Read Ebook: The Truth about Opium Being a Refutation of the Fallacies of the Anti-Opium Society and a Defence of the Indo-China Opium Trade by Brereton William H

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He little thought that on that very site there would soon be many thousands of houses, some of them palatial buildings, including many Christian churches and some heathen temples, for liberty of conscience reigns there supreme; with a Chinese population of over one hundred and fifty thousand. These people are all doing well. Some of them are wealthy merchants; many of them are shop-keepers; others are artificers; and a very large number of them are labourers or coolies. There is no pauperism in the colony. The people there are all well-to-do, or able to live comfortably, and, what is more, they are all happy and contented. A comparatively small body of police preserves the peace of the colony; for, thanks to a succession of wise and able governors, local crime has been reduced to a minimum; serious offences are very rare amongst the regular inhabitants. It is the criminal classes from the mainland which really give trouble, for Hong Kong labours under the disadvantage of being close to two large cities on the Pearl River--Canton and Fatchan, notorious for piratical and other criminal classes. You might send a child from one end of the town to the other without fear of molestation. Indeed, the natives themselves are the very best police; for, take the Chinese all round, they are the most orderly and law-abiding people in the world. They respect the British Government as much as the British people do themselves. They bring their families to Hong Kong, settle down there, and make themselves perfectly at home, finding more security and happiness there than they ever could attain in their own country; because in Hong Kong there is and has always been perfect equality before the law for every man, irrespective of race, colour, or nationality. The life and property of every man there is secure. This is not the case in China.

These are the fruits of commerce which brings peace and plenty in its train, which sweeps aside the dust of ignorance, fanaticism, and superstition--which has reclaimed the deserts of Australia and North America, and spread flourishing cities there, where law and order, truth and justice, peace and happiness, religion and piety are established. These are the achievements of British merchants who have won for our Sovereign the Imperial diadem she wears, and made their country the mistress of the world. These are the people who have done all this, and better still, made the name of England honoured and respected throughout the whole world, and sent the Gospel into every land. Yet those very men Mr. Storrs Turner and other anti-opium fanatics would cover with obloquy, because, forsooth, some British merchants have been concerned in this perfectly justifiable Indo-Chinese opium trade.

Mr. Turner in his book speaks of the Chinese Government as a paternal Government, which, the moment it finds any practices on foot injurious to the people, at once takes steps to put them down. I tell you, as a fact, that a more corrupt Government, so far at least as the Judges and high Mandarins downwards are concerned, never existed in the whole world. There is no such thing as justice to be had without paying for it; if it is not a misnomer to say so, for this so-called justice is bought and sold every day. Corruption pervades the whole official class. I could detail facts as to the punishment of the innocent and the escape of the guilty, which came under my own observation, that would make one's flesh creep. This is why the Chinese of Hong Kong respect so much the British Government, whose rule is just and equitable.

Now there is another point which I wish more particularly to impress upon you, it is this: Anyone hearing of the alleged dreadful effects upon the Chinese of opium smoking, and our wicked conduct in forcing the drug upon them, and making them buy it whether they wish to do so or not, would think that these Chinese were a simple, unsophisticated people, something like the natives of Madagascar,--a people lately rescued from barbarism by missionaries; that they were a weak race, without mental stamina or strength of mind--a soft simple, easily-persuaded race. These are some more of the erroneous views which the Anti-Opium Society tries to impress upon the public mind, and which its Secretary, Mr. Storrs Turner, in particular, artfully endeavours to inculcate. To prove that this is so, I have only to read you a passage from his work. But before doing so, let me assure you that there is not a more astute, active-minded, and knowing race of people under the sun than the Chinese. For craft and subtlety I will back one of them against any European. At page 3 you will read:--

Now, is that a fair parallel? Is it honest or just to place the civilized, wise, and educated Chinese in the same category with the barbarous natives of Central Africa? This, I assure you is but a fair specimen of the misleading character of Mr. Turner's book and an example of the teaching by which people are made the dupes of the Anti-Opium Society. This is the language which Mr. Storrs Turner applies to his country and countrymen to gratify himself and his fanatical followers. China, though a heathen, is a civilized nation. The civilization of the Chinese does not date from yesterday. When England was inhabited by painted savages, China was a civilized and flourishing Empire. When ancient Greece was struggling into existence, China was a settled nation, with a religion and with laws and literature dating back to a period lost in the mist of ages. When Alexander, miscalled the Great, fancied he had conquered the world, and sighed that there was no other country to subdue, the mighty Empire of China, with its teeming millions, and a civilization far superior, taken altogether, to any that he had yet known, was a flourishing nation, and happily far away from the assaults of him and his conquering force. Five thousand years ago, as the Rev. Dr. Legge, the Professor of Chinese at Oxford, tells us, the Chinese believed in one God and had, in fact, a theology and a system of ethics known now as Confucianism, certainly superior to that of Greece or Rome. They had then and still have a written language of their own, in which the works of their sages and philosophers are recorded. There are books extant in that language for more than three thousand years ago. In a learned and very interesting book, written by Dr. Legge, entitled "The Religions of China," it is shown that the Chinese, not only of to-day, but of five thousand years ago, were a great nation. Was it then, I again ask, honest or fair of the Rev. Storrs Turner, who is himself no mean Chinese scholar, to mislead his readers by making use of so forced and inapplicable a comparison? Can there, in fact, be any analogy whatever between the Indo-China opium trade, even supposing that the smoking of the drug were as deleterious to the system as is alleged, and sending whisky from England to the savages of Central Africa? No man could have known better than Mr. Turner that his simile was false and misleading, for he has lived in China for many years. An ordinary person reading that gentleman's book would swallow this simile as one precisely in point, and end by feeling horrified at the iniquities we were perpetrating in China, which is, no doubt, the exact result that he looked for. I recently met a lady with whom I had been in correspondence for some time on professional business. In the course of conversation we happened to speak about opium, and the moment the subject was mentioned she turned up her eyes in horror and declared that she was ashamed of her country for the wrong it was inflicting upon the natives of China. Mr. Turner's wonderful parallel between the civilized Chinese and the African savages had plainly produced its desired effect upon her. I very soon, however, undeceived her on the point, as I have since had the pleasure of doing with many others labouring under the like delusions. I am sorry to say that it is with the gentler sex that our Anti-Opium fanatics make their most profitable converts. I honour those ladies for their fond delusion, which shows that their hearts are better than their heads; that their good intentions run in advance of them, and make them ready victims. Well, well, I trust their charity will soon be diverted into worthier channels. Unfortunately, the minds of many in England have become imbued with the same erroneous belief, which is entirely owing to the mischievous teaching of the Anti-Opium Society, and to the powerful machinery that this Society has available for disseminating its doctrines. I am sorry, indeed, to have to allude thus to Mr. Storrs Turner and his book, for I respect him as a clergyman, a scholar, and a gentleman; but I cannot avoid doing so, for certain it is that if you mean to refute Mahomedanism you cannot spare Mahomed or the Alkoran.

