Oh, had we some bright little isle of our own
In a blue summer ocean far off alone,
Where a leaf never dies, midst the still blooming bowers,
And the bee banquets on through a whole year of flowers.
He little thought that on that very site there would soon be many thousands of houses, some of them palatial buildings, including many Christian churches and some heathen temples, for liberty of conscience reigns there supreme; with a Chinese population of over one hundred and fifty thousand. These people are all doing well. Some of them are wealthy merchants; many of them are shop-keepers; others are artificers; and a very large number of them are labourers or coolies. There is no pauperism in the colony. The people there are all well-to-do, or able to live comfortably, and, what is more, they are all happy and contented. A comparatively small body of police preserves the peace of the colony; for, thanks to a succession of wise and able governors, local crime has been reduced to a minimum; serious offences are very rare amongst the regular inhabitants. It is the criminal classes from the mainland which really give trouble, for Hong Kong labours under the disadvantage of being close to two large cities on the Pearl River—Canton and Fatchan, notorious for piratical and other criminal classes. You might send a child from one end of the town to the other without fear of molestation. Indeed, the natives themselves are the very best police; for, take the Chinese all round, they are the most orderly and law-abiding people in the world. They respect the British Government as much as the British people do themselves. They bring their families to Hong Kong, settle down there, and make themselves perfectly at home, finding more security and happiness there than they ever could attain in their own country; because in Hong Kong there is and has always been perfect equality before the law for every man, irrespective of race, colour, or nationality. The life and property of every man there is secure. This is not the case in China.
These are the fruits of commerce which brings peace and plenty in its train, which sweeps aside the dust of ignorance, fanaticism, and superstition—which has reclaimed the deserts of Australia and North America, and spread flourishing cities there, where law and order, truth and justice, peace and happiness, religion and piety are established. These are the achievements of British merchants who have won for our Sovereign the Imperial diadem she wears, and made their country the mistress of the world. These are the people who have done all this, and better still, made the name of England honoured and respected throughout the whole world, and sent the Gospel into every land. Yet those very men Mr. Storrs Turner and other anti-opium fanatics would cover with obloquy, because, forsooth, some British merchants have been concerned in this perfectly justifiable Indo-Chinese opium trade.
Mr. Turner in his book speaks of the Chinese Government as a paternal Government, which, the moment it finds any practices on foot injurious to the people, at once takes steps to put them down. I tell you, as a fact, that a more corrupt Government,[2] so far at least as the Judges and high Mandarins downwards are concerned, never existed in the whole world. There is no such thing as justice to be had without paying for it; if it is not a misnomer to say so, for this so-called justice is bought and sold every day. Corruption pervades the whole official class. I could detail facts as to the punishment of the innocent and the escape of the guilty, which came under my own observation, that would make one’s flesh creep. This is why the Chinese of Hong Kong respect so much the British Government, whose rule is just and equitable.
