The object of these lectures is to tell you what I know about opium
smoking in China--a very important subject, involving the retention or
loss of more than seven millions sterling to the revenue of India, and
what is far more precious, the character and reputation of this great
country. With respect to the former, I would simply observe that I do not
intend to deal with the question on mere grounds of expediency, strong as
such grounds unquestionably are, for, if I believed that one-half of what
is asserted by the "ANGLO-ORIENTAL SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF THE
OPIUM TRADE," as to the alleged baneful effects of opium smoking upon the
Chinese, were true, I should be the first to raise my humble voice against
the traffic, even though it involved the loss, not of seven millions
sterling, but of seventy times seven. But it is because I know that these
statements and all the grave charges made by the supporters of that
society, and repeated from day to day, against the Government of India and
the Government of this country, and also against the British merchants of
China, to be not only gross exaggerations but absolutely untrue--mere
shadowy figments, phantasies, and delusions--that I come forward to draw
aside the curtain, and show you that behind these charges there is no
substance. Were my knowledge of the opium question derived merely from
books and pamphlets, articles in the newspapers, and ordinary gossip, I
would not venture to trespass upon your time and attention, because in
that respect you have at your disposal the same means of information as I
have myself. But I come before you with considerable personal experience,
and special knowledge of the subject, having lived and practised as a
solicitor for nearly fifteen years in Hong Kong, where I had daily
experience, not only of the custom and effects of opium smoking, but also
of the trade in opium in both its crude and prepared state. I had there
the honour of being solicitor to the leading British and other foreign
firms, as well as to the Chinese, from the wealthy merchant to the humble
coolie; so that during the whole of that period down to the present time I
have had intimate relations in China with foreigners and natives,
especially with those engaged in the opium trade. Under these
circumstances I had daily intercourse with the people from whom the best
and most trustworthy information on the subject of opium and opium smoking
could be obtained, and my experience is that opium smoking, as practised
by the Chinese, is perfectly innocuous. This is a fact so patent that it
forces itself upon the attention of every intelligent resident in China
who has given ordinary attention to the subject. The whole question at
issue is involved in this one point, for if I show you that opium smoking
in China is as harmless, if, indeed, not more so, as beer drinking in
England, as I promise you I shall do most conclusively, then _cadit
quæstio_, there is nothing further in dispute; the Indo-Chinese opium
trade will then stand out--as I say it does--free from objection upon
moral, political, and social grounds, and the occupation of the Anti-Opium
agitators, like Othello's, will be gone. It is true that the opponents of
the Indo-Chinese opium trade interlard their case with political matters
wholly beside the question; this they do to make that question look a
bigger one than it really is, so as to throw dust in the eyes of the
public and impose upon weak minds. For instance, they drag in the
miscalled "Opium War" and ring the changes upon it. That war, whether
justifiable or not, cannot affect the points at issue. It is an
accomplished fact, and it is idle now to introduce it into the present
opium question. And though I shall be obliged to go pretty fully into the
whole controversy, I ask you to keep your minds steadily fixed upon the
real question, which is briefly this: Is opium smoking, as practised in
China, detrimental to health and morals, and if so, does the Indo-Chinese
opium trade contribute to these results?
I may now at the outset assure you that I do not give expression to my
views in the interests of the merchants of China, whether native or
foreign, or on behalf of any party whatsoever; nor do I come before you
with any personal object, because neither directly nor indirectly have I
any pecuniary or personal concern in the opium question, nor, indeed, in
any commercial matter in Hong Kong or China. I simply find that unfounded
delusions have taken possession of the public mind upon the subject, which
have had most mischievous consequences, and are still working much evil.
These I wish to dispel, if I can. Furthermore, I have delivered and
published these lectures at my own cost, unaided by any other person, so,
I think, under these circumstances, that I have some right to be regarded
as an impartial witness.
I am aware of no subject, involving only simple matters of fact, and
outside the region of party politics, upon which so much discussion has
been expended, and about which such widely different opinions are
prevalent, as this opium question. On the one side, it is said that, for
selfish purposes, we have forced and are still forcing opium upon the
people of China; that the Indian Government, with the acquiescence and
support of the Imperial Government, cultivates the drug for the purpose of
adding seven or eight millions sterling to its revenue, and, with full
knowledge of its alleged baneful consequences to the natives of China,
exports it to that country. A further charge, moreover, is brought against
the British merchants, that they participate in this trade for gain, or,
as it is put by the Rev. Mr. Storrs Turner, formerly a missionary
clergyman at Hong Kong, but now and for many years the active and
energetic Secretary of the Anti-Opium Society, to enable them to make
"princely fortunes." That is the favourite expression of Mr. Turner, who
finds, no doubt, that it takes with certain small sections of the public,
readier to believe evil of their own countrymen than of the people of
other countries, under the belief, perhaps, that in doing so they best
display the purity and disinterestedness of their conduct.