I have already told you something as to the character of the Chinese generally. I will now mention from authority some more specific characteristics of these people, because it is really important that you should thoroughly understand what manner of men these Chinese are, for that is a matter going to the root of the whole question. If I show you, as I believe I shall be able to do most conclusively, that the Chinese are as intelligent and as well able to take care of themselves as we are, with far more craft and subtlety than we possess, you will, I think, be slow to believe that they are silly enough to allow us to poison them with opium, as it is alleged we are doing. A stranger mixture of good and evil could hardly be met with than you will find in the Chinese--crafty, over-reaching, mendacious beyond belief, double-dealing, distrustful, and suspicious even of their own relations and personal friends; self-opinionated, vain, conceited, arrogant, hypocritical, and deceitful. That is the character that I give you of them; but it is the worst side of their nature, for they have many redeeming qualities. I will now place before you their character from another and a more competent authority. The Venble. John Gray, D.D., was, until recently, for about twenty-five years, Archdeacon of Hong Kong, but during the greater part, if not the whole of that time, he was the respected and faithful incumbent of the English Church at Canton, where he resided. Now Dr. Gray, who is still in the prime of life, is a learned and able man; a keen observer of human nature; a sound, solid, sensible Churchman, and so highly esteemed for his excellent qualities, that I do not think any Englishman who ever lived in China has left a more honoured name behind him than he has. He mixed a great deal amongst the Chinese as well as amongst his own countrymen. He also travelled much in China, and there really could not be found a more competent authority as to the character of the Chinese people; and indeed as to all matters connected with China. In 1878 he published a valuable and trustworthy book. It is not the production of a person who has merely made a flying visit to China; but it is the work of an old and sagacious English resident in that country, a profound thinker and observer, of a man who has studied deeply and made himself thoroughly acquainted with his subject. He says, at p. 15, vol. i.:--

Of the moral character of the people, who have multiplied until they are "as the sands upon the sea-shore," it is very difficult to speak justly. The moral character of the Chinese is a book written in strange letters, which are more complex and difficult for one of another race, religion, and language to decipher than their own singularly compounded word-symbols. In the same individual virtues and vices apparently incompatible are placed side by side--meekness, gentleness, docility, industry, contentment, cheerfulness, obedience to superiors, dutifulness to parents, and reverence to the aged, are, in one and the same person, the companions of insincerity, lying, flattery, treachery, cruelty, jealousy, ingratitude, and distrust of others.

This is the character which an English clergyman and scholar gives of the Chinese. Dr. Gray was not a missionary, and it is to the missionary clergymen generally that the extraordinary and delusive statements respecting opium which I am combating are due; the reason for which I shall by and by give you. I hold these missionary gentlemen in the very highest respect. In their missionary labours they have my complete sympathy, and no person can possibly value them as such more than I do, nor be more ready than I am to bear testimony to the ability, piety, industry, and energy which they have always displayed. But they are not infallible, and when they forsake or neglect their sacred functions, and enter the arena of politics; when they cast aside the surplice and enter the lists as political gladiators, they are liable to meet with opponents who will accept their challenge and controvert their views, and have no right to complain if they now and then receive hard knocks in the encounter. They are enthusiastic in their sacred calling; but that fact, whilst it does them honour, shows that their extraordinary assertions as to the opium trade should be received with caution, if not distrust. They are the men who are responsible for the unfounded views which have got abroad on this question.

Now, is it not significant that Dr. Gray, whom the people of Canton esteemed and respected more than any European who has lived amongst them, except, perhaps, the late Sir Brooke Robertson , should have said nothing against opium in that valuable and exhaustive work of his? Is it not passing strange that this shrewd observer of men and manners, this intelligent English clergyman, who has passed all these years at Canton, which, next to Hong Kong is the great emporium of opium in the south of China, should be silent upon the alleged iniquities that his countrymen are committing in that country? Dr. Gray is a patriotic English gentleman. Can you suppose for a moment, that if we were demoralizing and ruining the people of the great city of Canton, and above all, that we were impeding the progress of the Gospel in China, that his voice would not be heard thundering against the iniquity? Dr. Gray is an earnest and eloquent preacher as well as an accomplished writer; yet his voice has been silent on this alleged national crime. Is it to be thought that, if there were any truth in the outcry spread abroad by Mr. Storrs Turner and the Anti-Opium Society, he would have omitted to have enlarged upon the wickedness of the opium trade when writing this book upon China and the manners and customs of the Chinese? Is it not remarkable that he has said not a word about that wickedness, and that all these alleged evils arising from the trade are only conspicuous in his book by their absence? And here I would ask, is not the silence of Dr. Gray on this important opium question, under all the circumstances, just as eloquent a protest against the anti-opium agitation, as if he had given a whole chapter in his book denouncing the imposture?

But to return to the character of the Chinese. Dr. Wells Williams, a missionary clergyman of the highest character, who, being a missionary, I need hardly say, does not hold the views that I do, has written another admirable book upon China. In it he has described the Chinese character very fully. He first tells us, at page 2 of the second volume, what one, Tien Kishi--a popular essayist--thinks of foreigners.

"I felicitate myself," he says, "that I was born in China, and constantly think how different it would have been with me if I had been born beyond the seas in some remote part of the earth, where the people, far removed from the converting maxims of the ancient kings and ignorant of the domestic relations, are clothed with the leaves of plants, eat wood, dwell in the wilderness, and live in the holes of the earth. Though born in the world in such a condition, I should not have been different from the beasts of the field. But now, happily, I have been born in the 'Middle Kingdom.' I have a house to live in, have food and drink and elegant furniture, have clothing and caps and infinite blessings--truly the highest felicity is mine."

That is still the opinion of every Chinaman respecting foreigners, save those at Hong Kong, Shanghai, and the other treaty ports of China who, having intermixed with foreigners, have found that their preconceived notions respecting them were untrue, but they are but a handful, a drop in the ocean; yet these are the people who, it is said, at our bidding and instigation, are ruining their prospects and their health by smoking our opium. Dr. Williams further says of them, at page 96 of the same volume:--

More ineradicable than the sins of the flesh is the falsity of the Chinese and its attendant sin of base ingratitude. Their disregard of truth has, perhaps, done more to lower their character in the eyes of Christendom than any other fault. They feel no shame at being detected in a lie, though they have not gone quite so far as to know when they do lie, nor do they fear any punishment from the gods for it. Every resident among them and all travellers declaim against their mendacity.

I shall give you by-and-by instances--actual facts known to myself, to prove that every word Dr. Williams has said is true; and further, that the Chinese will indulge in falsehood, not merely for gain or to carry out some corrupt purpose, but for the mere pleasure of romancing, or to gratify and oblige a friend. Dr. Williams then goes on to moralize, and admits that the Chinese have a great many virtues as well as a great many very foul vices. Unquestionably they have a great many virtues, aye, and virtues of sterling character, and amongst these are commercial honour and probity. For commercial instincts and habits I place them next to the British. In their affection for their parents, their attachment to the family homestead, their veneration for the aged and the virtuous, they surpass every other nation. These are not the class of men to allow themselves to be befooled with opium. Another virtue they possess, and it is one very pertinent to the subject of this lecture, is abstemiousness; they are positively the most frugal, self-denying, and abstemious people on the face of the earth.

