A Vindication Of England's Policy With Regard To The Opium Trade Part 4

[56] Dr. Moore, p. 11, 48, 55.

[57] _Ibid._, p. 56.

[58] July 12, 1883. This has now been further reduced.

[59] Dr. Christlieb says 1,033,000 acres--an obvious exaggeration.

[60] The districts of Indore, Bhopal, &c.

[61] Mr. Storrs Turner himself, the secretary of the Society, allows that this is a difficult part of the question. See his article in the _Nineteenth Century_, Feb. 1882.

[62] Mr. Brereton (p. 74) estimates the amount consumed in California alone to be worth 100,000.

[63] Mr. Acheson, in a memorandum to the Custom inspectorate from Canton, says it amounts to 5,000 piculs.

[64] This, however, does not fairly represent the difference, as Indian opium yields twenty per cent. more extract.

[65] Brereton, p. 139.

[66] Financial Statement, 1882, sect. 172.

[67] The Right Hon. J. Whittaker Ellis.

[68] Dr. Christlieb, a German professor, says 400,000; but Dr. Medhurst, a medical man resident for years in China, with all his life-long experience and knowledge would not even hazard a conjecture as to the annual death-rate. Dr. Lockhart says, "It is impossible to say what is the number of such victims either among the higher or lower cla.s.ses." _Ait Varius, negat Scaurus. Utri creditis, Quirites?_

[69] Don Sinibaldo (p. 11). To prohibit opium, he says, because some people kill themselves with it, is as bad as if we prohibited razors because some people cut their throats with them. He also says that he considers the number of deaths by opium in China to be less in proportion than the number of deaths self-inflicted by firearms in France--_i.e._ that they do not number 3,500 in all.

[70] Swinhoe's _Campaign of 1860_, p. 248.

[71] Dr. Ayres, _Friend of China_, 1878, p. 217.

[72] Comm. on E. I. Finance, Q. 5980. Mr. Winchester says: "I should say the balance was in favour of the relief given by the stimulant over the actual misery created by its abuse." Also Dr. Moore, p. 86.

[73] Dr. Ayres, _Friend of China_, 1878, p. 217.

[74] Dr. Myers, _Health of Takow_, p. 8. A recent article in the Times, from a Singapore correspondent, fully bears this out. He says that all allow the Chinese of the Straits Settlements to be the _finest specimens of their race_, and yet these very Chinese, a million in number, smoke 12,000 chests of opium a year; and the deaths from opium registered in the annual medical report were last year _five_.

[75] Mr. Brereton (p. 8) says: "I have known numbers, certainly not less than 500 in all, who have smoked opium from their earliest days, young men, middle-aged, and men of advanced years, some of them probably excessive smokers; but I have never observed any symptoms of decay in one of them." Again: "I have tried to find the victims of the dreadful drug, but have never succeeded."

[76] From a letter to the _London and China Telegraph_, June 19, 1882.

[77] The estimate of one million given in a preceding note includes the Chinese population of the neighbouring islands and of Cochin China.

[78] Dr. Myers: "It is surprising how few among the hard-working cla.s.s indulge to excess; and case after case will be met with, even in the lowest ranks of life, of men who have smoked regularly from ten to twenty or thirty years, and show little or no signs of mental or physical deterioration."

[79] Dr. Myers, _Health of Takow_, p. 10.

[80] Correspondent to _North China Herald_. See Brereton, p. 135.

[81] Of this the Indian Government is only responsible for 40,000 chests.

The rest is Malwa opium.

[82] It may be said that those who smoke _Indian_ opium are the richer cla.s.ses, and therefore more p.r.o.ne to excess; but, on the other hand, the native drug is more deleterious.

[83] _Health of Takow_, p. 6.

[84] _Ibid._, p. 5.

[85] Mr. Cooper's coolies carried him twenty miles a day for months.

[86] Coleridge.

[87] Aug. 19, 1882.

[88] "Most remarkable for industry and usefulness."--Sir F. Halliday.

[89] See Johnston's _Chemistry of Common Life_.

[90] "Stimulants are weak narcotics: narcotics are strong stimulants."--_Modern Thought_, Aug. 1882.

[91] Sir George Birdwood calls this the greatest temperance triumph of any age or nation.

[92] It has only recently been discovered that the aborigines of Australia also have a narcotic of their own, which has qualities akin to opium and tobacco.

[93] Capt. Hall's _Nemesis_.

[94] _Opium Question Solved_, p. 15. _Cf._ Sir Charles Trevelyan, Comm. on E. I. Finance, Qu. 1532-40.

[95] And in this connection it might occur to us that if, in the wake of our civilization, instead of the "blue ruin" which we gave him, we had brought to the Red Indian the marvellous gift of opium, "that n.o.ble race and brave" would not have "pa.s.sed away," but be still surviving to smoke the calumet of peace with the divine opium in the bowl.

[96] Parliamentary Papers 1842-56, No. 26.

[97] Letter to Sir W. Parker, 1843. He adds that "personally he had not been able to discover a _single_ instance of its decidedly bad effects."

[98] _China and the Chinese._

[99] "No one," says Mr. Gardner, "is maddened by smoking opium to crimes of violence, nor does the habit of smoking increase the criminal returns or swell the number of prison inmates."

[100] Dr. Pereira, _Materia Medica_. Dr. Andrew Clarke estimated on one occasion that seven-tenths of the patients in St. Bartholomew's Hospital owed their ill-health to alcohol.

[101] Dr. Tanner's _Practice of Medicine_. Dr. Moore. For an interesting comparison between opium and alcohol, we may refer our readers to De Quincey's _Confessions of an Opium Eater_.

[102] Twenty-five drops of laudanum = 1 grain of opium [therefore] 8,000 drops = 320 grains; but Dr. Myers tells us that 2 grains of opium swallowed = 1 mace (58 grains) smoked, so that De Quincey took what was equivalent to 160 _mace_ smoked.

[103] Theodore Gautier maintains that "the love of the ideal is so innate in man that he attempts, as far as he can, to relax the ties which bind body to soul; and as the means of being in an ecstatic state are not in the power of all, one drinks for gaiety, another smokes for forgetfulness, a third devours momentary madness."

[104] It is indeed said of Ennius that he sought inspiration in the flowing bowl; that he never