I trust that the delusion that the opium trade now existing with China was “extorted” from that country by the British Ambassador may be finally dispelled.
But Mr. Storrs Turner will doubtless still say, “Oh! these gentlemen are Englishmen; you cannot believe them.” I do not think, however, this kind of objection will have much weight with my readers or the country at large.
And now, as I am on the political side of the question, I will say a few words on the Indian aspect of the case. The Government of India is charged by Mr. Storrs Turner and the Anti-Opium people generally with descending to the position of opium manufacturers and merchants, and quotes an alleged proposal of the late Lord Lawrence to drop the traffic, leaving the cultivation and exportation of the drug to private enterprise, and recouping itself from loss by placing a heavy export duty on the article. If Lord Lawrence ever proposed such an arrangement, which I doubt very much, I hardly think he could have carefully considered the question. No doubt, in an abstract point of view, it is contrary to sound policy for the Government of a country to carry on mercantile business, much less to take into its own hands a monopoly of any trade, yet the thing has been done for a great number of years, and is still practised by some continental Governments without the existence of any special reason for so doing. The Indo-China opium trade, however, is an entirely exceptional one. When an exceptional state of things has to be dealt with, corresponding measures must be resorted to. The opium industry in India is an ancient one; and the exportation of this drug to China began under the Portuguese, several centuries ago. Were the Government of India to adopt the alleged proposals of Lord Lawrence, the result would be that a much larger quantity of opium than is now produced in India would be turned out, so that not only would the alleged evils now complained of by the missionaries and the Anti-Opium Society be intensified, but the Government of India would find its revenue greatly increased by its export duty on the drug. This is very conclusively shown by Don Sinibaldo de Mas, a most competent authority, who has studied the question deeply and can have no possible object but the revelation of the truth.
There are numerous objections to throwing open the Indian trade. As matters now stand, the Government of India annually makes advances to the opium growers, to enable them to produce the drug. These advances are made at a low or nominal rate of interest. Let the Government once drop the monopoly and throw open the trade, and then the small farmers—and they form perhaps seventy-five per cent. of the whole, whether they cultivate the poppy or any other crop—would be at the mercy of the usurers, who are the curse of India. Thus the poor cultivator, instead of paying the Government two or three per cent. interest for the advance, would have to pay perhaps five times that amount, with a bill for law costs; and a much larger bill staring him in the future, in case he should be so unfortunate as not to be up to time with his payments. The usurers or Márwáris as I believe they are called, would in such cases profit by the fruits of the soil instead of the growers. As to the morality of the proposed change, I do not see what could be gained by such an arrangement. If it is wrong to derive a revenue from opium by direct, it is equally wrong to do so by indirect means. Before closing this part of the subject, there is another point I wish to say a few words upon. It is put forward by Mr. Turner in his book, with great plausibility, and is, no doubt, accepted by his disciples as fact, that every acre of land put under opium cultivation displaces so much rice, the one being a poison, the other the staff of life. This is perfectly fallacious; wherever rice is grown in China—and I fancy it is the same in India—there are two crops taken in the year. Rice is cultivated during the spring and summer months (that is, the rainy season), for the grain only grows where there is abundance of water.
The poppy thrives only in the dry season, that is, during the latter part of the autumn and the winter, when the rice crops have been saved. The poppy requires a rich soil, so that before planting it the farmers have to manure the ground well; then, when the poppy crop has been secured, the land is in good heart for rice, and so the rotation goes on. This I stated in the first edition of this lecture; since then Mr. Spence’s Report for 1881 has appeared which fully confirms my view. Thus much for the accuracy of this statement of Mr. Storrs Turner.
I come now to the last of the fallacies, follies, and fantasies, upon which the huge superstructure of delusion put forward for so many years by the Anti-Opium Society has been built. At once the least sustainable, it is the one which carries the most weight with the supporters of that Society, for it furnishes the raison d’être of their whole action. It is that the introduction of Indian opium into China has arrested the progress of Christianity in that country, and that if the trade were discontinued the Chinese would accept the Gospel. No greater mistake, nor more unfounded delusion than this could be indulged in; indeed, it seems to me something very like a profanation to mix up the Indo-China opium trade with the spread of the Gospel in the Empire of China. If the objection to embrace Christianity because we send opium to that country has ever, in fact, been made by natives, that objection was a subterfuge only.
