The truth about opium

by William H. Brereton

Now, why is this belief so prevalent? Because those foreign residents daily mix with the Chinese, know their habits and customs, hear them talk, sell to them, and buy from them, and being aware, as they all are, of the controversy going on here about opium, and the strenuous efforts that are being made in this country to prevent the Indian Government from allowing opium to be imported into China, they take a greater interest in the subject, and examine the question more carefully than they otherwise might. They, I say, being on the ground and knowing the very people who smoke opium and who have smoked it for years, without injury or decay to their bodily or mental health, have irresistibly come to the same conclusion as I have. For myself, I may say that I have taken a very great interest in the subject, particularly during the past five or six years. I have tried in vain to find out those pitiable victims of opium smoking who have been so much spoken of in books, in newspapers, and on public platforms. Day after day I have gone through the most populous parts of Hong Kong, which is a large city, having about one hundred and fifty thousand Chinese inhabitants—in both the wealthiest and poorest quarters. I have daily had in my office Chinese of all classes, seeing them, speaking to them, interrogating them upon different subjects, and I have never found amongst them any of these miserable victims to opium smoking. On the contrary, more acute, knowing, and intelligent people than these very opium smokers I have rarely met with.

Now, Hong Kong may be said to be, and is, in fact, the headquarters in China of the opium trade. It is there that all the opium coming from India and Persia is first brought. It is, in fact, the entrepôt or depôt from which all other parts of China are supplied with the drug. Furthermore, it is the port whence “prepared opium,” the condition in which the drug is smoked, is mostly manufactured and exported to the Chinese in all other parts of the world, for wherever he goes, the Chinaman, if he can afford it, must have his opium-pipe. Moreover, the Chinese of Hong Kong get much better wages and make larger profits in their trades and businesses than they could obtain in their own country; and can, therefore, better afford to enjoy the luxury of the pipe than their own countrymen in China. So that if opium smoking produced the evil consequences alleged, Hong Kong is unquestionably the place where those consequences would be found in their fullest force. They are not to be found there in the slightest degree. One fact is worth a thousand theories, and this I give you as one which I challenge Mr. Storrs Turner or any other advocate of the Anti-Opium Society to disprove. I will now show you how I am corroborated. I have a witness on the subject whose testimony is simply irrefragable. Dr. Philip B. C. Ayres, the learned and efficient Colonial Surgeon, and Inspector of Hospitals of Hong Kong, confirms my statement in the strongest possible manner. That gentleman has held the important office I have mentioned for about ten years. Previous to taking up his appointment at Hong Kong he had been on the Medical Staff of India, where he had made opium and opium eating—for the drug is not smoked in India—a special study. In Hong Kong he has had abundant opportunities of studying the effects of opium smoking and making himself thoroughly acquainted with the wonderful drug, such opportunities, indeed, as few other medical men have ever had. It is part of his daily duties to inspect the Civil Hospital of Hong Kong,—a splendid institution open to all nationalities, and conducted by able medical men,—the Gaol, the Chinese Hospital, called the Tung Wah, which is under exclusive Chinese management, and all other medical institutions in the Colony. Thus a wide field of observation is presented to him. I may add here that Dr. Ayres is the only European physician who has succeeded in removing the prejudice among the better class of the Chinese against European doctors and in obtaining a large native practice. This fact speaks volumes as to his general abilities as well as to his professional attainments and his means of acquainting himself with the social life of the Chinese. In his annual Report presented to the Government of Hong Kong for the year 1881, a copy of which, I believe, is now, or ought to be, in the pigeon-holes of the Colonial Office in Downing Street, there is the following passage:—

I have come to the conclusion that opium smoking is a luxury of a very harmless description, and that the only trouble arising from its indulgence is a waste of money that should be applied to necessaries. Eight mace is equivalent to an ounce and twenty-nine grains, a quantity of opium sufficient to poison a hundred men, smoked by one man in a day, and this he has been doing for twenty years: that is to say, he has consumed in smoke in that time about one thousand pounds sterling, and for this indulgence he has to deny himself and his family many absolute necessaries. The list of admissions contains thirty-five opium smokers, and the amount smoked between them daily was eighty-four mace and a half, or seven dollars worth of opium. The result of my observations this year is only to confirm all I said on the subject of opium smoking in my report for 1880.

Again, Dr. Ayres has published from time to time in the “Friend of China,” the organ of the Anti-Opium Society, various interesting papers on medical subjects. This is what he says in an article which will be found at length at p. 217 of vol. 3 of that journal:—

My opinion of it is that it [opium smoking] may become a habit, but that that habit is not necessarily an increasing one. Nine out of twelve men smoke a certain number of pipes a day, just as a tobacco smoker would, or as a wine or beer drinker might drink his two or three glasses a day, without desiring more. I think the excessive opium smoker is in a greater minority than the excessive spirit drinker or tobacco smoker. In my experience, the habit does no physical harm in moderation.... I do not wish to defend the practice of opium smoking, but in the face of the rash opinions and exaggerated statements in respect of this vice, it is only right to record that no China resident believes in the terrible frequency of the dull, sodden-witted, debilitated opium smoker met with in print, nor have I found many Europeans who believe they ever get the better of their opium-smoking compradores in matters of business.