Not only are the Chinese abstemious in their use of opium, but also as regards alcoholic liquors. It is not, I think, generally known that there is a species of spirit manufactured, and extensively used throughout China, commonly called by foreigners "sam-shu." It is very cheap, and there is no duty upon it in Hong Kong, nor is there any, I believe, in their own country. I suppose a pint bottle of it can be bought for a penny. It is a sort of whisky distilled from rice. The Chinese use it habitually, especially after meals, and I do not think there is a single foreign resident of Hong Kong, or any of the Treaty Ports, who does not know this fact. The practice in China is, for the servants of Europeans to go early to market each morning and bring home the provisions and other household necessaries required for the day's use. I have seen, in the case of my own servants, the bottle of sam-shu brought home morning after morning as regularly as their ordinary daily food. Yet I never saw one of my servants drunk or under the influence of liquor. What is more than that, although sam-shu is so very cheap and plentiful, and is used throughout the whole of Hong Kong, I never saw a Chinaman drunk, nor ever knew of one being brought up before the magistrate for intemperance. I cannot say the same thing of my own countrymen. Does not that form the strongest possible evidence that the Chinese are an extremely steady and abstemious race? Yet these are the people whom Mr. Storrs Turner would put in the same category as the savages of Africa? Well, then, is it likely that a people so abstemious in respect of spirit drinking would indulge to excess in opium, especially if the drug has the intoxicating and destructive qualities ascribed to it by the missionaries?

The Chinese, I have also said, are a very frugal people. Six dollars, or about twenty-four shillings of our money, per month are considered splendid wages by a coolie. On two dollars a month he can live comfortably. He sends, perhaps, every month, one or two dollars to his parents or wife in his native village; for generally a Chinaman, be he never so poor, has a wife, it being there a duty, if not an article of religion, for the males, to marry young. The remainder they hoard for a rainy day. Now, I say again, if the Chinese are such abstemious and frugal people, and that they are so is unquestionable, does not the same rule apply to opium as to spirits? The truth of the matter is, that it is a very inconsiderable number of those who smoke opium who indulge in it to any considerable extent--probably about one in five thousand. When a Chinaman's day's work is over, and he feels fatigued or weary, he will, if he can afford it, take a whiff or two of the opium pipe, seldom more. If a friend drops in he will offer him a pipe, just as we would invite a friend to have a glass of sherry or a cigar. This use of the opium pipe does good rather than harm. Those who indulge in it take their meals and sleep none the worse. The use of the pipe, indeed, wiles them from spirit drinking and other vicious habits. My own belief is that opium smoking exercises a beneficial influence upon those who habitually practise it, far more so than the indulgence in tobacco, which is simply a poisonous weed, having no curative properties whatever. I have seen here in England many a youth tremble and become completely unhinged by excessive smoking, so terrible is the effect of the unwholesome narcotic on the nervous system when it is indulged in to excess; indeed I have heard it often said that excessive indulgence in tobacco frequently produces softening of the brain: such a result has never proceeded from opium smoking.

I have stated in my programme of these lectures that the views put forward by the "Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade" were based upon fallacies and false assumptions, which account for the many converts the advocates of that Society have made. I have now to tell you what these fallacies and false assumptions are. In fact, these explain pretty clearly how it has come to pass that so many otherwise sensible, good, and benevolent people have been led astray on the opium question.

I closed my first lecture with a list of fallacies, upon which the objections to the Indo-China opium trade, and the charges brought against England in relation to that trade, are founded, stating that I should return to them and dispose of each separately. I also said in the earlier part of my lecture, that the extraordinary hallucinations which had taken hold of the public mind, with respect to opium smoking in China, arose, amongst other causes, from the fact that the public had formed their opinions from hearsay evidence, and that of the very worst and most untrustworthy kind. I say untrustworthy because hearsay evidence, although in general inadmissible in our law courts, may be in some cases very good and reliable evidence. As this point goes to the root of all these fallacies and false assertions, and the delusions based upon them, I wish to show you why hearsay evidence is, in this case, of the worst and most unreliable kind. In the first instance, I would refer you to the general character of the Chinese for mendacity and deceit, admitted by all writers upon the subject of China and the Chinese, and supported by the general opinion of Europeans who have dwelt amongst them. Now, I am far from saying that every Chinaman is necessarily a liar, or habitually tells untruths for corrupt purposes. The point is, rather, that the Chinese do not understand truth in the sense that we do. The evidence of Chinese witnesses in courts of justice is notorious for its untrustworthy character. The judges are not generally contented with the direct and cross-examination to which witnesses are ordinarily subjected by counsel, but frequently themselves put them under a searching examination, and generally require more evidence in the case of Chinese than they would if Europeans were alone concerned.

While upon this point I may allude to another peculiar phase in the Chinese character. They are so addicted to falsehood that they will embellish truth, even in cases where they have the facts on their own side. On such occasions they like to add to their story a fringe of falsehood, thinking, perhaps, that by doing so, they will make the truth stand out in brighter colours and appear more favourable in the eyes of the Court and the Jury. Another Chinese peculiarity is the following:--If you put leading questions to a Chinaman upon any particular subject, that is to say, if you interrogate him upon a point, and by your mode of doing so induce him to think that you are desirous of getting one particular kind of answer, he gives you that answer accordingly, out of mere good-nature. In these instances his imagination is wonderfully fertile. The moment he finds his replies afford pleasure, and that there is an object in view, he will give his questioner as much information of this kind as he likes. Not only is this the case with the common people, corresponding to the working or the labouring classes here, but the habit really pervades the highest ranks of Chinese society. It is mentioned in Dr. Williams's work, how the Chinese as a people think it no shame in being detected in a falsehood. It is very hard to understand, especially for an Englishman, such moral obtuseness. We are so accustomed to consider truth in the first place, and to look upon perjury and falsehood with abhorrence, that it may seem almost like romancing to gravely assure you of these facts.