The Anti-Opium Society and its supporters assert as an incontestable fact
that opium smoking is fatal, not only to the body but to the soul;
meaning, I suppose, that the custom is destructive to the physical, and
demoralising to the moral nature of its votaries, and that the opium
traffic is regarded by the people of China with such horror that it
prevents the natives from receiving the Gospel from those who help to
supply them with this drug, viz., the British people. It is alleged that
the use of opium demoralises the Chinese, that it ruins and saps the
manhood of the whole nation, with a host of concomitant evils, to which I
shall by and by refer more particularly, the whole involving the utmost
turpitude, the greatest guilt and the worst depravity on the part of
England and the English Government, and still more especially on that of
the Indian Government and the British merchants in China. Here I may
observe, in passing, that if the objection to opium on the part of the
Chinese is so strong, it is rather remarkable that they should not only
greedily purchase all the Indian opium we can send them, but cultivate the
drug to an enormous extent in their own country. The Anti-Opium Society
and its supporters further say that opium culture and opium smoking are of
comparatively recent origin in China; and although they do not directly
allege that we have introduced those practices, there is throughout all
their writings and speeches "a fond desire, a pleasing hope" that the
readers or hearers of their books and speeches will form that opinion for
themselves. I should tell you that those who hold directly contrary views
consist of all the British residents in China, with the exception of some
of the Protestant missionaries (of whom I desire to speak with respect),
comprising the British merchants, their numerous assistants (an educated
and most intelligent body), professional men, traders of all classes, and
also all the other foreign merchants and residents in the country--German,
American, and others, for there are many nationalities to be met with in
China, who with the British form one harmonious community.
Take all these men, differing in nationality and religious persuasions as
they do, and I venture to say that you will not find one per cent. of them
who will not tell you that the views put forward by these missionaries and
the Anti-Opium Society are utterly preposterous, false, and unreal--who
will not declare that opium smoking in China is a harmless if not an
absolutely beneficial practice; that it produces no decadence in mind or
body, and that the allegations as to its demoralising effects are simply
untrue. Those who have taken a special interest in the subject know that
the poppy is indigenous to China, as it is to the rest of Asia, that opium
smoking is and has been a universal custom throughout China, probably for
more than a thousand years; that this custom is not confined to a few, but
is general amongst the adult male population; limited only, in fact, by
the means of procuring the drug. That is my experience also; it is
corroborated by others, and therefore I may assert it as a fact. I have
used the adjective "Protestant" because, although there are a great number
of Roman Catholic and some Greek missionaries in China, no complaint
against the opium trade has ever to my knowledge been made by one of these
missionaries.
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.
It must be borne in mind that the empire of China comprises eighteen
provinces, quite large enough to form eighteen separate kingdoms. I am
speaking now of China Proper, and am leaving out Thibet, Mongolia, and
Manchuria, immense countries to the West, North-West, and North of China,
and also the vast possessions of China in Central Asia, all forming part
of that great empire. Many of these eighteen provinces are larger than
Great Britain; one of them is equal in extent to France. Although there is
in one sense a language common to the whole country, yet not only has each
province a dialect of its own, different from that of the others, but it
has, so to speak, innumerable sub-dialects. Dialect, perhaps, is hardly
the correct word; it is more than a dialect, for not only each province,
but each district or county, has a dialect, differing so essentially from
each other that the people of one province, or one district, can, in most
instances, no more make themselves colloquially understood by those of
another than a Frenchman could make himself intelligible to an Englishman,
if neither knew the language of the other. You will often find people
living in villages not more than fifteen or twenty miles apart who cannot
converse with one another. I have seen in my own office a man belonging to
the province of Kwang-tung, in the south of China, unable to speak in
Chinese to a native of the adjoining province of Fuh-kien. In this case
the native villages of these two were not more than ten miles apart, and
the only medium of conversation was the barbarous jargon in which
Europeans and Chinese carry on their dealings, called "pidgin English"--a
species of broken English of the most ridiculous kind. Now, when you take
into account that each province differs in language from each other--for
that is really what the case practically comes to--that they have separate
dialects in each province, and also, to a certain extent, different
customs and certain prejudices, I ask you, does it not appear a gigantic,
if not an impossible, task for England, a small and distant country, to be
able to demoralize, debase, and corrupt the people of each of these
eighteen provinces? Yet that is really the allegation of the Anti-Opium
Society against their own country, this small and distant England!
I have said that there are customs peculiar to each of these provinces,
but there are others common to all; one of them is opium smoking; another,
I am sorry to say, is hatred and contempt of foreigners. They one and all
agree in regarding foreigners as an inferior race, whose customs,
language, and religion they despise. Among the common people every
foreigner, of whatsoever nationality, is called "Fan-Qui," or "foreign
devil." The designation of foreigners amongst the better classes of people
is "outer barbarian." No better instance could I give you than this to
show the strong prejudice held by the whole nation against foreigners.
"Fan-Qui" is still the term used by the lower orders to denote foreigners,
even in the British colony of Hong Kong. To remedy this state of things,
at the time of the making of the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858 (which is the
existing treaty between the two nations), Lord Elgin, the author of the
treaty, had very properly a stipulation inserted that the term "outer
barbarian" should no longer be applied to British subjects. Now, when you
take into account that not only are these three hundred and sixty millions
of people spread over an enormous empire, having a prejudice common to all
parts alike against foreigners, as well as their own prejudices against
each other, forming eighteen separate provinces or kingdoms, speaking
different languages, is it reasonable to suppose that they would, so to
speak, simultaneously adopt the practice of opium smoking when introduced
by the despised foreigner? If these people still despise our customs, as
they do our religion, as they do everything, in fact, belonging to us, how
can it be said that we are forcing this foreign drug upon them to their
destruction?
