’Tis pleasant, sure, to see one’s name in print;
A book’s a book, although there’s nothing in’t.
Mr. Turner, in his volume, gives what he calls “a little apologue,” with the object of showing how the Indian Government injures China by supplying it with opium. If you will allow me, I will give you a short one, too. Let us suppose a young gentleman, well brought up, and a member of that excellent institution, the “Young Men’s Christian Association,” where he has heard the most eloquent speeches on the wickedness of this country in permitting the Indo-Chinese opium trade, and thus encouraging opium smoking—for your anti-opium agitator thinks it the height of virtue and propriety to drag his country through the mire on every occasion that presents itself. Let us call him Mr. Howard; it is a good name, and was once owned by a most benevolent man. He makes up his mind to go out to China and to see for himself the whole iniquity; for, despite his strong faith in his clerical mentors at Exeter Hall, he can hardly believe that his own countrymen could really be the perpetrators of such dreadful wickedness as he has been told. He takes a letter of introduction to a missionary gentleman at Hong Kong, and another to a mercantile firm there. He expects, on his arrival, to see the streets crowded with the wretched-looking victims of the opium-pipe, crawling onwards towards their graves, whilst the merchant who is making his princely fortune by this terrible opium trade drives by in his curricle, looking complacently at his victims, just as a slave-owner of old might be expected to have gazed at his gangs of serfs wending their way to their scene of toil. Not seeing any but active, healthy-looking people, he concludes that the miserable creatures he is looking out for are in hospital, or lying up in their own houses. He calls upon Messrs. Thompson and Co., the mercantile firm to which he is accredited, and is well received by one of the partners, who invites him to stop at his house during his stay in Hong Kong—for our fellow-countrymen in China are the most hospitable people in the world. Mr. Howard declines, as he intends putting up at Mr. Jenkins’s, his missionary friend. The great subject on his mind is opium, so he comes to the point at once, and asks, “Is there much opium smoked in the colony?” “Oh, plenty,” answers Mr. Thompson; “two or three thousand chests arrive here every week.” “Do you sell much?” Mr. Howard asks. “No; we haven’t done anything in it these many years,” is the response. “Do many people smoke?” continues Howard, following up his subject. “Oh, yes: every Chinaman smokes.” “But where are all the people who are suffering from opium smoking?” again asks the inquirer, determined to get at the facts. “Ha, ha, ha!” laughs Mr. Thompson, but that gentleman is writing letters for the mail, and has not much time at his disposal. “Here, Compradore,” he says, addressing a Chinese who has been settling an account with one of the assistants, “this gentleman wants to know all about opium smoking.” The Compradore is the agent who conducts mercantile transactions between the foreign firms and the Chinese; he resides on his master’s premises, and is usually an intelligent and keen man of business, and, I may also add, an inveterate opium smoker. The two try to make themselves understood. Mr. Howard repeats the same questions to the Compradore that he had just put to Mr. Thompson, and receives similar replies. Disappointed and surprised, Howard calls with his letter of introduction upon the missionary, to whom he tells what he has heard from Messrs. Thompson & Co. “Ah,” says the missionary, “they wouldn’t give you any information there; they are in the opium trade themselves.” But Mr. Howard tells him that Thompson had assured him that they had not been in the trade for years. “Ah,” returns the missionary, “you must not believe what he says. His firm is making a princely fortune by opium.” “But where are the smokers?” asks Howard. “Oh, I will show them to you.” He then calls Achun his “boy.” “This gentleman,” he says to the latter, “wants to know about opium smoking. Take him to the Tung-Wah and to an opium shop, you savee?” “Yes, my savee” (meaning “I understand”), returns Achun, who is, of course, a devout convert, but who, notwithstanding, often in private indulges in the iniquity of the pipe. On they go to the Tung-Wah, which is the Chinese hospital before referred to, where he is shown some ghastly-looking men, all either smoking the “vile drug” or having opium pipes beside them. Two or three are shivering with ague; another is in the last stage of dropsy; another is in consumption, and so on. They are all pitiable-looking objects, wasted, dirty, and ragged. Poor Mr. Howard shrinks away in horror. “Are all these men dying from opium smoking?” he asks of his guide. “Yes, ebely one; two, tlee more day dey all die. Oh! velly bad! olla men dat smokee dat ting die,” says the person questioned, well knowing that what he has said is false, and that the poor creatures before him are only honest, decent coolies in the last stages of disease, who until they entered the hospital may never have had an opium pipe in their mouths. “Their poverty and not their will consented.” They had been admitted but a few days before to the Tung-Wah, where the Chinese doctor in charge had