They [the missionaries] secure some adherence to the Christian religion, no doubt, but what is the value of the Christianity? It possesses, so far as we have been able to judge, neither stamina nor backbone. Foreigners at Hong Kong, and at the Treaty Ports, fight shy of Christian servants, a very general impression existing that they are less reliable than their heathen fellows; and with regard to the Christians in their own villages and towns, there is always a suspicion of interested motives.
Are these Chinese converts the class of the Chinese from which truth is to be gleaned? Is the testimony of such people of the slightest value? Yet these are the persons from whom the missionaries derive their knowledge of opium smoking and its alleged baneful effects. I venture to say that among all the so-called Christian converts in China you will not find five per cent. who are really sincere—all the rest profess Christianity to obtain some personal advantage. These so-called converts are generally people from the humblest classes, because, as I have mentioned, people of the better class, such as merchants, shopkeepers, and tradesmen, not only consider their own religion superior to the Christian’s creed, but they would be ashamed to adopt Christianity, as they would thus be disgraced and make themselves appear ridiculous in the eyes of their neighbours; and they are a people peculiarly sensitive to ridicule. I will not say that there are not some true converts to be found among Chinese congregations; if there are none, the missionary clergymen are certainly not to blame, for they are indefatigable in their exertions to make converts, proving also by their blameless lives the sincerity of their professions. As I have said, the difficulty attending their efforts is enormous. It must be remembered that in China we are not teaching Christianity to the poor African, or the semi-civilised native of Madagascar or the Fiji Islands; but that we are dealing with civilized men, who consider their own country and literature, customs and religion, far superior to those of England or of any other country in the world. The Chinese are so convinced of this, that the very coolies in the streets consider themselves the superiors of the foreign ladies and gentlemen that pass, or whom, perhaps, they are carrying in their sedan chairs.
I hold the missionaries altogether responsible for the hallucination that has taken possession of the public mind on the opium question. With the Bible they revere in their hands, they think the Chinese should eagerly embrace the doctrine it inculcates, and, unable to account for their failure, they readily accept the subterfuge offered by certain Chinese for not accepting Christianity or attending to their teaching. They feel that it is, or may be, expected of them in this country, that they should have large congregations of native proselytes, such as, I believe, the missionaries have in Madagascar, and in like places, forgetting that no parallel can be drawn between such races and the Chinese. The Protestant missionary clergymen in China are, not unnaturally, anxious to account for their supposed failure in that large and heathen country. They would not be human if they were not. The better class of Chinese, as I have said, will not listen to a missionary, or argue with him. They do not want to hear lectures on Christianity, and grow impatient at any disparaging remark about their own religion. They simply say, “We have a religion that is better than yours, and we mean to stick to it.” The missionaries, however, think they ought to have better success. They are, no doubt, indefatigable in their labours, and as they do not meet with the results that ought, they consider, to follow from their labours, and as their sanguine minds cling to any semblance of excuse for their shortcomings, they accept the stale and miserable subterfuge, to the use of which their converts are prompted by the Mandarins, that the Indo-China opium trade is vicious, and that before Christianity is accepted by the country, the trade in question must be abolished. This transparent evasion of the Chinese appears to me to bear too strong a family likeness to the famous “confidence trick,” with which the police reports now and then make us acquainted, to be entertained for a moment.
The Chinese, knowing the weakness of the missionaries, play upon it; and one of the best instances I can give you that they are successful is this:—They tell them that the Chinese Government objects to the opium trade upon moral grounds; but it never occurs to the missionaries to retort and say, “If so, why does your Government not prevent the cultivation of opium throughout China? In the provinces of Yunnan and Szechuen, and all over the Empire, indeed, enormous crops of opium are raised every year; why does not your Government, knowing, as you say, that the effects of opium are so fatal, put a stop to the growth of the deleterious drug?” This question would prove rather a difficult one to answer, though the Mandarins, skilful casuists as they are, would no doubt invent some specious one which might impose upon their interrogators. The mental vision of our missionary friends is so limited to one side only of the question, that even here they might be taken in by the astute natives. It is only of late that the Chinese Government has taken up the moral objection, and the reason, I believe, it has done so is because it has found out the weak side of the missionaries, probably through The Friend of China, published at Shanghai.