The Chinese are an acute and crafty race; when they desire to attain an object, they seldom attempt to do so by direct means, but rather seek to gain their ends indirectly. They despise and hate Christianity, although they will not tell you so, much less will they argue with you, or enter into controversy upon the subject. They will rather try to get rid of it by a side-wind. They are a very polite and courteous people, and understand this style of tactics very well. I have no doubt whatever that if the British trade in opium were suppressed to-morrow, and that no British merchant dealt any longer in the drug, or sent a particle of it into China, and if a missionary were to go before the Chinese and say, “We can now show clean hands, our Government has stopped the opium trade,” and then were to open his book and begin talking to them of Christianity, he would only be met with derisive laughter. “This man,” they would say, “thinks that because the English have ceased to sell us opium we should all become Christians. If they sold us no more rice or broadcloth, we suppose they would say that we should become Mahomedans.”
Knowing the cunning and keen sense of humour of the people, I have no doubt they would use another argument also. There is a story told of a Scotch clergyman who rebuked one of his congregation for not being quite so moderate in his potations as he ought to be. “It’s a’ vera weel,” returned the other, who had reason to know that the minister did not always practise what he preached, “but do ye ken how they swept the streets o’ Jerusalem?” The clergyman was obliged to own his ignorance, when Sandy replied, “Weel, then, it was just this, every man kept his ain door clean.” And I can well fancy in the case I have supposed, an equally shrewd Chinaman saying to the missionary, “What for you want to make us follow your religion? Your religion vely bad one. You have plenty men drink too muchee sam-shu, get drunk and fight, and beat their wives and children. Chinaman no get drunk. Chinaman no beat or kill his wife. Too muchee sam-shu vely bad. Drink vely bad for Inglismen; what for you don’t go home and teach them to be soba, plaupa men?” Believe me, the Chinese know our little peccadilloes and are very well informed respecting our doings here at home.
We send but six thousand tons of opium annually to China, which, according to Sir Robert Hart, who ought to be a reliable authority on the subject, inflicts no appreciable injury upon the health, wealth, or extension of the population of that vast empire. The truth is, that the alleged objection of the Chinese against Christianity amounts simply to this: because some of our people do what is wrong, and we are not as a nation faultless in morals, we should not ask them to change their religion for ours. Perfection is not to be attained by any nation or the professors of any creed. If we had the ability, and were foolish enough to stop the exportation of Indian opium to China, the natives of the country would find some other reason for clinging to their own creeds and rejecting Christianity. They could, and doubtless would, point to the fearful plague of intemperance prevailing amongst us; they could also refer to the great number of distilleries and breweries in the United Kingdom, to our Newgate Calendar, and to the records of the Divorce Court. In short, they would say, “You do not practise what you preach. What do you mean, then, by trying to make Christians of us?” The same doctrine has been used over and over again even in Christian countries, and it is lamentable to see educated and intelligent men becoming victims to such a delusive mode of reasoning. This sad hallucination on the part of the missionary clergymen is the origin of the mischievous and very stupid agitation going on against the Indo-China opium trade, but now rapidly, I believe and hope, coming to an end.
A few years ago I paid a short visit to Japan. Whilst I was at Tokio, the capital, a lecture was given there by an educated Japanese gentleman, who spoke English well and fluently. He introduced religion into his lecture, and considered the question why the Japanese did not embrace Christianity. “Our minds,” said he, “are like blank paper; we are ready to receive any religion that is good, we are not bigoted to our own, but we object to Christianity because we do not consider it a good religion, because we see that Christians do not reverence old age, and because they are so licentious, and so brutal to the coolies.” But these reasons are again merely subterfuges. The Japanese do not smoke opium, and the very same objection they urge against Christianity might also be used by the Chinese. The Oriental mind is very much the same, whether Chinese, Japanese, or Indian. Upon religious or political questions they well know how to shift their ground. As to the Chinese embracing Christianity, I trust the day will come when they will do so. They would then be the most powerful nation in the whole world, and probably become our own best teachers on religion and morals; but at present I see no immediate hope of their conversion. I say this in view of the stand taken by the Protestant missionaries on this opium question. Nothing, in my opinion, is more calculated to impede the progress of missionary work than this most absurd and unfounded delusion. The reason given by the missionaries for the apparently small success which has hitherto attended their efforts, is that the so-called iniquitous traffic in opium has been the one stumbling block in their way. Put a stop to this villanous trade, they say, and the Gospel will flourish like a green bay-tree. This sort of argument takes with the missionaries themselves and with religious people generally, and thus converts to the anti-opium policy are made. Yet all these statements rest, I can assure you, on an entirely fallacious foundation. We are not dealing with a savage but with a civilized people. You may change a nation’s religion, but you cannot alter its customs, and if China were evangelised to-morrow the Chinese would still continue opium smokers. The Reverend Mr. Galpin has hit the nail on the head when he said in his letter to the missionaries of Peking:—