prescribed for them opium smoking as a remedy for their sickness and a relief for their pains. Poor Mr. Howard leaves the hospital bitterly reflecting upon the wickedness of the world and of his own countrymen in particular. As for Mr. Thompson, he is set down for a false deceitful man, a disgrace to his country, who should be made an example of. He and his guide then proceed to the opium shop. I shall, however, proceed there before them, and describe the place and its occupants. Opposite to the entrance door are two well-dressed men, their clothes quite new, their heads well shaven, and having attached to them long and splendid queues. These men are lying on their sides, vis-à-vis, with their heads slightly raised, smoking away. If it were not for their villainous countenances they might pass for respectable shopkeepers. They are two thieves, who have just committed a burglary in a European house, from which they carried off three or four hundred pounds’ worth of jewellery, and they are now indulging in their favourite luxury on the proceeds. They have also exchanged their rags for new clothes, got shaved and trimmed, as Mr. Howard sees them. Now, wherever an extreme opium smoker is met, he will in general be found to be one of the criminal classes. In this shop there are three other men smoking. They are stalwart fellows, but dirty-looking, as they have just finished coaling a steamer, and are begrimed with coal dust. As the daily expenses of a steamer are considerable, it is a great object with sea captains to get their vessels coaled as quickly as possible, so that they may not be delayed in port. The men employed upon this work are usually paid by the job, and probably each will receive half-a-dollar for his share. They work with extraordinary vigour, and by the time they have finished they are often much distressed, and are inclined to lie down; their hearts, perhaps, are beating irregularly, and their whole frame unhinged. Being flush of money, for half-a-dollar, or two shillings, is quite a round sum for them, they have decided to go to the opium shop, and, by having a quiet whiff or two, bring the action of their hearts into rhythm, and restore themselves to their ordinary state. These poor coolies are honest fellows enough. They work hard, and are peaceful, unoffending creatures. Hundreds of them are to be seen hard at work every day in Hong Kong.
The interior of the opium shop is as described when Mr. Howard enters with the missionary’s servant. The moment the two well-dressed thieves see them, their guilty consciences make them conclude that the one is a European, and the other a Chinese detective in search of them. They close their eyes and pretend to be in profound slumber. They are really in deadly fear of apprehension, for escape seems impossible. Mr. Howard asks his guide who they are. “Oh, dese plaupa good men numba one; dey come dis side to smokee. To-day dey smokee one pipe; to-mollow dey come and smokee two, tlee pipe; next dey five, six; den dey get sik and die. Oh, opium pipe veely bad; dat pipe kill plenty men.” “You say they are good, respectable men?” says Mr. Howard. “Yes, good plaupa men; numba one Chinee genlman.” “Oh, is not this a terrible thing?” says Mr. Howard, compressing his lips, breathing heavily, and vowing to bear witness, on his return to London, to all the villainy he fancies he has seen. The three men begrimed with coal-dust, although they appear only to be semi-conscious, are in reality taking the measure of Mr. Howard, and enjoying a quiet laugh at his expense. One exclaims, referring to his chimney-pot hat, “Ah ya! what a funny thing that Fan-Qui has got on his head!” The other replies, “It’s to keep the sun away.” “How funny!” retorts the first speaker, “we wear hats to keep our heads warm; they wear hats to keep their heads cool.” “Oh,” returns the other speaker, “the Fan-Qui have such soft heads that if they did not keep the sun off the little brains they have would melt away; and they would die, or become idiots.”[5] Mr. Howard, seeing them in their dirty condition, concludes that they are some of the wretched victims of opium smoking, in the last stage of disease, and leaves with his conductor, pitying them from the depths of his heart; his pity, however, is as nothing compared to the contempt with which these supposed victims to the opium pipe regard him and his chimney-pot hat. As he leaves he asks his guide, “Does the keeper of the opium shop expect a gratuity?” “Oh,” returns the other, “supposee you pay him one dolla, he say, tankee you.” Mr. Howard accordingly gives a dollar to the man, who looks more surprised than grateful, and he leaves the shop, satisfied that he has at last seen the true effects of opium smoking in China. He returns to the missionary, to whom he relates the horrors he has seen, makes copious notes of them, and vows to enlighten his countrymen at home upon the subject. As for his guide Achun, this person loses no time in returning to the opium shop, where he compels the keeper of it to share with him the dollar he has just received, and, having so easily earned two shillings, he quietly reclines on one of the couches and takes a whiff or two of the pipe, the more enjoyable because it is forbidden fruit. Thus the benevolent British public is befooled by these ridiculous stories about opium.