If I relate a few short anecdotes which are absolutely true, and in which I was personally concerned, I may put the matter more clearly before you. A Chinese merchant, now in Hong Kong, once instructed me to prosecute a claim against a ship-master for short delivery of cargo, and from the documents he gave me, and the witnesses he produced, I had no hesitation in pronouncing his case a good one, although I knew the man was untruthful. When we came into court, knowing my client's proclivities, my only fear was that he would not be content with simply telling the truth, but would so embellish it with falsehood that the judge would not believe his story. I therefore not only cautioned him myself in "pidgin English," but instructed my Chinese clerk and interpreter to do so also. My last words to him on going into court were, "Now mind you talkee true. Suppose you talkee true you win your case. Suppose you talkee lie you losee." The man went into the witness-box, and I am bound to say that on that occasion he did tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, but I could plainly see by his manner and bearing that the task was a most irksome one. When he left the box, after cross-examination, I felt greatly relieved. The defendant, who, I am glad to say, was not an Englishman, although he commanded a British ship, told falsehood after falsehood. There could be no doubt about this, and the judge, Mr. Snowden, the present Puisne Judge of Hong Kong, at last ordered him to leave the box, and gave judgment for my client. Notwithstanding this satisfactory result, I saw that the plaintiff was still dissatisfied. I left the court and he followed me out. He still seemed discontented, and had the air of an injured man. When we got clear of the court he actually assailed me for having closed his mouth and deprived him of the luxury of telling untruths. "What for," said he, "you say my no talkee lie? that man have talkee plenty lie." I replied, "Oh, that man have losee; you have won." But with anger in his countenance, he walked sullenly away.

Now I will tell you another--and a totally different case. The judge on this occasion was the late Sir John Smale, Chief Justice of Hong Kong. It was an action brought by a Chinese merchant, carrying on business in Cochin China, against his agent in Hong Kong, a countryman of his, who had not accounted for goods consigned to him for sale. The plaintiff put his case in my hands. When it came into court the defendant was supported by witnesses who seemed to have no connection whatever with the subject-matter of the suit. They, however, swore most recklessly. In cross-examination one of the witnesses completely broke down. The Chief Justice then stopped the case, and characterized the defendant's conduct "as the grossest attempt at fraud he had ever met with since he had come to China," and, under the special powers he possessed, sent the false witness to gaol for six weeks. The person so punished for perjury proved to be what we would call a Master of Arts. He was, in fact, an expectant mandarin, ranking very high in China. I should tell you that in that country there is no regular hereditary nobility, nor any aristocracy save the mandarin or official class. The fact is, and in view of Mr. Storrs Turner's comparison of the Chinese with the savages of Central Africa, I may here mention it, that in China--where these simple, innocent "aborigines," as it suits the anti-opium advocates to treat them, flourish--education is the sole criterion of rank and precedence. They have a competitive system there, which is undoubtedly the oldest in the world. This man, as I said, was a Master of Arts, and would, in regular course, have been appointed to an important official post and taken rank as a mandarin. He was, I believe, at the time of his sentence, one of the regular examiners at the competitive examinations of young men seeking for employment in the Civil Service of the Empire. When the case ended, I dismissed it from my mind. But, to my great surprise, six or seven of the leading Chinamen of Hong Kong waited upon me on the following day, and implored of me to get this man out of gaol. They declared that the whole Chinese community of Hong Kong felt degraded at having one of their superior order, a learned Master of Arts, consigned to a foreign prison. They assured me that this was the greatest indignity that could have been offered to the Chinese people. I replied that the fact of the prisoner being a man of education only aggravated his offence, that he had deliberately perjured himself in order to cheat my client, and that the foreign community considered his punishment far too lenient, for had he been a foreigner he would have got a far more severe punishment. But they could not see the matter in that light, and went away dissatisfied. They afterwards presented a petition to the Governor, praying for the man's release, but without success. My object in narrating this to you is to show the utter contempt which the Chinese, not only of the lower orders, but of the better class, have for the truth. I could supplement these cases by many others, all showing that the Chinese do not regard the difference between truth and falsehood in the sense that we do.

To illustrate more clearly what I have told you, I will read to you a short passage from a leading article in the "China Mail," a daily newspaper published in Hong Kong. The date of the paper is the 3rd of October 1881. The editor is a gentleman who has been out there for twenty years; he is a man of considerable ability and knows the Chinese character perfectly, and I may also mention that he is a near relative of Mr. Storrs Turner. This is what he says:--

That is exactly what I have already said. It would occupy too much time to read the rest of the article, which is ably written, but the portion I have quoted tends to show the unreliability of Chinese witnesses, even in a solemn Court of Justice.

Now, I think, I have shown you that our Celestial friends present rather an unpromising raw material from which to extract the truth. Yet these are the men from whom the missionaries derive their information as to those wonderful consequences from opium smoking which, the more greedily swallowed, are the more liberally supplied, thus affording an illustration of Mr. Storrs Turner's extraordinary theory of supply and demand, of which I shall have to speak more by and by. Having exhibited to you the well of truth from which credible evidence is sought to be obtained, I have now to turn to the other side of the question and describe the character and competence of those who draw their facts from that source, and from whom the general public have mainly derived their knowledge of opium and opium smoking.

When about eighteen years of age he got married, as is the custom with the youth of China. On informing me of his intention, he asked me to procure from the Superintendent of Police the privilege of having "fire crackers" at his wedding, a heathen custom, supposed to drive away evil spirits. I reminded him that I had always believed him a Christian; when he said, "Oh! it's a Chinese custom." However, I got him the privilege. But instead of being solemnized in the church, which he had been in the habit of attending when a pupil in St. Paul's College, according to the rites of the Church of England, his marriage ceremony was celebrated in Chinese fashion, a primitive proceeding, and certainly heathen in its form. He never went near the church at all. A few days afterwards I remarked to him that he had not been married in the church. He laughed, and said, "that as he and his wife were Chinese they could only be married according to Chinese custom."

Let me give another story in point. I knew a man in Hong Kong who, owing to the difficulty of finding suitable natives who understood English, was for a long time the only Chinese on the jury list. He spoke English fairly well. He was educated at a school presided over by the late Rev. Dr. Morrison, the learned sinologue, who had lived in Hong Kong before my time. His school was an excellent one, and had turned out some very good scholars. I have seen this man go into the jury-box, and often too, into the witness-box, and take the Bible in his hand and kiss it ostentatiously. I used to think he was a sincere Christian, and was glad to see so respectable a Chinaman acknowledge in public that he was a Christian. But that man, I afterwards discovered from the best possible authority, was at heart a heathen; he always had idols, or, as we call them, "Josses," in his house. He also was a Christian in name, and nothing more.

There was another man educated in Dr. Morrison's school. Dr. Legge knew him very well, and was a sort of patron of his. I suppose it is pretty well known that polygamy is a custom in China, and that it is quite an exception for a Chinese in any decent position there not to have three, four, or more wives; the more he has the greater his consequence among his countrymen. This man, as a matter of fact, had three wives, and when his so-called first wife died, he was in a great fright lest Dr. Legge should discover that he had two more wives, for it is customary that the other wives should attend the funeral of the first as mourners. Now these are the sort of converts, for the most part, to be met with in China. As a rule, they are far less honest and more untruthful than their heathen countrymen, and many Europeans in consequence will not take converts into their service. In proof of this statement I will here give you an extract from a very able article which appeared in the "Hong Kong Daily Press," an old and well conducted newspaper, of the 31st October 1882. This is it:--

They secure some adherence to the Christian religion, no doubt, but what is the value of the Christianity? It possesses, so far as we have been able to judge, neither stamina nor backbone. Foreigners at Hong Kong, and at the Treaty Ports, fight shy of Christian servants, a very general impression existing that they are less reliable than their heathen fellows; and with regard to the Christians in their own villages and towns, there is always a suspicion of interested motives.