I have already mentioned that the custom of opium smoking is common to all
the people of these eighteen provinces. Whether they live in the valleys
or on the hills they smoke opium. Now Mr. Turner is a great enemy of opium
smoking; he is its determined opponent, and I do not think I wrong him--I
certainly do not mean to do so--when I describe him as a person strongly
prejudiced against the practice. The best, the wisest, and ablest among us
have prejudices, and it is casting no stigma upon that gentleman to say
that he has his. When I make you better acquainted with his book, which I
shall soon do, you will, I think, agree with me on this point. When people
have those strong prepossessions they are prone not to judge facts fairly;
they see things, in short, through a false medium. That which to an
ordinary person appears plain and clear enough, to one under the influence
of prejudice stands out in different colours, and is passed over as untrue
or misleading; sometimes, however, the plain truth will leak out, in spite
of prejudice. It is laid down by legal text writers that truth is natural
to the human mind, that the first impulse of a man if interrogated upon a
point is to tell the truth, and that it is only when he has had time to
consider, that he is inclined to swerve from it. Now in this book of Mr.
Turner's, at p. 13, he confirms my statement. This is what he says. I need
not read to you the previous part, because the context does not alter the
sense of my quotation. He is arguing against the allegation of pro-opium
people that opium has a beneficial result in counteracting the effects of
malaria and ague, and he says:--
These curious arguments are two. First, that the universal
predilection of the Chinese for opium is owing to the malarious
character of the country; secondly, that the use of opium is a
wholesome corrective to the unwholesome, even putrid, food which the
Chinese consume. The reply to the first is that the country over which
opium is smoked is in area about the size of Europe, and includes,
perhaps, an equal variety of sites, soils, and climates, great plains
level as our own fen district, and mountainous regions like the
Highlands of Scotland. Ague is almost unknown in many of the
provinces--_yet everywhere, in all climates and all soils, in every
variety of condition and circumstance throughout that vast empire, the
Chinese smoke opium_.
Now that is the testimony of the Rev. Storrs Turner, the most strenuous
and, as I believe, the ablest advocate against the Indo-China opium trade.
But then he adds:--
But nowhere do they all smoke opium. The smokers are but a per-centage
greater or smaller in any place.
Well, nobody ever said they all did smoke opium. Females, as a rule, do
not smoke, and children don't smoke. It is only the grown men, and those
who can afford to buy the drug, who smoke it. China, for its extent and
its vast and industrious population, is still a poor country. Although its
natural resources are considerable, the great bulk of the people are in
poor circumstances. It is only those above the very poor who can afford to
smoke opium occasionally, and only well-to-do people who are able to do so
habitually. Opium smoking is, in fact, a luxury in which, every Chinaman
who can afford it indulges more or less, just as English people who have
sufficient means drink tea, wine, and beer, or smoke tobacco. The effects
of opium smoking are no more injurious than are those articles, in daily
use in England, nor is its use more enslaving. On the contrary, from my
own observation, I feel persuaded that those who habitually drink wine or
spirits are far more liable to abuse and become enslaved to the habit than
the smoker of opium. This, as you are now aware, is confirmed by the great
authority of Dr. Ayres. Yet Mr. Storrs Turner, in the face of that most
damaging admission, and his disciples would have the British public
believe that by supplying the Chinese with a small quantity of opium,
which is used and grown largely in almost every province, district, and
village of China, we are demoralizing and degrading the whole people. Now,
if this practice of opium smoking has existed, and does exist, throughout
these eighteen provinces, over this large and mighty empire, as Mr. Storrs
Turner admits, can it be urged for a moment that England has had anything
to do with it more than that Englishmen, in common with other foreigners,
have imported for the last forty or forty-five years a quantity of the
drug very much less than that actually grown in China itself? I say she
has not. I say that opium smoking has existed for a thousand years or
more, and that its use by the natives of China is simply limited by the
extent of their purchasing power. But how is it that such divergent
opinions can exist between Englishmen living in China and certain
Englishmen here at home? My answer is, that the former, the English
residents in China, derive their knowledge on the subject from actual
experience formed from personal intercourse with the natives, from seeing
with their own eyes, and hearing with their own ears; whilst people in
England obtain their information from hearsay only. Hearsay testimony is
their sole guide; and, as I shall show you by and by, this hearsay
evidence is of the worst and most unreliable kind. But still the question
remains why this should be so; why is it that among the educated and
intelligent people of England, in an age when newspapers are universal,
and books of travel cheap and plentiful, that such an extraordinary
difference of opinion should exist? I will now give you the explanation of
these opposite views.