Now as Achun is a representative character, many like him being in the service of missionaries and other foreigners throughout China, I will give you a further specimen of the way such persons cheat and delude their masters. Achun, in whom Mr. Jenkins, the missionary, places implicit confidence, has of late been much exercised as to his “vails,” for Chinese servants are quite as much alive to the perquisites of their office as Jeames, John Thomas, or any others of our domestics here in England. Indeed, I may safely lay it down as a rule that, like cabmen, domestic servants will be found the same all over the world, “one touch of nature makes the whole world kin,” and no sooner have you engaged your Chinese “boy” than his mind is at once set working as to the amount of drawbacks, clippings, and parings over and above his wages he may safely count upon in his new place. Achun is dissatisfied with the commission or drawback allowed him by Chook Aloong, the shopkeeper or compradore, who supplies Mr. Jenkins’s family with provisions and other household necessaries; he is allowed only ten per cent. of the monthly bill, and he considers that in all fairness he should get double that amount. Thus impressed, he makes energetic remonstrances on the subject to Chook Aloong, who is firm and will give no more than ten per cent. Achun is equal to the occasion. Now Mr. Jenkins and his family are simple and frugal in their dietary, but there are some articles of food they insist upon having of the best kind, in consequence of which their compradore sends them those articles and, indeed, all others of unobjectionable quality. Eggs which are not absolutely fresh, and meat, though it be game, if in the slightest degree “up,” they will have none of. Achun well knows all this, and he has determined to have Chook Aloong displaced. Having himself a partiality for eggs, he begins operations by daily appropriating to his own use some of those fresh eggs and substituting stale ones in their stead. In the like manner, instead of letting the family have the beef, mutton, and fowls nice and fresh as they are delivered, he holds them over until the bloom of freshness has departed. This state of affairs occasions some commotion in the family circle. The boy is sent for and shown that the eggs are bad and the meat “high”; he expresses great concern, and declares that he will forthwith call upon the compradore and compel him to make good the damage already done, and supply proper provisions in future. Mr. Jenkins, though angry, is not implacable, and is willing to believe that some mishap has occurred; for how could his old and trusted compradore treat him so badly? His hopes are, however, disappointed, for again and yet again the meat is bad, and, worse still, the eggs are—well, not fresh. The climax is reached one morning when poor Mr. Jenkins, in breaking his egg, finds, not the usual bright yellow yolk and spotless albumen within, but a young chick almost fledged. Horror and disgust seize him, the old Adam over-masters him for a moment, and, full of wrath, he roars for the boy. Achun appears the very picture of innocence, when Mr. Jenkins, ashamed of his outburst of wrath and now quite calm explains the contretemps. He has even in the reaction regained some of his good humour. “Look here, Achun,” he says, showing the chick, “this is too bad, you know. Supposee I wanchee egg,—can catchee him; supposee I wanchee chicken—can catchee chicken. No wanchee egg and chicken alla same together.” Achun perceives the joke, and knowing his master’s weakness, says, “Oh, ho, massa, velly good, dat belong numba one. ‘No wanchee egg and chicken alla same togedda,’” continues the cunning rascal, repeating his master’s words, “Oh velly funny, velly good, massa, ho! ho! ho!” Mr. Jenkins is pleased at the mild flattery of his boy, who has now advanced a step or two in his estimation. “Oh, massa, dat man, Chook Aloong, velly bad