Are these Chinese converts the class of the Chinese from which truth is to be gleaned? Is the testimony of such people of the slightest value? Yet these are the persons from whom the missionaries derive their knowledge of opium smoking and its alleged baneful effects. I venture to say that among all the so-called Christian converts in China you will not find five per cent. who are really sincere--all the rest profess Christianity to obtain some personal advantage. These so-called converts are generally people from the humblest classes, because, as I have mentioned, people of the better class, such as merchants, shopkeepers, and tradesmen, not only consider their own religion superior to the Christian's creed, but they would be ashamed to adopt Christianity, as they would thus be disgraced and make themselves appear ridiculous in the eyes of their neighbours; and they are a people peculiarly sensitive to ridicule. I will not say that there are not some true converts to be found among Chinese congregations; if there are none, the missionary clergymen are certainly not to blame, for they are indefatigable in their exertions to make converts, proving also by their blameless lives the sincerity of their professions. As I have said, the difficulty attending their efforts is enormous. It must be remembered that in China we are not teaching Christianity to the poor African, or the semi-civilised native of Madagascar or the Fiji Islands; but that we are dealing with civilized men, who consider their own country and literature, customs and religion, far superior to those of England or of any other country in the world. The Chinese are so convinced of this, that the very coolies in the streets consider themselves the superiors of the foreign ladies and gentlemen that pass, or whom, perhaps, they are carrying in their sedan chairs.

I hold the missionaries altogether responsible for the hallucination that has taken possession of the public mind on the opium question. With the Bible they revere in their hands, they think the Chinese should eagerly embrace the doctrine it inculcates, and, unable to account for their failure, they readily accept the subterfuge offered by certain Chinese for not accepting Christianity or attending to their teaching. They feel that it is, or may be, expected of them in this country, that they should have large congregations of native proselytes, such as, I believe, the missionaries have in Madagascar, and in like places, forgetting that no parallel can be drawn between such races and the Chinese. The Protestant missionary clergymen in China are, not unnaturally, anxious to account for their supposed failure in that large and heathen country. They would not be human if they were not. The better class of Chinese, as I have said, will not listen to a missionary, or argue with him. They do not want to hear lectures on Christianity, and grow impatient at any disparaging remark about their own religion. They simply say, "We have a religion that is better than yours, and we mean to stick to it." The missionaries, however, think they ought to have better success. They are, no doubt, indefatigable in their labours, and as they do not meet with the results that ought, they consider, to follow from their labours, and as their sanguine minds cling to any semblance of excuse for their shortcomings, they accept the stale and miserable subterfuge, to the use of which their converts are prompted by the Mandarins, that the Indo-China opium trade is vicious, and that before Christianity is accepted by the country, the trade in question must be abolished. This transparent evasion of the Chinese appears to me to bear too strong a family likeness to the famous "confidence trick," with which the police reports now and then make us acquainted, to be entertained for a moment.

When it is taken into account that of late years the average quantity of Indian opium imported into China is about one hundred thousand chests, each of which, for all practical purposes, may be called a hundredweight, and that the price of each of these chests landed in China is about seven hundred dollars, and that the whole works up to something like sixteen millions sterling, the strong objection of the Mandarin classes to allow such a large amount of specie to leave the country becomes intelligible. Rapacious plunderers as they are, they see their prey escaping them before their very eyes, and are powerless to snatch it back. These sixteen millions, they think, would be all fair game for "squeezing" if we could only keep them at home. For although China is an immense empire, with great natural resources, it is still a poor country as regards the precious metals. No doubt an economist would tell these Mandarins: "It is true we sell you all this opium, but then we give you back again all the money you pay for it, with a great deal more besides, for the purchase of your tea and silk." But a Mandarin would only laugh at such an argument. "Ah," he would say, "you must have tea and silk in any case; you can't do without them. We want to get hold of your silver and give you none of ours in return." That is the true cause, or one of the true causes, of the objection of the Government of China to the importation into that country of Indian opium.

The Governments of China and of the United States mutually agree and undertake that Chinese subjects shall not be permitted to import opium into any of the ports of the United States; and citizens of the United States shall not be permitted to import opium into any of the open ports of China. This absolute prohibition, which extends to vessels owned by the citizens or subjects of either Power, to foreign vessels employed by them or to vessels owned by the citizens or subjects of either Power, and employed by other persons for transportation of opium, shall be enforced by appropriate legislation on the part of China and the United States, and the benefits of the favoured claims in existing treaties shall not be claimed by the citizens or subjects of either Power as against the provisions of this article.

I happened to be weather-bound in Rome when I first read, in a Hong Kong paper, that amusing and deceptive treaty, which was made in 1880. Knowing thoroughly the situation, and all the facts connected with the Indo-China opium trade, I undertake to assure you that so far, at least, as regards this opium clause, that treaty was simply a farce. With the single exception of a line of mail packet steamers between Hong Kong and San Francisco, America has few or no steamers trading in the China seas. She has protected her mercantile marine so well that she has now very little occasion for exercising her protection. She has no vessels trading between India and China, and never has had any, and, as a matter of fact, no American ships carry one ounce of opium between India or China, or to the port of Hong Kong, or have carried it for many years, if, indeed, any American vessel has ever done so. Nor is there, indeed, at present the slightest probability that her ships will ever convey opium between India and China. America, in fact, might, with as much self-denial, have undertaken not to carry coals to Newcastle as Indian opium to China. There are regular lines of British steamers plying between the ports of Bombay, Calcutta, and Hong Kong, by which all Indian opium for the China trade is carried direct to its destination.

If Sir J. W. Pease were not an enthusiast, ready to swallow without hesitation everything which seems to tell against the opium traffic, and to disbelieve everything said or written on the other side of the question, he would have seen through all this as a matter of course. This is what he said about the treaty in the speech I have referred to, having first delivered a philippic on the enormities and terrible wickedness of the traffic:--

Only last year a treaty was entered into between the United States and China, and one of the articles of that treaty distinctly stated that the opium trade was forbidden, and that no American ship should become an opium trader--a fact which showed that the Chinese authorities were honest in their expressed desire to put an end to the trade.