The first is this:--China is ten thousand miles away. If that country were
as near to us as the Continent of Europe, to which it is equal in extent,
the people of England, including all these Anti-Opium advocates, would be
of the same mind as their countrymen in China. The field of the imposture
would then be so close to us that the delusion could no longer be
sustained--if, indeed, under such circumstances it could ever have
existence--it would be seen through at once. If it were sought to prove
that we were corrupting and demoralizing the whole of the natives of the
Continent by selling them spirits, beer, or opium, and if the persons who
did so were to pity, patronize, and caress those people as if they were an
inferior race, and but semi-civilized, as the anti-opium people do with
the Chinese,--the persons who attempted to act in such an extraordinary
manner would be scoffed at as visionaries, if not downright fools; yet the
parallel is complete. Indeed, taking into account the existing prejudices
of the Chinese against foreigners, the sound sense of the people of China
and their frugal and abstemious habits, there should be less difficulty in
effecting such wonderful results in Europe than in China. Perhaps,
however, the best illustration of this is that afforded by the present
agitation here in England, under the leadership of Sir Wilfrid Lawson
against the liquor traffic. The evils of intemperance, unlike those
alleged against opium smoking, are real evils, and are admitted to be so
by all. Everyone is agreed upon this point; yet a large portion of our
revenue, amounting to some twenty-six millions sterling, is derived from
taxes upon spirits, wine, and beer, the abuse of which produces these
evils. Sir Wilfrid Lawson is as determined a foe to the Indo-China opium
trade as he is to the liquor traffic. Why does he not apply the same rule
to the one as to the other? Why does he ask the Government to forego the
eight millions derived from opium in India, and not demand the abrogation
of these spirit, wine, and beer duties which are derived from so wicked a
source here in England? He and his Anti-Opium friends would, if they
could, prohibit the cultivation and exportation of opium in India, why do
not he and his fellow teetotallers call upon the country to prohibit the
manufacture of alcoholic liquors? Some few months ago an Anti-Opium
meeting took place at, I think, Newcastle, attended by Sir Wilfrid Lawson.
In the course of a facetious speech the Honourable Baronet, becoming
serious, made quite light of this ridiculously small sum of eight millions
sterling derived from the opium trade, and declared that he who did not
believe that a substitute for it could be found was a "moral
atheist"--whatever that may mean. Why does he not call upon the Government
to forego the sum of twenty-six millions derived from alcohol, which is
not more to England, if indeed so much, as the eight millions are to
India, and declare that any person who said we could not find a substitute
was a "moral atheist"? I answer thus: because the one concerns matters
here at home with which he and the rest of the public are well acquainted,
whilst the other relates to affairs ten thousand miles away, about which
he and they know little or nothing. Sir Wilfrid and his followers very
well know that if they advocated the abolition of the duties on spirits,
wine, and beer, they would be simply scoffed at by the public as fools and
visionaries, and that, on the other hand, if they required all our
distilleries and breweries and all public-houses to be closed, they would
be treated as downright lunatics; but it is quite different as regards
India and China. With matters in those countries these enthusiastic
gentlemen can and do disport themselves very much as they please,
oblivious to the plainest facts.
The second is this:--There is, here in England, that powerful association,
"_The Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade_,"
whose sole object is to attain the end which its name imports, the
abolition of the Indo-China opium trade, on the alleged ground that it is
demoralizing and ruining the natives of China. That Society, I deeply
regret to say, is supported by some of the most influential people in
England--noblemen, archbishops, and other dignitaries of the Church,
clergymen of all denominations, people justly and deservedly commanding
the respect of their fellows--but who, on this opium question, simply know
little or nothing, who implicitly believe all that is told to them by the
agents of that Society, but otherwise have no knowledge of the facts. When
it is taken into account that this body has immense funds at its command,
that it has the support of a large part of what is known as the "religious
world," and that the Society has branches and agencies ramified throughout
the whole country, the reader will not fail to perceive how this
extraordinary hallucination, these false and unfounded delusions
respecting opium smoking, have got possession of the public mind. In
former times we have had associations formed for the purpose of carrying
out great public objects and of disseminating knowledge necessary for the
country to comprehend those objects; but you will find that for the most
part these societies have dealt with acknowledged and existing facts. For
instance, there was the "Anti-Corn Law League." The purposes of that
league were understood by everyone; the main facts were admitted because
they existed here in England and were patent to all. It was only a matter
of opinion between two great political parties whether they should be
dealt with in one particular way or not. That league was formed for a
great national object; but the Anti-Opium Society of which I am speaking
has been got up to carry out the opinions of a few individuals, most
respectable, I admit, but at the same time most enthusiastic--I may say,
indeed, fanatical--holding views the most incorrect and delusive upon a
subject with which they are most imperfectly acquainted.
Meantime, this Society, through its ubiquitous and indefatigable
Secretary, who may be called the "Head Centre" of the confederacy, and its
other agents, is for ever on the alert. Let any gentleman who has bad
experience of opium smoking, whether in India or China, write to the
newspapers; let him read a paper at a meeting of any of our scientific
bodies disputing the alleged facts of the opium-phobists, and he is marked
out as a prey. Sir Rutherford Alcock, whose high character, thorough
knowledge of China, and great abilities are well known, with a view of
putting the opium question before the public in a correct and proper
light, published an able and, indeed, unanswerable article in the
"Nineteenth Century" for December 1881 ("Opium and Common Sense"), when
Mr. Storrs Turner plunged into print with a counter article in the number
for February 1882 of the same Review ("Opium and England's Duty"), to
which I have already alluded. This article purports to be an answer to the
former one, but it is nothing of the kind, for it is a mere _rechauffé_ of
his book, and wholly fails in its alleged purpose. Again Sir Rutherford
Alcock, with the same laudable object, early in 1882, read an able and
interesting paper on the opium question before the Society of Arts. It was
listened to by many scientific gentlemen and others. Sir Rutherford knows
the truth about opium, and he told it in his paper. The Rev. Storrs Turner
was there; he knew the damaging revelations which Sir Rutherford Alcock
had made, and so much afraid was he of the effects of the fusillade, that
to rally his dismayed followers he improvised a meeting of his most
devoted disciples two or three days afterwards at the Aquarium. I venture
to say there was not a pro-opium advocate present at his meeting I do not
think the meeting was ever advertised--I certainly saw no advertisement of
it in the newspapers--and Mr. Turner, on that occasion, exhorted his
followers to hold fast to the true faith, refuting in the way, no doubt
most satisfactory to himself and his audience, the facts, figures, and
arguments of Sir Rutherford. So it is with articles and letters in the
newspapers. Many gentlemen well-informed upon the opium question have
published letters dealing with this question on the pro-opium side;
whereupon Mr. Turner and other anti-opium advocates at once pounce down
upon them, and repeat the same old stale exploded stories about
demoralization and what not. But latterly, and since the first edition of
these lectures was published, Mr. Turner has preferred to carry on the
anti-opium agitation more quietly, for I think I have thrown cold water
upon the zeal of him and his friends. His plan now is to get together in
private conclave a few medical gentlemen and others whose opinions he has
first made sure of; certain resolutions are then produced ready cut and
dry, which are passed with acclamation and inserted in the newspapers.