man,” continues Achun when his merriment had subsided. “Him smokee too much opium pipe; he no mind his pidgin plaupa, he smokee alla day.” “Oh! ho! is that the way?” asks the missionary, a new light dawning for the first time upon him. “And so Chook Aloong is an opium smoker?” “Ye-s,” replies Achun, prolonging the word. “Too much opium, plenty opium. More betta you get anoda compado sah—some good plaupa man dat no smokee.” “Very well, Achun,” says Mr. Jenkins with a sigh. “It is plain I must get somebody else. Find me out some other man, and, mind, he must not smoke opium.” “Hab got, massa,” returns the boy delighted with his success. “Hab got velly good man, him numba one good compado”; and in walks the person indicated, who has been listening outside all the time. “This belong Sam Afoong, him do all ting plaupa,” the fact being that this very Sam Afoong is the greatest cheat in the whole market. “Oh, you’re the man,” says Mr. Jenkins. “I hope you don’t use opium.” “Oh no, sah,” returns the other, who is in fact an inveterate smoker, “my neba smokee; dat opium pipe velly bad. It hab kill my fadda, my six bludda, my——.” But here he is stopped by a signal from Achun, who saw that his friend, in familiar parlance, was “laying it on too thickly.” Sam Afoong vows to supply the best of good things, and does so, and the Jenkins family are no longer troubled with bad provisions; but had the lady of the establishment gone through the formality of weighing every joint of meat that her new compradore supplied, she would have found that every pound was short of two or three ounces, for thus Sam Afoong recouped himself for the large per-centage bestowed on Achun.
To prove that the missionaries are deceived in the way I have described I will refer you to a passage in Mr. Storrs Turner’s own book, where even he admits that one of his own converts, who had assured him that he never smoked, and no doubt had pledged himself never to do so, was found regaling himself with the iniquity. At p. 32 Mr. Turner says, “I have caught a man smoking who had only half an hour before denied to me that he was a smoker, and condemned the habit.” Yet such are the men from whom the missionaries derive their information about opium smoking. For further proof of this I will quote again from Dr. Ayres’ article, in The Friend of China. This is what he says:—
At the Tung Wah Hospital the stranger may at any time see the most dreadful and ghastly-looking objects in the last stages of scrofula and phthisis smoking opium, who had never previously in all their lives been able to afford the expense of a pipe a day, yet the European visitor leaves the establishment attributing to the abuse of opium effects which further inquiry would have satisfied him were due to the diseases for which the patients were in hospital. From what I have seen there, there is no doubt that the advanced consumptive patient does experience considerable temporary relief to his difficult breathing by smoking a pipe of opium, though it is a very poor quality of drug that is given to patients at the Tung Wah Hospital.
Thus, as I have shown, it has come to pass that whilst the missionary clergymen, owing to their sacred calling and their unquestionably high character, are accepted in England as the most reliable witnesses and entitled to the greatest credit, they are really the men who are the very worst informed upon the opium question which they profess to understand so thoroughly. They are, in fact, the victims of their own delusions. But saddest fact of all, these missionary gentlemen, with the best intentions and in the devout belief that by carrying on this anti-opium agitation they are helping to remove an obstacle to the dissemination of the Gospel in China, are of necessity by so doing obliged to neglect more or less the very Gospel work they are really so desirous to spread, leaving the missionary field open to their Roman Catholic rivals.