Let Mr. Storrs Turner refute this, if he can. If he cannot, what becomes of his book[1] published in 1876, which may be called the gospel of the Anti-Opium Society, with which I shall make you better acquainted by and by. And what should become of the Anti-Opium Society itself, which has wasted on its chimerical projects hundreds of thousands of pounds—the contributions of the benevolent British public, which might have been spent in alleviating the misery and distress in this vast metropolis, or been otherwise usefully applied.

The Government of Hong Kong, for the purposes of revenue, has farmed out the privilege or monopoly of preparing this opium and selling it within the colony, and I dare say you will be surprised to hear that the amount paid by the present opium monopolist for the privilege amounts to about forty thousand pounds sterling a year. To elucidate this, I should tell you, that opium as imported from India, Persia, and other places is in a crude or unprepared state. In this condition it is made up in hard round balls, each about the size of a Dutch cheese, but darker in colour. To render it fit for smoking it has to be stripped of its outer covering, shredded, and boiled with water until it becomes a semi-fluid glutinous substance resembling treacle in colour and consistence. In this state it is known as “prepared opium.” As such it is put up into small tins or canisters, hermetically sealed, so that it can be exported to any part of the world. Now, I have been the professional adviser of the opium farmer for at least ten years, and from him and his assistants I have had excellent opportunities of learning the truth about opium. I have thus been able to get behind the scenes, and so have had such opportunities of acquainting myself with the subject as few other Europeans have possessed. I knew the late opium farmer, whom I might call a personal friend, intimately from the time of my first arrival in China. When I call him the opium farmer I mean the ostensible one, for the opium monopoly has always, in fact, been held by a syndicate. My friend was the principal in whose name the license was made out, and who dealt with the wholesale merchants, carried on all arrangements with the Government of the Colony, and chiefly managed the prepared opium business. I knew him so intimately and had so many professional dealings with him, irrespective of opium, that I had constant opportunities of becoming acquainted with all the mysteries of the opium trade. Now the conclusion to which my own personal experience has led me I have told you of before, and I have never met anyone who has lived in China, save the missionaries, whose experience differed from mine. I have tried to find the victims of the so-called dreadful drug, but I have never yet succeeded.

Many people in this country, I dare say, owing to the false and exaggerated stories which have been disseminated by the advocates of the Anti-Opium Society, think that if they went to Hong Kong they would see swarms of wretched creatures, wan and wasted, leaning upon crutches, the victims of opium smoking. If they went to the colony they would be greatly disappointed, for no such people are to be met with. On the contrary, all the Chinese they would see there are strong, healthy, intelligent-looking people, and, mark my words, well able to take care of themselves. I don’t suppose there were five per cent. of my Chinese clients who did not, to a greater or less extent, smoke opium. I have known numbers, certainly not less than five or six hundred persons in all, who have smoked opium from their earliest days—young men, middle-aged men, and men of advanced years, who have been opium smokers all their lives, some of them probably excessive smokers, but I have never observed any symptoms of decay in one of them. I recall to mind one old man in particular, whom I remember for more than fifteen years; he is now alive and well; when I last saw him, about two years ago, he was looking as healthy and strong as he was ten years before. He is not only in good bodily health, but of most extraordinary intellectual vigour, one of the most crafty old gentlemen, indeed, that I have ever met; no keener man of business you could find, or one who would try harder to get the better of you if he could. The only signs of opium smoking about him are his discoloured teeth, by which an excessive smoker can always be detected, for immoderate opium smoking has the same effect, though in a less degree, as the similar use of tobacco, the excessive smoking of which, as I shall by and by show you, is the more injurious practice of the two. The Chinese, as a rule, have extremely white teeth—the effect, perhaps, of their simple diet, and their generally abstemious habits. They are proud of their teeth, which they brush two or three times a day, so that there is no difficulty in distinguishing heavy smokers from those who smoke in moderation. It is easy to compare the one with the other, and I may state that although the former be not often met with, he will be found to be not a whit inferior to the other in wit or sharpness. The old gentleman I have referred to, like many others of his countrymen, will settle himself down of an evening, when the business of the day is over, and enjoy his opium pipe for two or three hours at a stretch, yet, notwithstanding this terrible excess, as the Anti-Opium people would say, he continues strong and well. Nay, more, he has two sons of middle age, healthy, active men, who indulge in the pipe quite as regularly as their aged father. I have known many others like these men, but have never seen or heard of any weakness or decay arising from the practice.