This sort of thing deceives nobody but the infatuated dupes of the
Anti-Opium Society, for whose edification they are principally intended;
just as the American orator, though speaking to empty benches in Congress,
made what his constituents at Bunkum considered a capital speech.
All these anti-opium articles, speeches, and resolutions are based upon
the same model. They assume certain statements as existing and
acknowledged facts which have never been proved to be such, and then
proceed to draw deductions from those alleged facts. This style of
argument can scarcely be praised for its fairness; it certainly places
those who hold contrary views, and who object to employing similar
tactics, at a disadvantage. This is especially remarkable in Mr. Storrs
Turner's article in the "Nineteenth Century." There the writer, taking all
his facts for granted, plunges at once _in medias res_, and proceeds to
enlighten his readers with all the confidence of the pedagogue who, strong
in his axioms and postulates, explains to his admiring pupils the
mysteries of the "Asses' Bridge." The English people have hitherto had
little or no knowledge of the opium question, save what they hear through
the Anti-Opium Society, in whose teaching some of them put faith, if only
for the reason that they are mostly clergymen and others of high
character. And here I may observe that, supposing the pro-opium advocates,
or perhaps I should more correctly say the general public, had a counter
society to disseminate their opinions, that they had organised a committee
with command of ample funds, and had officers to carry out their views,
this Anglo-Oriental Society would be strangled in three months; for
fiction, however speciously represented, cannot hold its own against fact.
There is an old saying that "what is everybody's business is nobody's
business," and so it has been with the pro-opium side of the question. The
foreign merchants in China, as a body, have no interest in the Indo-China
opium trade. They would not care if the trade were to be suppressed
to-morrow, and therefore they take no active part in opposing the
Anti-Opium Society. The general public also take little or no interest in
the matter, and it is really only those who are actuated by a sense of
duty, or who, like myself, have followed the question, and who, from
practical acquaintance and a thorough research into all its bearings, take
more than ordinary interest in the subject, who think of refuting the
monstrous misrepresentations of the anti-opium people. Therefore it is
that the other side have had practically the whole field to themselves.
Upon the like conditions any imposture could for a time be successfully
carried on. The days of the anti-opium agitation are, however, happily
drawing to a close. A flood of light from various sources has within the
past year been thrown upon the subject. The unwholesome mists of
ignorance, prejudice, and fanaticism are clearing away, and the truth
about opium is becoming visible at last. And here I would observe that in
using the word "imposture" I do not mean to impugn the motives of any of
the good and benevolent people who support this Society. I speak of the
thing, not of those who have created or are supporting it.
I have before slightly touched upon the charges brought against the
British Government and the British nation respecting opium. I will
formulate them more particularly now; as the subject cannot, I think, be
thoroughly understood unless I do so. I have read Mr. Storrs Turner's book
and his reply to Sir R. Alcock, very carefully; I have read anti-opium
speeches delivered in London, Manchester, Leeds, and London upon the
subject; they all come to the same thing--one is a repetition of the
other. As I understand the matter, this is what the charges of the
Anti-Opium Society amount to. It is alleged that opium smoking, once
commenced, cannot be laid aside, that it poisons the blood, reduces the
nervous and muscular powers, so that strong men under the use of opium
speedily become debilitated and unfit for labour; that opium smoking
paralyses the mind as well as the body, and produces imbecility, or at
least mental weakness; that it so demoralises the people using it, that it
converts honest and industrious men from being useful members of society
into lazy, dishonest scoundrels; that it saps the manhood and preys like a
cankerworm upon the vitals of the Chinese people, injuring the
commonwealth and threatening even the existence of the nation if the
custom of opium smoking be not stopped, which, it is alleged, can be
effected only by the supply of opium from India being discontinued. It is
urged, in fact, that the sale of Indian opium to the Chinese is a crime
not only against the people of China but against humanity; that much, if
not all, of the misery and crime prevalent throughout China are due,
either directly or indirectly, to the use of opium; and for all these
fearful results England is held responsible. It is further said, that the
sale of British opium to the Chinese interferes with legitimate commerce,
creating, it is alleged, so much bitterness in the native mind against the
English nation, that the Chinese refuse to buy our goods. And, above all,
it is contended that the Indo-China opium trade impedes the progress of
Christianity, the Chinese refusing to accept the Gospel from a people who
have such terrible crimes to answer for as the introduction of Indian
opium into China. Since the days of Judge Jeffereys never was there such a
terrible indictment, nor one so utterly unfounded as happily it is. In
fact, all the objections that in old times were made against negro slavery
have been brought forward against this harmless and perfectly justifiable
Indo-China opium trade. Indeed Mr. Storrs Turner, in his article in the
"Nineteenth Century," coolly places the two in the same category, and
modestly proposes that the revenue from opium should be discontinued, and
that England should compensate the Indian Government for the loss, just as
