Looking at Christianity in the broad and true sense, as a great regenerating force breathing its beneficent spirit upon and promoting the welfare of all, of course the excessive use or abuse of opium and every other thing, is a serious hindrance to its happy progress. But this is a very different position from that of supposing that the present apparently slow progress of mission-work in China is to be attributed to the importation of Indian opium. China is a world in itself, and the influence of Christian missions has hitherto reached but a handful of the people, for there are many serious obstacles to its progress besides opium.
As before mentioned, the Roman Catholic missionaries have never complained that their missionary labours were impeded by the opium trade. I had the honour of being Solicitor at Hong Kong to a wealthy and important religious community of that persuasion which has missionary stations all over China, Formosa, and Tonquin, and might call the head of the order a personal friend, yet I never heard a complaint of the kind from him or any of his clergy. I was on very intimate terms with a Roman Catholic gentleman who was in the confidence of the Catholic Bishop at Hong Kong, and the Roman Catholic community generally, and I have had conversations with him on missionary matters. He has never uttered such a complaint, but, on the contrary, has always spoken of the success which attended the Roman Catholic missions throughout China. In this connection it should not be forgotten that the Chinese treat all foreigners alike; they know no distinction between them—English, French, German, Spanish, Americans, Portuguese, are to them one people. The victims of the Tientsin massacre were, with the exception, I think, of a Russian gentleman, a community of French nuns. The petition to the House of Commons set out in my first letter emanated from the Protestant missionaries alone, and it has not, I am well assured, been signed by a single Roman Catholic missionary. It is plain, therefore, that this alleged obstacle to the spread of the Gospel in China by the English and American missionaries is a monster of their own creation, and has no real existence. Bishop Burden, of Hong Kong, the missionary bishop for South China, who, although no authority on the opium question, ought, on this point at all events, to be well informed, estimates the number of Protestant converts in China at forty thousand, and of Roman Catholics at one million. The disparity is great, but then it should not be forgotten that Roman Catholic missions in China date from a period probably two centuries earlier than Protestant missions. If out of these forty thousand converts I allow five per cent., or two thousand, to be really sincere and able to give a reason for the faith that is in them, I believe that I am not underrating the precise number of true and bona fide converts which these missionaries have made. But knowing this as I do, it is very far from my intention to cast blame upon the missionaries in consequence. To those who understand the difficulties those devoted men have to contend with in the progress of their labours, the wonder is not that they have done so little, but that they have achieved so much. Upon this point, I would say again, I am very far from attributing any blame to our missionaries, save in so far as they have allowed themselves to be cajoled by certain Chinese and others as to opium smoking. No one is more sensible of their piety, learning, zeal, and industry; and a very sad task it has been to me to impugn their conduct and controvert their views as I have done. A good cause, however, cannot and ought not to be promoted by falsehood; for such this Anti-Opium delusion amounts to, and nothing more, and there can be no hope for more solid results from the missionary field until it is swept from the missionaries’ path. Two thousand sincere converts after all is, in my belief, a great and encouraging result, considering the tremendous obstacles our missionaries have to encounter in overcoming in the first instance the prejudice of the Chinese against foreigners, and then in displacing in their minds the idolatrous and sensuous creed that has taken such firm root there, and become, so to speak, engrained in the Chinese nature, and implanting in its stead the truths of the Gospel. Each of these two thousand converts will prove, I am well assured, like the grain of mustard seed that will fructify and in time bring forth much fruit. But it must not be forgotten that China, in the terse and apposite words of the Rev. Mr. Galpin, is “a world in itself,” containing as it does about a fourth of the whole human race.
The custom of opium smoking has existed in the Empire of China from time immemorial. You might as well try to reverse the course of Niagara as to wean the Chinese from the use of their favourite drug. As to the Treaty of Tientsin, it is unfair and ungrateful of the missionaries to speak of it as they do. It did no more than reduce to a formal settlement a state of things that had been for several years tacitly acquiesced in and agreed to by the Chinese and British authorities and people. That treaty was prepared with the greatest deliberation by an eminent statesman who was singularly remarkable for his humanity and benevolence, assisted by able subordinates who were in no way deficient in those qualities. The missionaries seem to forget that this very Treaty of Tientsin, which they so denounce, is the charter by which they have now a footing in China, with liberty to preach the Gospel there. They would have no locus standi in China but for this sorely abused treaty. There is a special clause in it drawn up by Lord Elgin himself, providing that we should be at liberty to propagate Christianity in the country. That treaty is the missionaries’ protection. It is to it they would now appeal if molested by the Mandarins or people of China. They cry it down for one purpose, and rely upon it for another. I may here not inappropriately observe that the missionaries of Peking seem to have been under a misapprehension as to the nature of this treaty. From their petition to the House of Commons it would appear that they were under the impression that some special clause legalizing the importation of opium into China was introduced into it under pressure from the British Government; but that was a mistake. There is no “clause” whatever in the treaty on the subject of opium. The only place that the word “opium” appears is in the schedule, where it is set down amongst other dutiable articles, such as pepper and nutmegs, exactly as stated by Mr. H. N. Lay. It is plain, then, that these missionary gentlemen had not a copy of the Treaty of Tientsin before them when they drew up their petition, and I doubt very much if any of them ever read the treaty at all. They appear to have got the delusion so strongly into their heads that the legalization of opium was wrung from the Chinese Government that it seems they thought it quite unnecessary to read the treaty and took everything for granted.
I have now, I think, shown and fully refuted the fallacies which within the past thirty years have crept into the minds of the opponents of the Indo-China opium trade, dimming the faculties, blinding the reason, warping the judgment, ministering to the prejudices, deluding the senses, gratifying the feelings, until these fallacies have become so interwoven and welded together as to form and culminate into one CONCRETE PLAUSIBLE, FASCINATING, DEFAMATORY LIE! A cruel, false, and treacherous lie, that misleads alike its votaries and its victims, and that, too, in the names of religion and charity.—A lie circumstantial,—so highly genteel and respectable,—so sentimental and pious,—so sleek and unctuous,—so caressed and flattered,—so bravely dressed, and so beflounced and trimmed with the trappings of truth, that even those who have bedecked the jade fail to see the imposture they have created, so that the tawdry quean struts along receiving homage as she goes, whilst plain honest Truth in her russet gown wends her way unnoticed.—I have shown that this Anti-Opium scare is a sham, a mockery, a delusion—a glittering piece of counterfeit coin, which I have broken to pieces and proved to you that, for all its silvery surface, there is nothing but base metal beneath.
Let me now recapitulate. I have, I think, made it irrefutably clear—
1. That the Chinese are a civilized people, very abstemious in their habits, especially as regards the use of opium, spirits, and stimulants of all kinds.
2. That there is and can be no analogy or comparison whatever between opium eating and opium smoking, as each stands separate and apart from the other, differing totally in the mode of use and their effects, and that opium eating is not a Chinese custom.
3. That an overdose of opium, like an excessive draught of spirits, is poisonous and produces immediate death.
4. That opium smoking is a harmless and perfectly innocuous practice, unless immoderately indulged in, which rarely happens, as seldom, indeed, as over-indulgence in tea or tobacco in England.
5. That even when immoderately indulged, any depressing effects resulting from opium smoking are removed simply by discontinuing the use of the drug for a short period.