How, after that, it can be said for a moment that the Chinese Government was actuated by moral considerations, or was really anxious to put down opium smoking or opium culture, I cannot conceive. The truth is, and it is so palpable that it really seems to me to require no advocacy whatever, that the Government, as Sir Rutherford Alcock and Don Sinibaldo so strongly put it, does not like to see so much bullion leaving the country.
Now, Sir Rutherford Alcock, unlike the missionaries and the agents of the Anti-Opium Society, has acquired his knowledge of opium and the opium trade in the regular course of his ordinary duties, and has necessarily, therefore, acquired an authentic knowledge of the subject. His testimony, like that of Messrs. Spence, Baber, and a host of other unimpeachable witnesses, comes under the head of the “best evidence.” But it is said of Sir Rutherford by the agents of the Anti-Opium Society, with the view of discrediting his testimony, that he has changed his opinions; that formerly he was opposed to the trade which he now defends. I do not believe there is any solid truth in this assertion; but if there is, what does the fact prove? Why, simply nothing at all. Show me the public man who during the past forty or fifty years has not altered or modified his opinions more or less. Sir Robert Peel, one of the greatest of modern statesmen, when he was past sixty years of age, changed the opinions he had held all his life upon free trade. Was he right or wrong in doing so? If Sir Rutherford Alcock had at an earlier period of his life held different opinions to those he now holds on the Indo-Chinese opium trade, it is not unreasonable that on a closer study of the subject, and by the strong light that has been thrown upon it within the past ten or fifteen years, he should have modified or even altogether changed his opinions. This is, again, another instance of the desperate efforts of the Anti-Opium advocates to hold their ground and maintain their unfounded and untenable theories.
The Government of China have always been protectionists in the strictest sense of the term. Their idea has been that China can support itself; that the people can provide themselves with everything they want, and need nothing from abroad. They will sell the foreigner as much of their produce as he wishes to buy, and cheerfully take his gold in exchange, but they will not buy from him if they can help doing so. This is the real end they are aiming at; but they would not be at all so persistent, or put their case so much forward as they do, were it not for the attitude taken up by the missionaries and that most mischievous, intermeddling, un-English confederacy the Anti-Opium Society, as revealed to them by The Friend of China. The Government of China have in their employment Chinese clerks and interpreters who are excellent English scholars. These men explain everything about the objects of the Anti-Opium Society, and, whilst the Mandarins laugh at the absurdities put forward by that association, they are still quite ready to accept the Society as their ally. Hence Li Hung Chang’s letter to Mr. Storrs Turner, mentioned in Sir Rutherford Alcock’s paper; one would almost fancy that this letter had been written for Li by Mr. Storrs Turner himself. No one knew better than Li Hung Chang that this letter was one tissue of hypocrisy and mendacity. But, stay, there is one part of it that is certainly true. Li says to Mr. Turner: “Your Society has long been known to me and many of my countrymen.” There can be no doubt of the fact. Whilst despising Mr. Storrs Turner and his Society, and cordially hating him and his fellow missionaries, Li Hung Chang and his friends play into their hands and humour them in this matter to the top of their bent. Their real object is to get rid of the Indian opium if they can; or, if they cannot, to have a higher duty fixed upon it, so as to reduce its supply; or, at all events, to augment their own revenues by the higher duty. As matters stand at present, the Chinese Government obtains a net revenue of over two million pounds sterling from the Indian drug, and they derive, perhaps, half that amount from the duty on the home-grown article. They have revenue cruisers constantly watching to put down opium smuggling, and they adopt other rigid steps to prevent the practice; but it is still carried on to a considerable extent, not by Englishmen or other foreigners, mark you, but by their own countrymen. Very great misconception, I may here say, prevails upon this point artfully spread abroad by agents here of the Anti-Opium Society, but I shall sweep this away before I close. The Chinese Government is quite willing to perpetuate the Indo-China opium trade if it can only get the duty raised to suit its purpose. Therein lies their whole object. Mr. Turner speaks about the paternal character of the Chinese Government. In the Peking Gazette—which is in some respects analogous to the London Gazette—Imperial decrees are from time to time published. Amongst others, there will appear proclamations addressed to the people, warning them to abstain from this and that evil practice. But they have not the least effect, nor is it expected that they will have effect. They are mere shams, and are not heeded; yet they please the people. These proclamations or injunctions are never seriously intended, and Mr. Turner knows this perfectly well. Dr. Wells Williams mentions in his book that two thousand years before Christ the manufacture of spirits was forbidden in China; yet the trade still flourishes there. Spirits are still drunk in moderation throughout China, just as opium is smoked.
Sir R. Hart says that “Native opium was known, produced, and used long before any Europeans began the sale of the foreign drug along the coast.” Mr. Watters, one of Her Majesty’s Consuls in China, states that the poppy is largely cultivated throughout Western China; Mr. Colborne Baber, who has travelled through nearly the whole of China, not only confirms Mr. Watters’ statement, but says that from his own experience one-third of the province of Yunnan is under opium culture. Mr. W. Donald Spence and a host of others thoroughly well informed upon the question also give the strongest corroborative testimony. Now, in the face of the statements of such witnesses as these, can you credit for a moment Mr. Storrs Turner when he says—believing only what he wishes to be true, but having no data whatever for his statements—that it is only recently that opium has been cultivated in China? Of all the existing nations of Asia, the only one that can now be described as civilized is China; and this is the country where Mr. Turner, because it suits his purpose, tells us that this invaluable drug has been only recently known.