The information placed before the public here in England upon the opium question, tainted as it is at the very fountain head, is sent forward from hand to hand, meeting in its filtrations from China to this country with impurity after impurity, until it reaches the form of the miserable trash retailed at Exeter Hall, or by the agents of the Anti-Opium Society. It is an accepted adage that “a story loses nothing by the carriage.” The maxim becomes, more strongly pointed when it is remembered that the opium tales partake so much of the marvellous, and that the various transmitters of those accounts are, in almost every instance, fanatical believers in the supposed wickedness of the Indo-Chinese opium trade. I am quite sure that out of every thousand people who believe in the anti-opium delusion, you will not find two who have ever set their foot in China, or know anything with respect to the alleged evils they denounce, except from the unreliable sources I have mentioned. Such people, as a rule, are by far the most violent and uncompromising opponents of the Indo-Chinese opium trade. The people I describe generally speak with such an air of authority on the question, that an ordinary person would suppose they had personally witnessed all the evils they describe. If you ask one of them in what part of China he has lived, or when and where he has seen the horrors he speaks of, he will jauntily tell you, “Oh, I have heard Mr. A. or the Rev. Mr. B. explain the whole villainy at Exeter Hall.” Another will say he has read Mr. Storrs Turner’s great work upon opium smoking, with which I have already made you somewhat acquainted. When General Choke rebuked Martin Chuzzlewit for denying that the Queen lived in the Tower of London when she was at the Court of St. James, Martin inquired if the speaker had ever lived in England. “In writing I have, not otherwise,” responded the General, adding, “We air a reading people here, Sir; you will meet with much information among us that will surprise you Sir.” Just so. These anti-opium enthusiasts have been in China in writing, and understand the opium question upon paper only—a few months in Hong Kong or Canton, freed from missionary influence, would soon disillusionize them. I remember hearing a story once of a most estimable gentleman who had the misfortune to be the defendant in an action for breach of promise. The plaintiff’s counsel, who had a fluent tongue and a fertile imagination, painted him in such dreadful colours, and so belaboured him for his alleged heartless conduct towards the lady that the gentleman so denounced, persuaded for the moment that he was really guilty, rushed out of court, exclaiming, “I never thought I was so terrible a villain before.” That is just the kind of feeling that first comes over one upon hearing of those opium-smoking horrors; for it must not be forgotten that the indictment of the Anti-Opium Society, and of its secretary Mr. Storrs Turner in particular, not only includes the Imperial Government, and the Government of India, during the past forty years, but all the British merchants connected with the Chinese trade, and, indeed, the entire British nation.
Before proceeding to deal with the fallacies I have enumerated, it is necessary that I should again address a few words to you on the subject of evidence, so as to enable you to discriminate between the value of the various witnesses who have attempted to enlighten public opinion on the subject before us. I dislike very much to trouble the reader with dry professional matters, but, under the circumstances, I cannot avoid doing so. It is a rule of law which will, I think, commend itself to the common sense of everybody, that the evidence to be adduced on a trial should be the best that the nature of the case is susceptible of, rather than evidence of a subsidiary or secondary nature, unless, indeed, no better be forthcoming. In determining matters of fact, the best witnesses would be held to be those who have become acquainted with those facts in the course of their ordinary employment, or in the performance of their professional duties, rather than mere amateurs or volunteers, whose knowledge is derived from accident or casual observation only. For illustration, let us suppose the case of a collision at sea between two steamers, A and B,—that previous to and at the time of the collision, besides the usual officers and seamen in charge of A, there were on deck the steward of the vessel and a passenger. Now, the best witnesses on board of A as to the catastrophe would not be the two latter, although they saw the whole occurrence, but the men who were in actual charge of the navigation of the ship, viz. the look-out man in the bows—whose duty it would be to watch for rocks or shoals, or any ship or vessel ahead, and to give immediate notice to the officer of the watch and the man at the wheel of the presence of such object;—the officer of the watch, usually stationed on the bridge;—and the man at the wheel. Why? Because, it being the peculiar duty of the first two men to look out for and avoid striking on rocks or shoals, or coming into collision with any other vessel, and the duty of the third man not only to keep a look out but to steer as directed by the officer on the bridge, they necessarily paid more attention to, and had their intellects better sharpened in respect to such matters than the others, who had no such duty cast upon them. The next best witnesses would be the other seamen during whose watch the accident occurred, their duty being generally to attend to the management of the ship, her sails and cordage, and obey the orders of the officer of the watch, but who, not having immediate connection with the steering and course of the vessel, would not be expected to have the same accurate knowledge of the circumstances that led to and occurred up to the time of the collision as the first three. The least valuable witnesses would be the steward and the passenger, for the reasons already mentioned. Applying these rules to the question now before us, it follows that the testimony of such a man as Dr. Ayres—some of which I have given you already—and of others which I shall lay before you, should have far greater weight and be more reliable than that of ordinary persons having no special knowledge or experience of opium or its effects, nor any opportunity of obtaining such knowledge, much less any duty cast upon them to acquire it, e.g. missionaries and other persons unconnected with native and foreign merchants, and having no duties to perform which would bring them into constant intercourse with the Chinese community.