When it is taken into account that of late years the average quantity of Indian opium imported into China is about one hundred thousand chests, each of which, for all practical purposes, may be called a hundredweight, and that the price of each of these chests landed in China is about seven hundred dollars, and that the whole works up to something like sixteen millions sterling, the strong objection of the Mandarin classes to allow such a large amount of specie to leave the country becomes intelligible. Rapacious plunderers as they are, they see their prey escaping them before their very eyes, and are powerless to snatch it back. These sixteen millions, they think, would be all fair game for “squeezing” if we could only keep them at home. For although China is an immense empire, with great natural resources, it is still a poor country as regards the precious metals. No doubt an economist would tell these Mandarins: “It is true we sell you all this opium, but then we give you back again all the money you pay for it, with a great deal more besides, for the purchase of your tea and silk.” But a Mandarin would only laugh at such an argument. “Ah,” he would say, “you must have tea and silk in any case; you can’t do without them. We want to get hold of your silver and give you none of ours in return.” That is the true cause, or one of the true causes, of the objection of the Government of China to the importation into that country of Indian opium.
The missionaries, or at all events the greater number of them, have adopted the view, that if they could only put a stop to the importation of Indian opium into China the evangelization of the country would be a question of time only; and in one sense, indeed, this would be true; but the time would not be near, but very distant. The Chinese have a keen sense of humour, and if the British would allow themselves to be cajoled by the specious arguments with which the religious world here is constantly regaled about the opium question, so far as to put a stop to the traffic, such a feeling of contempt for English common sense, and in consequence for the religion of Englishmen, would ensue, that the spread of the Gospel in China would be greatly retarded indeed. The truth about opium is so clear to those who trust to the evidence of their senses, and who look at facts from a plain common sense point of view, that they cannot for a moment see that there is any connection whatever between opium and Christianity. It seems to me that those gentlemen who adopt the anti-opium doctrine, and scatter it abroad, are only comparable to the monomaniac, who, sane upon every subject but one, is thoroughly daft upon that. No better example of this can I give you than by referring to a speech made by a gentleman deservedly respected by the community, whom I have always considered as one of the hardest-headed men sitting in the House of Commons, possessing sound common sense upon all subjects save that of opium. I refer to Sir J. W. Pease, the Member for South Durham. In the year 1881 the usual anti-opium debate came on in the House of Commons. Sir J. W. Pease delivered a speech on the occasion denunciatory of the Indo-China trade, in the course of which he referred to the treaty recently made between China and America, one of the clauses of which provides that American ships shall not import opium into China, and that no Chinaman shall be allowed to import opium into America, where there is a large Chinese population, especially in San Francisco. The treaty relates to other matters, and this clause is, so to speak, interpolated into it, for a purpose I shall now explain. It was intended to appear as a sort of quid pro quo, for whilst America, in fact, gave up nothing, though she affected to do so, she obtained some commercial advantages by the treaty. This is the clause:—
The Governments of China and of the United States mutually agree and undertake that Chinese subjects shall not be permitted to import opium into any of the ports of the United States; and citizens of the United States shall not be permitted to import opium into any of the open ports of China. This absolute prohibition, which extends to vessels owned by the citizens or subjects of either Power, to foreign vessels employed by them or to vessels owned by the citizens or subjects of either Power, and employed by other persons for transportation of opium, shall be enforced by appropriate legislation on the part of China and the United States, and the benefits of the favoured claims in existing treaties shall not be claimed by the citizens or subjects of either Power as against the provisions of this article.
I happened to be weather-bound in Rome when I first read, in a Hong Kong paper, that amusing and deceptive treaty, which was made in 1880. Knowing thoroughly the situation, and all the facts connected with the Indo-China opium trade, I undertake to assure you that so far, at least, as regards this opium clause, that treaty was simply a farce. With the single exception of a line of mail packet steamers between Hong Kong and San Francisco, America has few or no steamers trading in the China seas. She has protected her mercantile marine so well that she has now very little occasion for exercising her protection. She has no vessels trading between India and China, and never has had any, and, as a matter of fact, no American ships carry one ounce of opium between India or China, or to the port of Hong Kong, or have carried it for many years, if, indeed, any American vessel has ever done so. Nor is there, indeed, at present the slightest probability that her ships will ever convey opium between India and China. America, in fact, might, with as much self-denial, have undertaken not to carry coals to Newcastle as Indian opium to China. There are regular lines of British steamers plying between the ports of Bombay, Calcutta, and Hong Kong, by which all Indian opium for the China trade is carried direct to its destination.