Sir J. W. Pease is the most confiding of men; to my mind the treaty should be construed in a very different sense. Sometimes, when we want to convey our sentiments to another, we do so indirectly. There is a very well understood method of attaining that object. Instead of opening your mind to Mr. Jones, who is the object of your intended edification, you will in Mr. Jones's presence address your remarks to Mr. Brown; but in reality, although you are speaking to the latter, you are speaking at the former. Now the whole object of this precious article of the treaty was to play a similar piece of finesse. Both nations well understood what they were about; they were simply trying to hoodwink and make fools of John Bull by putting into the treaty this false and hypocritical clause, which, as between themselves, each party well knew meant nothing to the other. Here is Sir J. W. Pease, a sensible and astute man of business, with his eyes open, yet, blinded by his good nature and anti-opium prejudice, falling into the trap set for him, and allowing himself to be deceived by this transparent piece of humbug, and quoting in the House of Commons this "bogus" treaty as evidence that the Indo-China opium trade is so infamous that the American Government intended, so far as they were concerned, to put a stop to it, and that the Chinese Government wish to abolish it on moral grounds. I give you this as an example of the lengths to which otherwise sensible gentlemen will go when smitten with opium-phobia, and how oblivious they become under such circumstances to actual facts. Imagine how his Excellency Li Hung Chang, that very able Chinese statesman, and those smart American diplomatists who have thus posed as anti-opium philanthropists, must have enjoyed the fun of being able to so completely bamboozle an English member of Sir J. W. Pease's reputation!

I may speak in the same terms of the venerable and universally-respected nobleman who is the president of the Anti-Opium Society, whose whole life has been devoted to the welfare of his fellow men, especially those who stood most in need of his help. I referred in the first edition of this lecture to a Most Reverend Prelate, honoured and beloved both by his own countrymen, and, I believe, the whole Christian world, who is also, I deeply deplore, a believer in the anti-opium delusion, but in doing so nothing was farther from my intentions than to lay aside for a moment the respect that was due to him as a man and a high dignitary of the church. I revere and honour him and admire his great and noble qualities as much as any man living. Born and brought up as I have been in the Church of England, and sincerely attached to its doctrine and teaching, having near and dear relatives, too, ministers of that church, the last thing I would be capable of doing is to harbour an unkind thought, or utter a disrespectful word, against any of her clergy, much less one of her most honoured prelates. These three good and upright men are, I am sorry to say, but types of a great many other most estimable people, many of them ornaments to their country, who through the purity and overflowing goodness of their hearts, have been dragged into the vortex of delusion set afloat by the Anti-Opium Society--who allow themselves to be cajoled and victimised--led by the nose, in fact, by anti-opium fanatics, who, cunning as the madman and perfectly regardless of the means they resort to in the prosecution of what they consider right, bring to their aid the zeal of the missionary and the power for mischief which superior education and mis-directed talents confer. This is what rouses one's indignation and compels me to pursue the unpleasant task of discrediting and otherwise painfully referring to men whom, apart from this wretched opium delusion, I honour and respect.

Upon this point I cannot refrain from referring to a gentleman of high standing, who had formerly been in China, and really ought to have known better. That gentleman went so far as to write a letter to the "Times," in which he said that out of one hundred missionaries in China there was not one who would receive a convert into his church until he had made a vow against opium smoking. Bearing in mind that all these so-called converts made by these one hundred missionaries belong for the most part to the very poor, if not to the dregs of the people, I should think no missionary clergyman would find much difficulty in obtaining such a pledge. He has only to ask and to have. If a clergyman in a very poor neighbourhood in the East End of London proposed to his congregation that they should promise never to drink champagne, he would receive such a pledge without difficulty from one and all; but if any kind person were afterwards to give them a banquet of roast beef and plum-pudding, with plenty of champagne to wash those good things down, I am afraid their vow would be found to be very elastic.

So it is with the congregations of these missionary clergymen; there is not an individual amongst them who would refuse to enjoy the opium pipe if he got the chance, however much they might declaim against the practice to please the missionary. Opium, as the missionaries must well know, is a luxury that can only be indulged in by those who have the means of paying for it. Now, while twopence or threepence may appear to us a very insignificant sum, such will not be the opinion of a very poor person. Threepence will purchase a loaf of bread. So it is with the Chinese, especially those residing in their own territory. There is only one class of coin current in China. It is known by Europeans as "cash." Ten should equal a cent, or a halfpenny, but owing to the inferiority of the metal they are made of, twelve or thirteen usually go to make one cent of English money, so that ten cents, or fivepence of our money, would be about one hundred and thirty cash. A poor Chinaman possessing that sum would think that he had got hold of quite a pocketful of money, and so it would prove, so far as regards a little rice or salt fish, which forms part of most Chinamen's daily food; but were he so foolish as to indulge in opium, a few whiffs of the pipe would soon swallow up the whole. And then there arises the difficulty of getting the cash, so that it is really only people having command of a fair amount of money who can afford to indulge, habitually at all events, in the luxury of the pipe.

Such are the tales, and such the authors who have caused much of this clamour about opium smoking. There is scarcely a particle of truth in any one of those stories. No man can indulge in opium to such an extent as to harm himself unless he possesses a fair income, and if such a person became ill from over-indulgence, he would not go to a foreign hospital, but would send for a doctor to treat him at his own house. It is only the broken-down pauper, thief, or beggar, who, in his last extremity, seeks admission to the hospital.

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in't.

The interior of the opium shop is as described when Mr. Howard enters with the missionary's servant. The moment the two well-dressed thieves see them, their guilty consciences make them conclude that the one is a European, and the other a Chinese detective in search of them. They close their eyes and pretend to be in profound slumber. They are really in deadly fear of apprehension, for escape seems impossible. Mr. Howard asks his guide who they are. "Oh, dese plaupa good men numba one; dey come dis side to smokee. To-day dey smokee one pipe; to-mollow dey come and smokee two, tlee pipe; next dey five, six; den dey get sik and die. Oh, opium pipe veely bad; dat pipe kill plenty men." "You say they are good, respectable men?" says Mr. Howard. "Yes, good plaupa men; numba one Chinee genlman." "Oh, is not this a terrible thing?" says Mr. Howard, compressing his lips, breathing heavily, and vowing to bear witness, on his return to London, to all the villainy he fancies he has seen. The three men begrimed with coal-dust, although they appear only to be semi-conscious, are in reality taking the measure of Mr. Howard, and enjoying a quiet laugh at his expense. One exclaims, referring to his chimney-pot hat, "Ah ya! what a funny thing that Fan-Qui has got on his head!" The other replies, "It's to keep the sun away." "How funny!" retorts the first speaker, "we wear hats to keep our heads warm; they wear hats to keep their heads cool." "Oh," returns the other speaker, "the Fan-Qui have such soft heads that if they did not keep the sun off the little brains they have would melt away; and they would die, or become idiots." Mr. Howard, seeing them in their dirty condition, concludes that they are some of the wretched victims of opium smoking, in the last stage of disease, and leaves with his conductor, pitying them from the depths of his heart; his pity, however, is as nothing compared to the contempt with which these supposed victims to the opium pipe regard him and his chimney-pot hat. As he leaves he asks his guide, "Does the keeper of the opium shop expect a gratuity?" "Oh," returns the other, "supposee you pay him one dolla, he say, tankee you." Mr. Howard accordingly gives a dollar to the man, who looks more surprised than grateful, and he leaves the shop, satisfied that he has at last seen the true effects of opium smoking in China. He returns to the missionary, to whom he relates the horrors he has seen, makes copious notes of them, and vows to enlighten his countrymen at home upon the subject. As for his guide Achun, this person loses no time in returning to the opium shop, where he compels the keeper of it to share with him the dollar he has just received, and, having so easily earned two shillings, he quietly reclines on one of the couches and takes a whiff or two of the pipe, the more enjoyable because it is forbidden fruit. Thus the benevolent British public is befooled by these ridiculous stories about opium.