The first of these fallacies which have so much tended to warp the understanding of these Anti-Opium people is this: “That the poppy is not indigenous to China, but has been recently introduced there, presumably by British agency.” With this let us take the second fallacy, viz.: “That opium smoking in China is now and has always been confined to a small per-centage of the population, but which, owing to the introduction of Indian opium, is constantly increasing.” Here I would first inquire—what is the poppy? To this question one person would say, It is the plant that produces that deadly drug, morphia. Another would answer, It is the herb from which laudanum is made; and a third would say, It is the plant which supplies opium, smoked so much in China and eaten so largely in India. These answers would all be correct enough, so far as they go; but they would not be complete, for there are many other uses to which the poppy is applied besides all these. That valuable plant produces not only opium, but an oil used for lighting and for edible purposes, the Chinese using the oil to mollify their daily rice and other food, mixing it also very commonly with another and richer quality of oil. The seeds, when the oil is expressed, are given to cattle, or allowed to rot and form manure. If the oil is not expressed, the seeds can be worked up into cakes. From the capsules medicine is made, and lastly, the stalks and leaves when burnt produce potash. Mr. William Donald Spence, one of Her Majesty’s Consuls in China, to whose valuable “Report on the Trade of the Port of Ichang, and the Opium-culture in the Provinces of Szechuan and Yunnan,” I shall presently introduce you, knows all this as matter of fact, and, indeed, I am mainly indebted to him for the information I now give you. It is admitted by Mr. Storrs Turner that the poppy is indigenous to China, and when it is remembered that the people of that country are and have been for thousands of years the most civilized in Asia,—that agriculture is considered the most honourable industry in the country, as evidenced by the annual practice of the Emperor to turn over the earth with the plough at the beginning of Spring,—that the Chinese are skilled husbandmen, and of most frugal and thrifty habits, it becomes a matter of irresistible inference that those people must have known that most useful plant, the poppy, and must have cultivated it for economic purposes long before opium was known in Europe. Sir Robert Hart, in his Yellow Book, says “that native opium was known, produced, and used long before any Europeans began the sale of the foreign drug along the coast.” Compare that with the misleading passage at page 2 of Mr. Storrs Turner’s book, where he says “that the poppy had long been cultivated in Egypt, Turkey, Persia, India, and recently in China and Manchuria,” and ask yourselves what credit you can give to that gentleman as a trustworthy guide on the subject of opium. Here is Sir Robert Hart, a great Chinese authority, practically admitting that three or four hundred years ago at the least native opium was grown and produced in China, and Mr. Storrs Turner, in this fallacious statement of his, trying to induce his readers to infer that the drug was only recently produced in that Empire! The reader can choose between these authorities for himself. Now the fact is, that in very ancient Chinese works mention is made of the poppy. In the “History of the Later Han Dynasty” (A.D. 25-220), the brilliant colour of the poppy blossom, of the charms of the juice, and the strengthening qualities of the seeds of the plant, formed the themes of Chinese poets as far back as a thousand years, and probably much farther. The poet Yung T’aou, of the T’ang dynasty (A.D. 618-907), celebrates the beauty of the flower. The poet Soo Cheh (A.D. 1039-1112), dwells, in an ode, on the curative and invigorating effects of the poppy seeds and juice, and another poet, Soo Sung, of the same period, praises the beauty of the plant, which he speaks of as being grown everywhere in China. I am not a Chinese scholar, but I have high authority for these statements. You will thus clearly perceive that opium is a native plant, that its various uses have for many centuries been known to the Chinese, and that the British are in no way responsible for the introduction of opium into China, much less for the practice of smoking the drug.