Now there is another point which I wish more particularly to impress upon you, it is this: Anyone hearing of the alleged dreadful effects upon the Chinese of opium smoking, and our wicked conduct in forcing the drug upon them, and making them buy it whether they wish to do so or not, would think that these Chinese were a simple, unsophisticated people, something like the natives of Madagascar,—a people lately rescued from barbarism by missionaries; that they were a weak race, without mental stamina or strength of mind—a soft simple, easily-persuaded race. These are some more of the erroneous views which the Anti-Opium Society tries to impress upon the public mind, and which its Secretary, Mr. Storrs Turner, in particular, artfully endeavours to inculcate. To prove that this is so, I have only to read you a passage from his work. But before doing so, let me assure you that there is not a more astute, active-minded, and knowing race of people under the sun than the Chinese. For craft and subtlety I will back one of them against any European. At page 3 you will read:—
More opium is consumed in China than in all the rest of the world, and nearly the whole of the opium imported into China is shipped from Calcutta and Bombay. The East and the West, England, India, and China, act and re-act upon each other through the medium of poppy-juice. Simple mention of the relations which these three great countries bear to the drug is enough to show that a very grave question is involved in the trade. England is the grower, manufacturer, and seller; India furnishes the farm and the factory; China is buyer and consumer. The question which obviously arises is this, Is it morally justifiable and politically expedient for the English nation to continue the production and sale of a drug so deleterious to its consumers? Before, however, we enter upon a consideration of this question, we must explain how it has come to pass that the British nation has got into this unseemly position. Otherwise, the fact that the British Government is actually implicated in such a trade may well appear incredible. If, for instance, any minister could be shameless enough to suggest that England should embark on a vast scale into the business of distillers, and with national funds, by servants of Government, under inspection and control of Parliament, produce and export annually ten or twenty millions’ worth of gin and whisky to intoxicate the populous tribes of Central Africa, he would be greeted by a general outcry of indignation. Yet the very thing which we scout as an imagination, we consent to as a reality. We are maintaining our Indian Empire by our profits as wholesale dealers in an article which, to say the best of it, is as bad as gin.
Now, is that a fair parallel? Is it honest or just to place the civilized, wise, and educated Chinese in the same category with the barbarous natives of Central Africa? This, I assure you is but a fair specimen of the misleading character of Mr. Turner’s book and an example of the teaching by which people are made the dupes of the Anti-Opium Society. This is the language which Mr. Storrs Turner applies to his country and countrymen to gratify himself and his fanatical followers. China, though a heathen, is a civilized nation. The civilization of the Chinese does not date from yesterday. When England was inhabited by painted savages, China was a civilized and flourishing Empire. When ancient Greece was struggling into existence, China was a settled nation, with a religion and with laws and literature dating back to a period lost in the mist of ages. When Alexander, miscalled the Great, fancied he had conquered the world, and sighed that there was no other country to subdue, the mighty Empire of China, with its teeming millions, and a civilization far superior, taken altogether, to any that he had yet known, was a flourishing nation, and happily far away from the assaults of him and his conquering force. Five thousand years ago, as the Rev. Dr. Legge, the Professor of Chinese at Oxford, tells us, the Chinese believed in one God and had, in fact, a theology and a system of ethics known now as Confucianism, certainly superior to that of Greece or Rome. They had then and still have a written language of their own, in which the works of their sages and philosophers are recorded. There are books extant in that language for more than three thousand years ago. In a learned and very interesting book, written by Dr. Legge, entitled “The Religions of China,” it is shown that the Chinese, not only of to-day, but of five thousand years ago, were a great nation. Was it then, I again ask, honest or fair of the Rev. Storrs Turner, who is himself no mean Chinese scholar, to mislead his readers by making use of so forced and inapplicable a comparison? Can there, in fact, be any analogy whatever between the Indo-China opium trade, even supposing that the smoking of the drug were as deleterious to the system as is alleged, and sending whisky from England to the savages of Central Africa? No man could have known better than Mr. Turner that his simile was false and misleading, for he has lived in China for many years. An ordinary person reading that gentleman’s book would swallow this simile as one precisely in point, and end by feeling horrified at the iniquities we were perpetrating in China, which is, no doubt, the exact result that he looked for. I recently met a lady with whom I had been in correspondence for some time on professional business. In the course of conversation we happened to speak about opium, and the moment the subject was mentioned she turned up her eyes in horror and declared that she was ashamed of her country for the wrong it was inflicting upon the natives of China. Mr. Turner’s wonderful parallel between the civilized Chinese and the African savages had plainly produced its desired effect upon her. I very soon, however, undeceived her on the point, as I have since had the pleasure of doing with many others labouring under the like delusions. I am sorry to say that it is with the gentler sex that our Anti-Opium fanatics make their most profitable converts. I honour those ladies for their fond delusion, which shows that their hearts are better than their heads; that their good intentions run in advance of them, and make them ready victims. Well, well, I trust their charity will soon be diverted into worthier channels. Unfortunately, the minds of many in England have become imbued with the same erroneous belief, which is entirely owing to the mischievous teaching of the Anti-Opium Society, and to the powerful machinery that this Society has available for disseminating its doctrines. I am sorry, indeed, to have to allude thus to Mr. Storrs Turner and his book, for I respect him as a clergyman, a scholar, and a gentleman; but I cannot avoid doing so, for certain it is that if you mean to refute Mahomedanism you cannot spare Mahomed or the Alkoran.