she did the slave owners. It is astonishing how liberal your political
philanthropist can be in the disposal of other people's money. Well, I had
always thought that the Government of India, for the past sixty years at
least, had been actuated by one great and prominent object--the
amelioration, the happiness, and prosperity of the teaming millions
committed to its care, and I think so still. I have always believed that
the Imperial Government, no matter which party was from time to time in
power, had the prosperity, honour, and dignity of their country at heart,
and were influenced by a sincere desire towards all the world to be just
and fear not, and to diffuse as much happiness as possible amongst our own
people, and all other nations and races with whom we became associated all
over the world, and I remain of that opinion still. Some fifty years ago
we washed the stain of slavery from our hands, performing that great act
of justice from a pure sense of duty, without any outside pressure, and
also without shedding a drop of blood. This act was unique, for at the
time slavery existed in every country, and had so existed for thousands of
years. We know that, thirty years later, a similar achievement cost a
kindred nation a long and bloody war, and an aggregate money expenditure
far exceeding our own national debt--the growth of centuries. That feat of
ours showed what the mind and heart of this great nation then were, and I
do not believe that we have since degenerated. Since then we have spent
many millions of money in sweeping slavery from the seas and in
endeavouring to put an end to that accursed evil throughout the world. In
doing this our pecuniary loss has been the least of our sacrifices. We
have spent more than money. We have lost in the struggle the lives of some
of the best and noblest of England's sons. These are acts worthy of a
great nation; compared with them the objects of the Anti-Opium Society
sink into utter insignificance. The sublime and the ridiculous could not
be brought more vividly face to face.
For the last fifty years there has been one feeling predominant in the
minds of the people of England, and that is a manly, generous anxiety to
protect the weak against the strong all over the world. Yet these foul and
untenable charges against England are now spread broadcast by this
Society, whose only warrant for doing so are the statements made to them
by a handful of fanatical missionary clergymen, whose unfounded and
fantastic views are accepted as so much dogma which it would be heresy to
doubt. Why, if we were guilty of but half the wickedness attributed to us,
it would not require this Anti-Opium Society to cry it down; the nation
would rise as one man to crush it for ever. There is not a British
merchant in China who would not raise his voice against it, aye, though he
was making that princely fortune which Mr. Turner refers to in his book;
for let me assure you that your fellow-countrymen in China, who are but
sojourners in that land, as they all hope to end their days at home, have
as warm a love for their country and as keen a sense of their country's
honour and dignity as any set of Englishmen residing here at home, however
high their station and great their wealth.
To prove to you, if indeed further proof is necessary, that I have not
overstated the case as regards the extreme views of the missionaries and
the Anti-Opium Society, I will give you their latest production. It comes
from the fountain-head, and takes the form of a petition of "the Ministers
of the Gospel in China" to the House of Commons. This petition was
prepared by the Missionaries of Peking, and is a gem in its way. It would
never do to put the reader off with a mere extract, so I give it _in
extenso_. It was drawn up and sent round for signature during the past
summer, and appeared in the Shanghai and Hong Kong newspapers. This is the
document:--
_To the Honourable_
THE BRITISH HOUSE OF COMMONS.
The petition of the undersigned Missionaries of the Gospel in China
humbly sheweth:
That the opium traffic is a great evil to China, and that the baneful
effects of opium smoking cannot be easily overrated. It enslaves its
victim, squanders his substance, destroys his health, weakens his
mental powers, lessens his self-esteem, deadens his conscience, unfits
him for his duties, and leads to his steady descent, morally,
socially, and physically.
That by the insertion in the British Treaty with China of the clause
legalizing the trade in opium, and also by the direct connection of
the British Government in India with the production of opium for the
market, Great Britain is in no small degree rendered responsible for
the dire evil opium is working in this country.
That the use of the drug is spreading rapidly in China, and that,
therefore, the possibility of coping successfully with the evil is
becoming more hopeless every day. In 1834 the foreign import was
twelve thousand chests; in 1850 it was thirty-four thousand chests; in
1870 it was ninety-five thousand chests; in 1880 it was ninety-seven
thousand chests. _To this must be added the native growth, which, in
the last decade, has increased enormously, and now at least equals,
and according to some authorities doubles, the foreign import._
That while the clause legalizing the opium traffic remains in the
British Treaty, the Chinese Government do not feel free to deal with
the evil with the energy and thoroughness the case demands, and
declare their inability to check it effectively.
That the opium traffic is the source of much misunderstanding,
suspicion, and dislike on the part of the Chinese towards foreigners,
and especially towards the English.
That the opium trade, by the ill name it has given to foreign
commerce, and by the heavy drain of silver it occasions, amounting, at
present, to about thirteen million pounds sterling annually, has
greatly retarded trade in foreign manufactures, and general commerce
must continue to suffer while the traffic lasts.
