The truth about opium

by William H. Brereton

I have mentioned Mr. W. Donald Spence as one of Her Majesty’s Consuls in China. Now, every foreign resident in that country knows who and what those consular gentlemen are; but I do not think the public here in England are equally well informed upon the subject, because it is only natural that they should confound them with the ordinary British Consuls at the European and American ports; but that would be a very great mistake, for the two sets of Consuls form quite distinct and separate bodies. The Consuls at the latter ports are no doubt highly respectable gentlemen, often indeed, men who have distinguished themselves in science and literature, or in the army or navy, but still they are simply commercial agents of the British Government, and no more, having little or no diplomatic or other duties to discharge. The Consular Service of China stands upon a totally different footing. In this country Her Majesty’s Consuls are not only commercial agents, but are trained diplomatists, entering the service in the first instance as cadets, after passing most difficult competitive examinations. They are always Chinese scholars, many of them holding high rank as such. The Consuls have very important diplomatic duties to discharge, and have also magisterial duties to perform towards their countrymen in China, all of which demand qualities of a high order, and which only superior education and careful training enable them to discharge. England has acquired by treaty ex-territorial rights, as regards her own subjects, in the ports of China thrown open to her commerce, known as “Treaty ports,” the most important of which are the exclusive right to hear and determine all civil and criminal cases against British subjects. These onerous and important duties are performed by Her Majesty’s Consuls at those ports. These gentlemen, indeed, have more power in many respects than is possessed by the Queen’s Ambassadors and Ministers Plenipotentiary at the various Courts in Europe. They have, in fact, all the powers now vested in the Judges of Her Majesty’s High Court of Judicature here in England, as well as the powers possessed by the Judges of the Admiralty, Probate, and Bankruptcy Courts. Further, and in addition to all these multifarious duties, they are Her Majesty’s special commercial agents at these treaty ports, with the usual jurisdiction over British ships, their officers, and crew. It is, therefore, a matter of the first necessity that the persons in whom such tremendous powers are placed should not only be gentlemen of the very highest characters and assured abilities, but men of superior education specially trained to fill these important positions and discharge the varied and onerous duties appertaining to them. Such are the present British Consuls in China, and such they have been in the past. There is not, I believe, in this or any other country, a more highly-educated, intelligent, and efficient body of men to be found. If any proof of these high qualities is required, it will be furnished in the fact that notwithstanding the difficult, delicate, and onerous duties cast upon them, no instance of their abuse of these powers has ever occurred. I certainly know of none. I am only here stating, I assure you, what is actually true. It has, indeed, always been to me a marvel that no complaints—no political entanglements, no troubles—have arisen from the abnormal state of things arising out of our commercial and political relations with China, and the extraordinary and exceptional powers necessarily entrusted to our Consular Agents in that Empire in consequence. We can now look back, after a quarter of a century of experience, and congratulate ourselves that all our complicated machinery has worked so well, that no clouds obscure the vista, and that our present position in China is one of serenity and sunshine; that we stand upon the very best terms with the Chinese Government from the central authority at Peking to all its ramifications throughout the vast empire. Nothing, in fact, blurs the landscape, save the miserable opium phantom created by our own countrymen, the missionaries, and magnified to a monster of large dimensions by the “Chinese jugglers,” who here in England keep the machinery of the Anti-Opium Society in motion. These happy results are due to Her Majesty’s Diplomatic and Consular Service in China, controlled by Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in England. And here I cannot but remind you of that distinguished veteran statesman Sir Rutherford Alcock, formerly Her Majesty’s Minister to the Court of Peking, to whose wise and far-seeing policy much of the present happy relations with China is due. There is not an English resident in China who cannot bear testimony to the splendid talents and genuine patriotism which has marked his career in that vast and interesting country. There is no greater authority living upon Anglo-Chinese affairs than he, especially as regards the period of the famous treaty of Tientsin, some of whose testimony on these points I will lay before you. After a long and honourable career he is now in England enjoying his well-earned repose, and is, happily, a powerful living witness to the fallacies I am now trying to efface.