I have already told you something as to the character of the Chinese generally. I will now mention from authority some more specific characteristics of these people, because it is really important that you should thoroughly understand what manner of men these Chinese are, for that is a matter going to the root of the whole question. If I show you, as I believe I shall be able to do most conclusively, that the Chinese are as intelligent and as well able to take care of themselves as we are, with far more craft and subtlety than we possess, you will, I think, be slow to believe that they are silly enough to allow us to poison them with opium, as it is alleged we are doing. A stranger mixture of good and evil could hardly be met with than you will find in the Chinese—crafty, over-reaching, mendacious beyond belief, double-dealing, distrustful, and suspicious even of their own relations and personal friends; self-opinionated, vain, conceited, arrogant, hypocritical, and deceitful. That is the character that I give you of them; but it is the worst side of their nature, for they have many redeeming qualities. I will now place before you their character from another and a more competent authority. The Venble. John Gray, D.D., was, until recently, for about twenty-five years, Archdeacon of Hong Kong, but during the greater part, if not the whole of that time, he was the respected and faithful incumbent of the English Church at Canton, where he resided. Now Dr. Gray, who is still in the prime of life, is a learned and able man; a keen observer of human nature; a sound, solid, sensible Churchman, and so highly esteemed for his excellent qualities, that I do not think any Englishman who ever lived in China has left a more honoured name behind him than he has. He mixed a great deal amongst the Chinese as well as amongst his own countrymen. He also travelled much in China, and there really could not be found a more competent authority as to the character of the Chinese people; and indeed as to all matters connected with China. In 1878 he published a valuable and trustworthy book.[3] It is not the production of a person who has merely made a flying visit to China; but it is the work of an old and sagacious English resident in that country, a profound thinker and observer, of a man who has studied deeply and made himself thoroughly acquainted with his subject. He says, at p. 15, vol. i.:—
Of the moral character of the people, who have multiplied until they are “as the sands upon the sea-shore,” it is very difficult to speak justly. The moral character of the Chinese is a book written in strange letters, which are more complex and difficult for one of another race, religion, and language to decipher than their own singularly compounded word-symbols. In the same individual virtues and vices apparently incompatible are placed side by side—meekness, gentleness, docility, industry, contentment, cheerfulness, obedience to superiors, dutifulness to parents, and reverence to the aged, are, in one and the same person, the companions of insincerity, lying, flattery, treachery, cruelty, jealousy, ingratitude, and distrust of others.
This is the character which an English clergyman and scholar gives of the Chinese. Dr. Gray was not a missionary, and it is to the missionary clergymen generally that the extraordinary and delusive statements respecting opium which I am combating are due; the reason for which I shall by and by give you. I hold these missionary gentlemen in the very highest respect. In their missionary labours they have my complete sympathy, and no person can possibly value them as such more than I do, nor be more ready than I am to bear testimony to the ability, piety, industry, and energy which they have always displayed. But they are not infallible, and when they forsake or neglect their sacred functions, and enter the arena of politics; when they cast aside the surplice and enter the lists as political gladiators, they are liable to meet with opponents who will accept their challenge and controvert their views, and have no right to complain if they now and then receive hard knocks in the encounter. They are enthusiastic in their sacred calling; but that fact, whilst it does them honour, shows that their extraordinary assertions as to the opium trade should be received with caution, if not distrust. They are the men who are responsible for the unfounded views which have got abroad on this question.