That the connection of the British Government with the trade in this
pernicious drug excites a prejudice against us as Christian
missionaries, and seriously hinders our work. It strikes the people as
a glaring inconsistency, that while the British nation offers them
the beneficent teaching of the Gospel, it should at the same time
bring to their shores, in enormous quantities, a drug which degrades
and ruins them.
That the traffic in opium is wholly indefensible on moral grounds, and
that the direct connection of a Christian Government with such a trade
is deeply to be deplored.
That any doubt as to whether China is able to put a stop to opium
production, and the practice of opium smoking in and throughout her
dominions should not prevent your Honourable House from performing
what is plainly a moral duty.
Your petitioners, therefore, humbly pray that your Honourable House
will early consider this question with the utmost care, take measures
to remove from the British Treaty with China the clause legalizing the
opium trade, and restrict the growth of the poppy in India within the
narrowest possible limits.
Your Honourable House will thus leave China free to deal with the
gigantic evil which is eating out her strength, and creates hindrance
to legitimate commerce and the spread of the Christian religion in
this country.
We also implore your Honourable House so to legislate as to prevent
opium from becoming as great a scourge to the native races of India
and Burmah as it is to the Chinese; for our knowledge of the evil done
to the Chinese leads us to feel the most justifiable alarm at the
thought that other races should be brought to suffer like them from
the curse of opium.
We believe that, in so doing, your Honourable House will receive the
blessing of those that are ready to perish, the praise of all good
men, and the approval of Almighty God.
And your petitioners will ever pray.
The thoughts that occurred to me after reading this petition were
these:--First it struck me that the missionaries, like the unfortunate
Bourbons, "had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing." I thought next of
the wonderful solicitude shown by these missionaries for the mercantile
interest. "By the ill name the opium trade has given to foreign commerce,"
they say, "the trade in foreign manufactures and general commerce has been
retarded, and must continue to suffer while the opium traffic lasts."
Well, it is remarkable that this complaint is not made by the people whose
interests are alleged to have so suffered, but by missionary clergymen,
who ought to know little or nothing upon the subject; they are not
merchants, and associate very little with mercantile men, either native or
foreign, and certainly, if they minded their own business, could not
possibly have that knowledge of mercantile affairs with which they appear
to be so familiar. The persons who ought to know whether foreign
manufactures or foreign trade have fallen off owing to the opium traffic,
are the foreign merchants resident in China, whose especial duty it is to
look after those interests, yet these gentlemen, strange to say, have made
no complaint of the kind. Those merchants are directly concerned in
foreign manufactures and general commerce either as principals or as
agents for absent principals in England and elsewhere; they, in fact,
exclusively manage foreign trade in China. There is a chamber of commerce
in Hong Kong and another in Shanghai, whose members are all keen men of
business, actively alive to their own and their constituents' interests,
and in constant communication with similar mercantile bodies at home;
moreover, there are excellent daily papers published in both these places,
where such grievances, if they existed, could be freely ventilated; yet
the missionaries of the Gospel in Peking would have the House of Commons
and the world believe that the foreign merchants in China, who are always
wide-awake, are blind to their own interests and slumbering at their
posts. Now why have not these merchants ever complained that commerce has
suffered from the opium traffic? Why, simply because there is no
foundation in fact for such complaint. I am afraid that with the
missionaries who make this most unfounded statement the "wish was father
to the thought." Every man ought to know his own business best, and you
will generally find that when a stranger professes great interest in your
affairs, and presses upon you gratuitous advice upon the subject, he is
not really actuated by a desire to promote your interests, but has some
other and totally different object in view. So it is with these missionary
gentlemen at Peking. There is just one other point connected with this
remarkable Petition to which I would call attention. Evidently feeling the
ground slipping from under their feet, the framers, adding another string
to their bow, extend their sympathies beyond China, and take British
Burmah under their patronage. Indeed, it seems to me that these missionary
clergymen of Peking would, if they could, not only supersede the Viceroy
of India in his management of the Indian Empire, but even Her Majesty the
Queen and her immediate Government.
I should here, however, in justice to the entire missionary body, say,
that _all_ of them are not so deluded as their brethren at Peking. There
is one bright, particular star, at least, which shines through the
Egyptian darkness that enshrouds the rest. The Reverend F. Galpin, of the
English Methodist Free Church, is a respected missionary clergyman at
Ningpo, an important port on the east coast of China. He, unlike most of
his brethren at other places in that country, when asked to sign this
curious petition, very properly declined to do so. All honour to Mr.
Galpin. He was not afflicted with the midsummer madness of his brethren at
Peking. Were all the Protestant missionaries in China like him, we should
not have heard of these absurd and monstrous stories respecting the
Indo-China opium trade, and there would, perhaps, be larger and better
results from the missionary's labours. This is the manly, sensible, and
dignified reply of Mr. Galpin:--
The REV. J. EDKINS and others, Peking.
SIR,--I beg to acknowledge receipt of a copy of your circular, dated
June 24th, with form of petition to the British House of Commons
against the importation of Indian opium, and also to express my
sympathy with the spirit and motives that have suggested the petition;
but, at the same time, I must also express disapproval of the proposed
petition, and disbelief of many of the statements contained therein.