China may be said to be the garden of Asia. Opium has been grown throughout the fertile plains of that immense continent for thousands of years, and is it likely that the oldest and most civilized of all Asiatic nations would be the last to introduce into their country the culture of that drug to whose curative properties Mr. Storrs Turner bears such strong testimony in the opening chapter of his book? The only reason that gentleman could have had for making such a statement is simply, as I have already intimated, to induce his readers to believe that the Chinese would not have cultivated the drug, nor have used it for smoking, were it not for the importation of Indian opium into China. Upon this part of my subject, I may mention that a book has been written by a very learned man, Dr. W. A. P. Martin, President of the Tungwen College at Peking, who shows that China was the cradle of Alchemy, which was known there five hundred years before it was ever heard of in Europe. Are these a people likely to be ignorant of this indispensable medicine, as Mr. Turner characterizes it, or to neglect its cultivation throughout their fertile country? I may add that all, or nearly all, the medicines of the British Pharmacopœia, and a great many more also, have been known to the Chinese for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
The eighth fallacy is, that the British merchants in China are making large fortunes by opium. I have already, I think, pretty well disposed of this, and I need not say much more upon the subject now. One of the great points of the Anti-Opium Society and its supporters seems to be that the British merchants are birds of prey, a set of rapacious and ravenous creatures, without the feelings of humanity in their breasts, who have gone out to China to make princely fortunes, after the manner of that apochryphal youth who, on his departure from the paternal roof, is said to have received this admonition from his canny sire, “Mak money, ma boy—honestly if you can—but mak money”; that thus animated the British merchant arrives in China like a hawk amid a flock of pigeons, and helps himself to one of those princely acquisitions, which, to Mr. Storrs Turner, seem to be as plentiful as blackberries in the flowery land, and who, after having helped to demoralise and ruin the nation, gracefully returns home to enjoy his ill-gotten gains. The best answer to this is the amicable relations that now exist and have always existed between the natives and these merchants. The British merchants, as a body, have no interest in the opium trade; nor are any of them engaged in smuggling or in any practices detrimental to the natives of China. In point of education, thorough mercantile knowledge, strict integrity, and sound practical Christianity, these gentlemen are second to no other body of men in the British Empire.
Another fallacy, or false assumption, number nine, which the advocates of the Anti-Opium Society are fond of propagating, and which is as fully believed in by themselves as by their deluded followers, is—that the discontinuance of the supply of opium from India would stop or check the practice of opium smoking. They fully believe that if they could only succeed in suppressing the Indo-China opium trade they would deal such a death-blow to this ancient custom, which prevails more or less over the eighteen provinces of the Chinese empire, that we should in a very short time hear of there being no opium smoking at all in China! That is as great a delusion as was ever indulged in. Imagine a person saying that if we ceased to ship beer, stout, and whiskey to Denmark, France, or Italy, we should check the consumption of brandy or other alcoholic liquors throughout Europe, and you have a pretty fair parallel to this assumption.
Suppose it were possible to stop the supply of opium from British India, and that such stoppage had in fact taken place, the result would be that the Chinese would increase the cultivation of the poppy in their own country still more than they have already done, and the Indian drug known as “Malwa opium” would still continue to be imported into China, for the British Government, even if desirous to do so, could not prohibit its manufacture and exportation. The Portuguese, who were the first to import Indian opium into China, would cultivate the drug, not only in their Indian possession of Goa, but in Africa, where they have colonies. Further, they would encourage its increased cultivation in the native states of India, which produce the Malwa opium, and which, as I have just said, we could not prevent. A great stimulus would also be given to the cultivation of Persian opium. Hear, how I am borne out by Don Sinibaldo de Mas, an authentic and thoroughly impartial witness. This is what he says, in his very valuable book:—
It is another fallacy to say that if the East India Company were to prohibit the cultivation of opium in her territories that the article would disappear from China altogether. The poppy grows freely between the equator and latitudes 30° to 40°; it is produced in large quantities in Java, the Phillipines, Borneo, Egypt, and other places, as well as in China itself, where for many years past some thousands of chests are annually produced. It may be that the opium grown at Java has perhaps a different taste from that grown at Malwa and Benares, and may seem to be of inferior quality, but the consumers would soon become accustomed to that, and would probably prefer the former to the latter. Persons who are in the habit of smoking Havanna dislike Manilla cigars, and those who generally smoke Manillas prefer them to Havannas. At present opium is not exported from other countries because Indian Opium is so cheap.
What, then, may I ask, is the reproach constantly hurled at the East India Company? That it derives an annual income by the culture of opium of at least three millions of pounds sterling. Should the Company prohibit the culture of the drug in order to allow other nations to derive the emoluments arising from it? I who have travelled in both upper and lower India, and know something of the country, am persuaded that the people there are already over-taxed, and to demand from them a substituted tax for those three millions would be a very serious matter indeed. And for whom pray would this sacrifice be made? To reduce the quantity of opium smoked in China? Most assuredly not; for the Chinese would still smoke just as much. This sacrifice on the part of England would only benefit those countries which would take up the cultivation of opium in order to supply the Chinese markets from which the Indian drug had been withdrawn. And what fault can be found with the merchants? Is it not the Chinese who ask for opium, and who buy it of their own free will, although not a single foreigner, either by example or precept, encourages them to do so. Is it not the Chinese who go out of their ports to the “Receiving Ships” to fetch it? Is the Chinese nation composed of children, or of savages who do not know right from wrong? Ought, for instance, the Queen of England to undertake to redress Chinese habits, or let us say vices, and to reform her Custom-house administration by watching the Chinese Coast? By what right could the English Government or any other Government do such things? If that is not what is wished, what is? Against whom and against what is all this outcry?