At the Tung Wah Hospital the stranger may at any time see the most dreadful and ghastly-looking objects in the last stages of scrofula and phthisis smoking opium, who had never previously in all their lives been able to afford the expense of a pipe a day, yet the European visitor leaves the establishment attributing to the abuse of opium effects which further inquiry would have satisfied him were due to the diseases for which the patients were in hospital. From what I have seen there, there is no doubt that the advanced consumptive patient does experience considerable temporary relief to his difficult breathing by smoking a pipe of opium, though it is a very poor quality of drug that is given to patients at the Tung Wah Hospital.

Thus, as I have shown, it has come to pass that whilst the missionary clergymen, owing to their sacred calling and their unquestionably high character, are accepted in England as the most reliable witnesses and entitled to the greatest credit, they are really the men who are the very worst informed upon the opium question which they profess to understand so thoroughly. They are, in fact, the victims of their own delusions. But saddest fact of all, these missionary gentlemen, with the best intentions and in the devout belief that by carrying on this anti-opium agitation they are helping to remove an obstacle to the dissemination of the Gospel in China, are of necessity by so doing obliged to neglect more or less the very Gospel work they are really so desirous to spread, leaving the missionary field open to their Roman Catholic rivals.

The information placed before the public here in England upon the opium question, tainted as it is at the very fountain head, is sent forward from hand to hand, meeting in its filtrations from China to this country with impurity after impurity, until it reaches the form of the miserable trash retailed at Exeter Hall, or by the agents of the Anti-Opium Society. It is an accepted adage that "a story loses nothing by the carriage." The maxim becomes, more strongly pointed when it is remembered that the opium tales partake so much of the marvellous, and that the various transmitters of those accounts are, in almost every instance, fanatical believers in the supposed wickedness of the Indo-Chinese opium trade. I am quite sure that out of every thousand people who believe in the anti-opium delusion, you will not find two who have ever set their foot in China, or know anything with respect to the alleged evils they denounce, except from the unreliable sources I have mentioned. Such people, as a rule, are by far the most violent and uncompromising opponents of the Indo-Chinese opium trade. The people I describe generally speak with such an air of authority on the question, that an ordinary person would suppose they had personally witnessed all the evils they describe. If you ask one of them in what part of China he has lived, or when and where he has seen the horrors he speaks of, he will jauntily tell you, "Oh, I have heard Mr. A. or the Rev. Mr. B. explain the whole villainy at Exeter Hall." Another will say he has read Mr. Storrs Turner's great work upon opium smoking, with which I have already made you somewhat acquainted. When General Choke rebuked Martin Chuzzlewit for denying that the Queen lived in the Tower of London when she was at the Court of St. James, Martin inquired if the speaker had ever lived in England. "In writing I have, not otherwise," responded the General, adding, "We air a reading people here, Sir; you will meet with much information among us that will surprise you Sir." Just so. These anti-opium enthusiasts have been in China in writing, and understand the opium question upon paper only--a few months in Hong Kong or Canton, freed from missionary influence, would soon disillusionize them. I remember hearing a story once of a most estimable gentleman who had the misfortune to be the defendant in an action for breach of promise. The plaintiff's counsel, who had a fluent tongue and a fertile imagination, painted him in such dreadful colours, and so belaboured him for his alleged heartless conduct towards the lady that the gentleman so denounced, persuaded for the moment that he was really guilty, rushed out of court, exclaiming, "I never thought I was so terrible a villain before." That is just the kind of feeling that first comes over one upon hearing of those opium-smoking horrors; for it must not be forgotten that the indictment of the Anti-Opium Society, and of its secretary Mr. Storrs Turner in particular, not only includes the Imperial Government, and the Government of India, during the past forty years, but all the British merchants connected with the Chinese trade, and, indeed, the entire British nation.

I have mentioned Mr. W. Donald Spence as one of Her Majesty's Consuls in China. Now, every foreign resident in that country knows who and what those consular gentlemen are; but I do not think the public here in England are equally well informed upon the subject, because it is only natural that they should confound them with the ordinary British Consuls at the European and American ports; but that would be a very great mistake, for the two sets of Consuls form quite distinct and separate bodies. The Consuls at the latter ports are no doubt highly respectable gentlemen, often indeed, men who have distinguished themselves in science and literature, or in the army or navy, but still they are simply commercial agents of the British Government, and no more, having little or no diplomatic or other duties to discharge. The Consular Service of China stands upon a totally different footing. In this country Her Majesty's Consuls are not only commercial agents, but are trained diplomatists, entering the service in the first instance as cadets, after passing most difficult competitive examinations. They are always Chinese scholars, many of them holding high rank as such. The Consuls have very important diplomatic duties to discharge, and have also magisterial duties to perform towards their countrymen in China, all of which demand qualities of a high order, and which only superior education and careful training enable them to discharge. England has acquired by treaty ex-territorial rights, as regards her own subjects, in the ports of China thrown open to her commerce, known as "Treaty ports," the most important of which are the exclusive right to hear and determine all civil and criminal cases against British subjects. These onerous and important duties are performed by Her Majesty's Consuls at those ports. These gentlemen, indeed, have more power in many respects than is possessed by the Queen's Ambassadors and Ministers Plenipotentiary at the various Courts in Europe. They have, in fact, all the powers now vested in the Judges of Her Majesty's High Court of Judicature here in England, as well as the powers possessed by the Judges of the Admiralty, Probate, and Bankruptcy Courts. Further, and in addition to all these multifarious duties, they are Her Majesty's special commercial agents at these treaty ports, with the usual jurisdiction over British ships, their officers, and crew. It is, therefore, a matter of the first necessity that the persons in whom such tremendous powers are placed should not only be gentlemen of the very highest characters and assured abilities, but men of superior education specially trained to fill these important positions and discharge the varied and onerous duties appertaining to them. Such are the present British Consuls in China, and such they have been in the past. There is not, I believe, in this or any other country, a more highly-educated, intelligent, and efficient body of men to be found. If any proof of these high qualities is required, it will be furnished in the fact that notwithstanding the difficult, delicate, and onerous duties cast upon them, no instance of their abuse of these powers has ever occurred. I certainly know of none. I am only here stating, I assure you, what is actually true. It has, indeed, always been to me a marvel that no complaints--no political entanglements, no troubles--have arisen from the abnormal state of things arising out of our commercial and political relations with China, and the extraordinary and exceptional powers necessarily entrusted to our Consular Agents in that Empire in consequence. We can now look back, after a quarter of a century of experience, and congratulate ourselves that all our complicated machinery has worked so well, that no clouds obscure the vista, and that our present position in China is one of serenity and sunshine; that we stand upon the very best terms with the Chinese Government from the central authority at Peking to all its ramifications throughout the vast empire. Nothing, in fact, blurs the landscape, save the miserable opium phantom created by our own countrymen, the missionaries, and magnified to a monster of large dimensions by the "Chinese jugglers," who here in England keep the machinery of the Anti-Opium Society in motion. These happy results are due to Her Majesty's Diplomatic and Consular Service in China, controlled by Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in England. And here I cannot but remind you of that distinguished veteran statesman Sir Rutherford Alcock, formerly Her Majesty's Minister to the Court of Peking, to whose wise and far-seeing policy much of the present happy relations with China is due. There is not an English resident in China who cannot bear testimony to the splendid talents and genuine patriotism which has marked his career in that vast and interesting country. There is no greater authority living upon Anglo-Chinese affairs than he, especially as regards the period of the famous treaty of Tientsin, some of whose testimony on these points I will lay before you. After a long and honourable career he is now in England enjoying his well-earned repose, and is, happily, a powerful living witness to the fallacies I am now trying to efface.