Now, I have told you that the British merchants in China hold the same views as I do upon the opium question. But it may be said that the merchants are interested persons, and in point of fact Mr. Storrs Turner says as much in his book. And, of course, he would have it inferred that what they allege or think on the subject should not have any weight, because they are the very persons in whose interest this so-called iniquitous traffic is being carried on, and that, therefore, they would not say anything likely to dry up their fountain of profit. I only wish for the sake of my fellow-countrymen that all these declarations about princely fortunes were true. Hills look green afar off, but when you approach them they are often found as arid as the desert; and, unfortunately, like Macbeth’s air-drawn dagger, these splendid visions are not “sensible to feeling as to sight,” but simply princely fortunes of the mind “proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain.” Mr. Turner mentions in his book one eminent firm in particular, the oldest and probably the greatest in China or the far East, a firm respected throughout the whole mercantile world, whose public spirit, boundless charity, and general benevolence are proverbial, whom he stigmatizes as “opium merchants,” and who are, of course, making the imaginary “princely fortune” by opium. Now if that gentleman had taken the least trouble to inquire before he launched his book upon the world, he would have found that the firm he refers to in such terms had had little or nothing to do with opium for at least twenty years. That is not, perhaps, a matter of much importance. If he had taken the trouble to make further inquiry, he could have had no difficulty in ascertaining, what I tell him now as a fact, and one within my own personal knowledge, that the only merchants in China who are making large profits out of opium are just two or three firms, who, by the undulations and fluctuations inseparable from commerce, have got the bulk of the trade into their hands, and that all the other British merchants throughout China, and all the foreign merchants, Germans, Americans, and others, have really little or nothing to do with the opium trade at all. Of course, merchants now and then will have to execute orders for opium for a constituent who may require a chest or two of the drug, but that is only in the course of business, and is not attended with any profit to speak of. And I am perfectly sure that if it were possible to put a stop to this opium traffic, which is said to be the source of so much profit to many, that, saving the two or three firms I have mentioned, the suppression of the trade would make no difference to the other firms. This gross blunder of Mr. Storrs Turner is characteristic of the general inaccuracy of his book. Before casting odium upon an eminent firm common decency, if not prudence, to say nothing of good taste, should have induced him to make careful inquiries upon the subject. This, it is clear, he has not done, and, as if to make matters worse, although his book appeared so long ago as 1876, in an article published in the “Nineteenth Century” for February 1882, he has again gratuitously referred to this firm in terms as unjustifiable as they are absolutely unfounded. He couples the firm with another house now dissolved, and says, “they were legally smugglers, but the sin sat lightly upon their consciences.” Very pretty this for a minister of the Gospel and the Secretary of the Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade. The statement, even if true, was wholly unnecessary for the professed object of the writer, and why he made it is best known to himself. This is the gentleman by whose persistent efforts those fallacious and mischievous views upon the opium question have during the past eight years been mainly forced upon the public, and to whom the prolonged existence of that most mischievous organization, the Anti-Opium Society, is due. He is the Frankenstein who has created the monster that has deceived and scared so many excellent people. I will show you that this monster is but a poor bogey after all, with just as much form and substance as that with which Mrs. Shelley affrights her readers in her clever romance. On the other hand, do not let it be thought, as I believe has been said by some enthusiasts, that it is owing to the British merchants in China having discovered that opium is an unclean thing, and to their having washed their hands of all participation in the traffic, that the trade has fallen into the hands of a few, who of course would, by parity of reasoning, be set down as very unscrupulous people. That is a fallacy, and, what is more, it is an untruth. I do not believe there is a British firm, or a firm of any other nationality, in China, which would not, if the opportunity presented itself, become to-morrow “opium merchants,” as Mr. Turner expresses it, if they thought the trade would prove a source of profit, because they hold, with me, that the opium traffic is a perfectly proper and legitimate one, quite as much so as traffic in tobacco, wine, or beer; and a thousand times less objectionable than the trade in ardent spirits.

Before proceeding further, it is important that I should bring to your notice some particulars about China and its people. It is actually necessary to do so, to enable you to grasp the facts and see your way well before you. Although the opium question ought to be a simple one, yet, owing to the sophistries and misrepresentations of the Anti-Opium Society, and in particular of its Secretary and living spirit, Mr. Storrs Turner, a wide field is opened to us across which it will be necessary to lead you to chase the phantom off the plain. The public here are very apt to think of China as if it were a country like Italy, France, or England. They never dream for a moment of the immense empire which China actually is. Perhaps if they did, and could take in the whole situation, they would be slower to believe the extraordinary stories which are spread about our forcing opium upon the Chinese, and, by doing so, demoralizing the nation. We forget, as we grow old, much that we have learned in our youth, especially geography, and I daresay many a schoolboy could enlighten myself and others upon that particular branch of education. China, it must be remembered, is a country which cannot be compared with France, Spain, or England, for it is a vast empire, as large as Europe, with a population some fifty or sixty millions greater. Now, what a stupendous feat to be able to storm, as it were, that enormous empire, and for a handful of British merchants to succeed in forcing opium upon, and, by doing so, debasing the whole of this wonderful people. Yet this is what is alleged by the anti-opium philanthropists and by Mr. Storrs Turner, who is their priest and prophet, and so his enthusiastic disciples believe, to whom I would merely say,—“Great is thy faith.” These plain facts are not brought forward by the Anti-opium people. The public are addressed and pleas are put forward for their support on the ground that we are dealing with a country of the like extent as our own, inhabited by a primitive semi-civilized people. No greater fallacy, no more downright untruth could be put forward. The Chinese are not only a civilized but an educated people. Until quite recently there were more people in the British Islands, in proportion to their population, who could neither read nor write than in China.