eastern world.” Forty years ago, the English Government sent out a commissioner to report upon the capabilities of the place for a town or settlement. He sent home word that there was just room there for one house. He little dreamt that upon that barren inhospitable spot within a few years would be realised the poet’s dream when he wrote:—