The truth about opium

by William H. Brereton

Sir Robert Hart’s Report, although to a certain extent an anti-opium one, is in this and other respects very valuable, and forms in itself a complete answer to the false and unfounded allegations of the Anti-Opium Society. It is not likely that he would exaggerate the amount of opium grown or smoked in China; the inference, indeed, would be that he, as an official of the Chinese Government, would do just the contrary. There are a great many other important ports in China besides the twenty ports with which foreigners are not allowed to trade, and from which, indeed, they are rigidly excluded; and in the interior of the country there are immense and numerous cities and towns, large, thriving and densely populated, where the opium pipe is used as freely as the tobacco pipe is with us. The provinces in which opium is most grown are Szechuan and Yun-Nan, two of the largest of the eighteen provinces constituting China proper. They are the two great western provinces; but it is also grown in the eastern and central provinces, in fact, more or less, all over the country. Though there are no certain statistics, there cannot be a doubt that opium smoking is more prevalent in the interior provinces than on the coast, because it is there that the most opium is grown, and it is but reasonable to infer that where opium is largely cultivated, especially in a country like China, having no railroads, and few ordinary roads, there you will find it to be most cheap and abundant, and therefore most consumed. Upon this point I would refer to a most authoritative work by the late lamented Captain Gill, R.E.,[6] whose barbarous murder the whole country deplored. At page 235 of vol. ii. Captain Gill says:—

As we had such vague ideas of the distance before us we were anxious to make an early start, but we were now in Yunnan, the province of China in which there is more opium smoked than in any other, and in which it is proportionately difficult to move the people in the morning. There is a Chinese proverb to the effect that there is an opium pipe in every house in the province of Kweichow, but one in every room in Yunnan, which means that men and women smoke opium universally.

That is the report of a man who was not only a sagacious and close observer of all that he saw in his interesting journey, but who was wholly impartial and disinterested on the subject of opium smoking. Sir Robert Hart does not purport to give in this book correct returns of the quantity of opium smoked or imported, much less of the quantity grown in China. The replies of his subordinates at the different ports, many of them seven hundred or a thousand miles apart, all concur in speaking of the great difficulties they had in getting any figures at all. They are, therefore, not to be taken as absolutely trustworthy, and Sir Robert candidly admits that they are mere approximations. Before I had seen his book I had made a calculation of the probable number of opium smokers in China, on the assumption that the population of China proper was three hundred and sixty millions, and that the custom was universal, limited only by the means of procuring the drug; and I arrived at the conclusion that there were in China three millions of habitual smokers, and about the same number of occasional smokers. Mr. Lennox Simpson, Commissioner at Chefoo, in reply to Sir Robert Hart’s circular, says, at page 13 of the Yellow Book:

Much difficulty has been experienced in eliciting answers to the various questions put to the native opium shops and others, all viewing with suspicion any inquiries made, evidently fearing that some prohibition is about to be put on the trade, or that their interests are in some way to suffer. Hence some of the figures given in the return can scarcely be considered reliable, although every pains has been taken to collect information.

These commissioners are all gentlemen of good standing and education, and they have a great many subordinates under them, so that they possess means of collecting information such as no foreigner, not engaged in the public service of China, could possibly command. Mr. Francis W. White, the Commissioner at Hankow, replied:

Owing to the entire absence of all reliable figures, the amount of opium put down as produced within the province and within the empire yearly, must be taken as approximate only. I have been careful to collect information from various sources, and this has been as carefully compared and verified as means will allow.

Mr. Holwell, the Commissioner at Kiukiang, wrote:

The total quantity of unprepared native opium, said to be produced yearly in the province of Kiangsi, I find it next to impossible to ascertain with any degree of certainty. Native testimony differs.

I will point out by-and-by the reason why these returns are so unreliable. The most extraordinary of them all are the returns of Mr. E. B. Drew, the Commissioner at Ningpo, and Mr. H. Edgar, the Commissioner at Ichang. The former estimates the entire quantity of native opium grown and consumed in China at two hundred and sixty-five thousand chests, the latter at only twenty-five thousand—less than a tenth of Mr. Drew’s estimate. In the face of all these discrepancies, Sir Robert Hart takes an arbitrary figure, and says, in effect, there is at least as much opium produced in China itself as is imported into China. With the knowledge I have of the Chinese and the opium trade generally, from the calculations I have made, and by the light thrown upon the question by Sir Robert Hart’s Yellow Book, and the Reports of Messrs. Spence and Baber and others, I am induced to come to the conclusion that two hundred and sixty-five thousand chests is much nearer the mark than a hundred thousand chests.

The reason the Chinese opium dealers have been so reticent in affording information to the Commissioners of Customs at these Treaty Ports is, that they are afraid to do so, fearing if they gave correct information, they might in so doing furnish to the Mandarins reasons for “squeezing” them, or for placing taxes and other restrictions on their trade; for the Government officials in China, from the highest to the lowest, are, as I have before said, the most corrupt, cruel, and unscrupulous body of men in the whole world. Mr. Storrs Turner has told us that the Chinese Government is a paternal one, exercising a fatherly care of its people, and always exhorting them to virtue. Nothing can be more fallacious than this. Theoretically, there is much that is good in the system of government in China, but practically it is quite the reverse. There is little sympathy between the supreme Government and the great body of the people. The Emperor, his family, and immediate suite, are all Tartars, quite another race from the Chinese, differing totally in customs, manners, dress, and social habits. The Governors or Viceroys are pretty much absolute sovereigns within their own provinces. Each has under him a host of officials, commonly known as Mandarins, who are generally the most rapacious and corrupt of men; their salaries, in most cases, are purely nominal, for they are expected to pay themselves, which they well understand how to do. Their system of taxation is irregular and incomplete, and the process of squeezing is openly followed all over the country. There is nothing a Chinese dreads so much as disclosing his pecuniary means, or, indeed, any information that might furnish a clue to them. If he admitted that he cultivated fifty acres of opium, or bought a hundred pikuls of opium in a year, his means and his profits could be arrived at by a simple process of arithmetic, and although he might feel sure that, so far as Sir Robert Hart and the foreign Commissioners under him were concerned, no wrong need be apprehended, yet he is so distrustful and suspicious, that he would fear lest the facts should reach the ears of the higher Chinese officials through the native subordinates in the Commissioners’ Offices.