I declare that anything more absurd, deceptive, and dishonest never formed the subject of an international treaty. The whole affair was so utterly false and misleading that the first thing I did after reading the treaty was to cut it out from the newspaper and forward it, with an explanatory letter, to the “Times,” the usual refuge of the aggrieved Briton. This deceptive clause was intended simply to mislead the simple, benevolent, good-natured John Bull, already, as the framers of the treaty no doubt supposed, half-crazed on the anti-opium movement. A better specimen of American smartness and Chinese astuteness could hardly be conceived than this crafty and fallacious clause. America has no opium to sell or import, and can, therefore, afford to be extremely generous on the point. It is just possible, however, that at a future day opium may be produced in the South-Western States, in which case the American Government—I will not say the American people, for I hold them in great respect—will endeavour to wriggle out of this precious treaty, just as they are now trying to do as regards the Panama convention with this country, when the possibility that gave rise to it is likely to become a reality. The stipulation that Chinese subjects should not be permitted to import opium into any of the ports of the United States is of course absolute nonsense. If the American Government had really intended to prohibit opium from being imported from China, or elsewhere, into their country they should not have confined the prohibition to Chinese subjects, but have extended it to all nationalities; in fact, to have made opium, save for medical purposes, contraband. To explain this point more clearly, you will remember what I have mentioned before, that the exclusive right to manufacture crude opium into the form used for smoking, called in China “prepared opium,” is farmed out. The present farmer pays the Government of Hong Kong two hundred and five thousand dollars, or forty thousand pounds a year for the monopoly. The reason why he pays so large a sum for this privilege is because of the facilities it affords him for exporting it to other places, and not merely to get the exclusive right of preparing and selling the drug in Hong Kong, for if that were all the benefit to be derived from the monopoly he would not give so large a rent for it. The greater source of profit arises from the circumstance that the Chinese must have the beloved stimulant wherever they roam. If you go to Australia, the Philippine Islands, the Straits, Borneo, or the town of Saigon in French Cochin China, or wherever else dollars are to be made, you will find Chinese in abundance. Go to the South Seas, go to the Sandwich or the Fiji Islands, you will discover the Chinese happy and prosperous, and you will always see in their houses the opium pipe. The advantage of having the exclusive privilege in Hong Kong of preparing and selling opium consists in this, that it is the terminus of an American line of steamers which ply between that port and San Francisco. It is also the port from which British lines of steamers run to Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. These packets always take with them consignments of prepared opium ready for smoking, because at these places there are large and well-to-do Chinese communities who can afford to indulge in the national luxury of opium smoking. I have already told you that I was for about ten years solicitor for that opium firm, and I happen to know a great deal about the prepared opium trade through that medium. The Chinese in California, where there is an immense number of those people, do not consume less, I should say, in the course of a year than one hundred thousand pounds worth of prepared opium. As is the case in Hong Kong, the Chinese have better means to buy the drug there than they would have at home. They get high wages, keep shops, are excellent tradesmen, and can live and make money where a European would starve. They are all, in fact, well-to-do, and wherever a Chinaman has the money he must have his opium pipe. Therefore the privilege of supplying the Chinese in California, Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania, and in the South Sea Islands, where are large China colonies, is enjoyed by the opium farmer of Hong Kong, because he has the means of shipping the drug by steamers direct to those places, thus out-distancing all other competitors. This trade, notwithstanding that wonderful treaty, is still going on, and not one ounce of opium less than was shipped before its ratification is now being carried to San Francisco, and in American bottoms too, for the treaty only says that no Chinaman shall import opium into America; there is no prohibition against Americans or Europeans doing so. What the opium farmer now does, if indeed he has not always done so, is to get an American or other merchant in Hong Kong to ship the drug for him in his own name, handing him, the opium farmer, the bill of lading. The opium is accordingly shipped in the name of Brown, Jones, or Robinson, and on its arrival at San Francisco the opium farmer’s consignee takes possession of it, and it is distributed by him among his countrymen in that flourishing city.
If Sir J. W. Pease were not an enthusiast, ready to swallow without hesitation everything which seems to tell against the opium traffic, and to disbelieve everything said or written on the other side of the question, he would have seen through all this as a matter of course. This is what he said about the treaty in the speech I have referred to, having first delivered a philippic on the enormities and terrible wickedness of the traffic:—