Now, one of the ablest and most accomplished men at present in the Diplomatic and Consular Service of China is Mr. W. Donald Spence, Her Majesty’s Consul at Ichang, a port on the Yangtze, to whom I have before shortly referred. This gentleman, in the year 1881, paid a visit to Chungking, the commercial capital of Szechuan in Western China. Whilst there he availed himself of the opportunity to make inquiries and investigations into the commercial products of that immense province, and especially into the cultivation of native opium, the extent and condition of opium culture in Western China, and the attitude respecting it of the Chinese Government, and on the effect of opium smoking on the people of those provinces where it appears that habit is all but universal. It was his especial duty to make these investigations. No better proof could be produced as to the abilities of this gentleman than this valuable document on the subject presented by him to Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs which Mr. Spence, in his covering letter to Lord Granville modestly styles “his Report on the Trade of the Port of Ichang for the Year 1881.” If anyone will read the whole of this Report—and it will well repay careful perusal—he will pronounce it, I think, one of the ablest and most admirable State papers that have ever been penned. In giving you some extracts from it I will, therefore, ask you to treat the author of it, not as a mere hireling, having an interest in certain matters which it is desirable to place in a particular light, as the agents of the Anti-Opium Society would, no doubt, have you believe, but as the honest statement of an upright, high-minded, honourable English gentleman, of superior talents and a cultivated mind, who values truth above everything, who can have no other object in the matter but to do what is honest, just, and right, and who on this question of opium smoking tells the truth and nothing but the truth to Her Majesty’s Minister. This is what he says as to the cultivation of the poppy in Szechuan:—

Of all the products of Szechuan, the most important nowadays is native opium. In September last year it was my fortune to be sent on the public service to the commercial metropolis of Szechuan, Chungking. I was four months in the province. In the course of that time I visited parts of the great opium country, questioned many people regarding opium culture, consumption, and export, and carefully noted the observations and conclusions on these subjects come to by Mr. Colborne Baber and Mr. E. H. Parker during their official residence there, with a view to giving, as far as possible, exact information in my Trade Report on a matter of great commercial, and no little political, interest at the present moment. The cultivation of the poppy is carried on in every district of Szechuan except those on the west frontier, but most of all in the Prefectures of Chungking Fu and Kweichow Fu. In all the districts of Chungking Fu, south of the Yang-tsze, and in some of the districts of Kweichow Fu, north of that river, it is the principal crop, and, in parts, the only winter crop for scores upon scores of square miles. The headquarters of the trade are at the city of Fuchow, in the first of these prefectures, and, in a considerably less degree, at Fengtu, a district city in Kweichow Fu. Baron Richthofen, writing in 1872, says that the poppy then was cultivated only on hill slopes of an inferior soil, but one sees it now on land of all kinds, both hill and valley. Baron Richthofen himself anticipates this change when he says:—“The Government may at some time or other reduce the very heavy restrictions, and if Szechuan opium then should be able to command its present price at Hankow, the consequence would be an immediate increase in the area planted with the poppy.” Since he wrote, the area given to the poppy has much increased, though not from the cause alleged. Being a winter crop, it does not interfere with rice, the food staple of the people, displacing only subsidiary crops, such as wheat, beans, and the like. When it is planted in paddy and bottom lands, which nowadays is often the case, it is gathered in time to allow rice or some other crop to follow. It can hardly be said of Szechuan that the cultivation of opium seriously interferes with food supplies. The supply of rice remains the same, and the opium produced, less the value of the crops it replaces, is so much additional wealth to the province.

I shall presently show that opium is a more remunerative crop than its only possible substitutes, beans or wheat, and no per-centage of the opium crop being due to the landlord, its cultivation has been greatly stimulated in consequence. Of late years, however, in the districts I have named as being in winter one vast poppy-field, owners of land have become alive to the value to occupiers of the opium crop, and have stipulated for a share of it in addition to their share of the summer crop. Rents, in fact, where opium is in universal cultivation, have practically doubled. Before leaving the subject of tenure, I may add that, in the event of non-payment of rent from causes other than deficient harvests, the landlord helps himself to the deposit in his hands. In bad years remissions are willingly made by the Government to owners of the land-tax, and by owners to occupiers of the rent-produce.