Now, one of the ablest and most accomplished men at present in the Diplomatic and Consular Service of China is Mr. W. Donald Spence, Her Majesty's Consul at Ichang, a port on the Yangtze, to whom I have before shortly referred. This gentleman, in the year 1881, paid a visit to Chungking, the commercial capital of Szechuan in Western China. Whilst there he availed himself of the opportunity to make inquiries and investigations into the commercial products of that immense province, and especially into the cultivation of native opium, the extent and condition of opium culture in Western China, and the attitude respecting it of the Chinese Government, and on the effect of opium smoking on the people of those provinces where it appears that habit is all but universal. It was his especial duty to make these investigations. No better proof could be produced as to the abilities of this gentleman than this valuable document on the subject presented by him to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs which Mr. Spence, in his covering letter to Lord Granville modestly styles "his Report on the Trade of the Port of Ichang for the Year 1881." If anyone will read the whole of this Report--and it will well repay careful perusal--he will pronounce it, I think, one of the ablest and most admirable State papers that have ever been penned. In giving you some extracts from it I will, therefore, ask you to treat the author of it, not as a mere hireling, having an interest in certain matters which it is desirable to place in a particular light, as the agents of the Anti-Opium Society would, no doubt, have you believe, but as the honest statement of an upright, high-minded, honourable English gentleman, of superior talents and a cultivated mind, who values truth above everything, who can have no other object in the matter but to do what is honest, just, and right, and who on this question of opium smoking tells the truth and nothing but the truth to Her Majesty's Minister. This is what he says as to the cultivation of the poppy in Szechuan:--

Of all the products of Szechuan, the most important nowadays is native opium. In September last year it was my fortune to be sent on the public service to the commercial metropolis of Szechuan, Chungking. I was four months in the province. In the course of that time I visited parts of the great opium country, questioned many people regarding opium culture, consumption, and export, and carefully noted the observations and conclusions on these subjects come to by Mr. Colborne Baber and Mr. E. H. Parker during their official residence there, with a view to giving, as far as possible, exact information in my Trade Report on a matter of great commercial, and no little political, interest at the present moment. The cultivation of the poppy is carried on in every district of Szechuan except those on the west frontier, but most of all in the Prefectures of Chungking Fu and Kweichow Fu. In all the districts of Chungking Fu, south of the Yang-tsze, and in some of the districts of Kweichow Fu, north of that river, it is the principal crop, and, in parts, the only winter crop for scores upon scores of square miles. The headquarters of the trade are at the city of Fuchow, in the first of these prefectures, and, in a considerably less degree, at Fengtu, a district city in Kweichow Fu. Baron Richthofen, writing in 1872, says that the poppy then was cultivated only on hill slopes of an inferior soil, but one sees it now on land of all kinds, both hill and valley. Baron Richthofen himself anticipates this change when he says:--"The Government may at some time or other reduce the very heavy restrictions, and if Szechuan opium then should be able to command its present price at Hankow, the consequence would be an immediate increase in the area planted with the poppy." Since he wrote, the area given to the poppy has much increased, though not from the cause alleged. Being a winter crop, it does not interfere with rice, the food staple of the people, displacing only subsidiary crops, such as wheat, beans, and the like. When it is planted in paddy and bottom lands, which nowadays is often the case, it is gathered in time to allow rice or some other crop to follow. It can hardly be said of Szechuan that the cultivation of opium seriously interferes with food supplies. The supply of rice remains the same, and the opium produced, less the value of the crops it replaces, is so much additional wealth to the province.

I shall presently show that opium is a more remunerative crop than its only possible substitutes, beans or wheat, and no per-centage of the opium crop being due to the landlord, its cultivation has been greatly stimulated in consequence. Of late years, however, in the districts I have named as being in winter one vast poppy-field, owners of land have become alive to the value to occupiers of the opium crop, and have stipulated for a share of it in addition to their share of the summer crop. Rents, in fact, where opium is in universal cultivation, have practically doubled. Before leaving the subject of tenure, I may add that, in the event of non-payment of rent from causes other than deficient harvests, the landlord helps himself to the deposit in his hands. In bad years remissions are willingly made by the Government to owners of the land-tax, and by owners to occupiers of the rent-produce.

The poppy is now grown on all kinds of land, hill slopes, terraced fields, paddy and bottom lands in the valleys. Since 1872, when Baron Richthofen visited the province, a great change has taken place in this respect, for it appears to have been cultivated then on hill lands only. All the country people whom I asked were agreed that opium is most profitably grown on good land with liberal manuring. In India it is best grown on rich soil near villages where manure can be easily obtained, and the Szechuan cultivator has found this out for himself. Poppy cultivation, as practised in Szechuan, is very simple. As soon as the summer crop is reaped the land is ploughed and cleaned, roots and weeds are heaped and burnt, and the ashes scattered over the ground; dressings of night soil are liberally given. The seeds are sown in December, in drills a foot and a half apart. In January, when the plants are a few inches high, the rows are thinned and earthed up so as to leave a free passage between each: the plants are then left to take care of themselves, the earth round them being occasionally stirred up and kept clear of weeds. In March and April, according to situation, the poppy blooms. In the low grounds the white poppy is by far the most common, but red and purple are also grown. As the capsules form and fill, dressings of liquid manure are given. In April and May the capsules are slit and the juice extracted. The raw juice evaporates into the crude opium of commerce increasing in value as it decreases in weight.

Mr. Spence then goes on to compare the value of the wheat with the opium crop, showing that the cultivation of the latter is just twice as profitable as the former. Space will not allow me to give you full extracts on this subject, but, as some portion of it is germane to this part of my lecture, I give a short extract on the point:--

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