Now you will remember that this very province of Szechuan, where such extensive cultivation of the poppy is carried on, is the largest and most distant of all the provinces of China; it is one of the westernmost of the eighteen provinces of the empire, being bordered on the west by Thibet. Until quite recently Szechuan was about as accessible to Englishmen as Moscow was fifty years ago, a terra incognita, in fact, to Europeans, so that it cannot be pretended for one moment that the introduction into China of Indian opium has had anything to do with the cultivation of the drug there. Indian opium could hardly ever have found its way into the province, which is not less than one thousand two hundred miles from the sea. It is only since the opening of the port of Ichang in the adjoining province of Hupeh, which took place in April 1877, that the district has become at all accessible. But let us return to Mr. W. Donald Spence. This is another extract from his report:—

The poppy is now grown on all kinds of land, hill slopes, terraced fields, paddy and bottom lands in the valleys. Since 1872, when Baron Richthofen visited the province, a great change has taken place in this respect, for it appears to have been cultivated then on hill lands only. All the country people whom I asked were agreed that opium is most profitably grown on good land with liberal manuring. In India it is best grown on rich soil near villages where manure can be easily obtained, and the Szechuan cultivator has found this out for himself. Poppy cultivation, as practised in Szechuan, is very simple. As soon as the summer crop is reaped the land is ploughed and cleaned, roots and weeds are heaped and burnt, and the ashes scattered over the ground; dressings of night soil are liberally given. The seeds are sown in December, in drills a foot and a half apart. In January, when the plants are a few inches high, the rows are thinned and earthed up so as to leave a free passage between each: the plants are then left to take care of themselves, the earth round them being occasionally stirred up and kept clear of weeds. In March and April, according to situation, the poppy blooms. In the low grounds the white poppy is by far the most common, but red and purple are also grown. As the capsules form and fill, dressings of liquid manure are given. In April and May the capsules are slit and the juice extracted. The raw juice evaporates into the crude opium of commerce increasing in value as it decreases in weight.

Mr. Spence then goes on to compare the value of the wheat with the opium crop, showing that the cultivation of the latter is just twice as profitable as the former. Space will not allow me to give you full extracts on this subject, but, as some portion of it is germane to this part of my lecture, I give a short extract on the point:—

It must be remembered, too, that every single part of the poppy plant has a market value. The capsules, after the juice has been extracted, are sold to druggists, and made into medicine; oil is expressed from the seeds, and largely used for lighting and adulterating edible oils; the oil-cake left in the oil-press is good manure, as are also the leaves; and the stalks are burnt for potash. Against these advantages opium is subject to a rent, and requires, for profitable cultivation, plenty of manure; whereas wheat, when followed by a summer crop, pays little or no rent, and gets, in general, no manure. Into the relative profits of opium and wheat both Mr. Baber and Mr. Parker have gone very carefully, and their results correspond, in the main, with my own observations.

I will now give you a short account of opium-culture in the province of Yunnan, a more inaccessible part of China still perhaps than Szechuan. Mr. E. Colborne Baber, like Mr. Spence, belongs to the diplomatic service, and is now the secretary of the British Legation at Peking. All that I have stated as to Mr. Spence applies alike to him. He is a gentleman in whom the most implicit confidence should be placed. In 1877 he travelled through Western Szechuan, having, in his own words, on the morning of the 8th July in that year, passed the western gate of Ch’ung-Ch’ung “full of the pleasurable anticipations which precede a plunge into the unknown.” Having finished his journey through Szechuan, he struck into Yunnan, following the route of Mr. Grosvenor’s mission. He has recounted his adventures in a most valuable and interesting book, written in such a pleasing and graphic style, that the reader, when looking at it for reference only, is irresistibly compelled to read further. His book has been published by the Royal Geographical Society, and is well worthy of general perusal. It is one of the few readable books of travel to be met with nowadays. There is very little respecting opium culture in the volume, but what there is upon the subject is very much to the point. This is what he says:—

Of the sole agricultural export, opium, we can speak with some certainty. We were astounded at the extent of the poppy cultivation both in Szechuan and Yunnan. We first heard of it on the boundary line between Hupah and Szechuan, in a cottage which appears in an illustration given in the work of Captain Blakiston, the highest cottage on the right of the sketch. A few miles south of this spot the most valuable variety of native opium is produced.