Looking at Christianity in the broad and true sense, as a great
regenerating force breathing its beneficent spirit upon and promoting
the welfare of all, of course the excessive use or abuse of opium, and
every other thing, is a serious hindrance to its happy progress. _But
this is a very different position from that of supposing that the
present apparent slow progress of mission-work in China is to be
attributed to the importation of Indian opium._ China is a world in
itself, and the influence of Christian missions has hitherto reached
but a handful of the people, for there are many serious obstacles to
its progress besides opium.
Then, again, I beg to express my hearty dissent from the idea
presented in the petition, that the Chinese people or Government are
really anxious to remove the abuse of opium. The remedy has always
been, as it is now, in their own hands.
Neither do I believe that if the importation of Indian opium ceased at
once, the Chinese Government would set about destroying a very
fruitful means of revenue. On the contrary, I feel sure that the
growth of Chinese opium would be increased forthwith.
I therefore beg to return the petition in its present form, with the
suggestion that Christian missionaries had better direct their
attention to, and use their influence upon, Chinese.
Yours truly,
F. GALPIN,
_English Methodist Free Church_.
Ningpo, 15th July.
No doubt these most estimable and respectable but infatuated gentlemen
suppose that their petition will have some weight with the Legislature. I
believe and hope it will, but not exactly of the kind expected; for I
shall be surprised indeed, if it be not treated as it deserves, _i.e._ as
a downright contempt of the House of Commons; for it seems to me to be an
insult to the common sense not only of the House in its collective
capacity, but of every individual member. In saying this I am far from
attributing to these missionary clergymen a wilful intention to state what
they knew to be untrue, nor to insult or mislead the Legislature, for I am
assured that one and all of them would be incapable of so doing. I am sure
they thoroughly believe every word they have stated to be true; but then
it must be remembered that the effect upon the public mind and the injury
done to society by the publication of fallacious and untrue statements,
are in no way lessened because their authors suppose those statements to
be, in fact, true and correct.
I have shown you that Mr. Turner admits that opium smoking is common all
over China. But, he says, the Chinese do not all smoke. In his book he
affirms that it is only in recent years that opium has been grown in
China. This is the passage, it occurs at page 2:--"Indigenous in Asia, the
first abode of the human species, the poppy has long been cultivated in
Egypt, Turkey, Persia, and _recently_ in China and Manchuria. It is well
known in our gardens, grows wild in some parts of England, and is
cultivated in Surrey for the supply of poppy heads to the London market.
From the time of Hippocrates to the present day _it has been the
physician's invaluable ally in his struggles against disease and death_."
This is about the most remarkable statement I have ever read. The greater
includes the less, and if the poppy is indigenous to Asia it is, of
course, indigenous also to China and Manchuria, which with the other
dominions of China comprise fully one-fourth of the entire Asiatic
continent. This, indeed, Mr. Storrs Turner does not deny in terms, but it
is plain he wished his readers to believe that the poppy was _not_
indigenous to those countries, and was only recently introduced there. The
passage involves that sort of fallacy which Lord Palmerston termed "a
distinction without a difference." As to the poppy being indigenous to the
whole of Asia and notably to the most fertile parts of it, _e.g._ China
and Manchuria, there can be no doubt, and therefore no difference, but
the distinction is that it is only of late years that it has been
_cultivated_ in those countries. The poppy may grow wild over a continent,
but be cultivated only in a part. I will show you by-and-by, upon
excellent authority and by the strongest grounds for inference, that the
poppy is not only indigenous to China, but has been cultivated there for
various purposes other than for medical ones and for smoking, certainly
for two thousand, and probably for four or five thousand years. An
ordinary reader, especially one not familiar with the geography of Asia,
would conclude from this passage in Mr. Turner's book that China and
Manchuria were not in Asia at all, but that of late years the poppy had
been introduced into those countries from that continent. Thus much for
the Gospel of the Anti-opiumists.
I now confront Mr. Storrs Turner with another book, which everyone must
admit is of greater authority than his. It is a book published towards the
close of 1881 by a high official of the Chinese Government, then Mr. but
now Sir Robert Hart, G.C.M.G., the Inspector-General of Chinese Customs, a
man who knows China and the Chinese better, perhaps, than any living
European. That gentleman tells a very different tale about opium to what
the Anti-Opium Society has hitherto regaled the world with. This book is
an official one, issued from the Statistical Department of the
Inspector-General of Chinese Customs at Shanghai for the use and guidance
of the Chinese Government. It stands upon a very different footing to the
volume published by Mr. Turner, the paid secretary and strenuous advocate
of the Anti-Opium Society. Sir Robert Hart has entire control over the
revenue of China as far as regards foreign trade. At every treaty port
open to foreign vessels there is a foreign Commissioner of Customs, and
Sir Robert Hart is the supreme head of these commissioners. He is a man
deservedly trusted and respected by the Chinese Government; a man of
learning and talents, and I need hardly add of the very highest character,
and, I believe, he is one of the most accomplished Chinese scholars that
could be found. He says that opium has been grown in China from a remote
period, and was smoked there before a particle of foreign opium ever came
into the country. This is the passage from his--the now famous
yellow-book:--
In addition to the foreign drug there is also the native product.
Reliable statistics cannot be obtained respecting the total quantity
produced. Ichang, the port nearest to Szechwan, the province which is
generally believed to be the chief producer and chief consumer of
native opium, estimates the total production of native opium at
twenty-five thousand chests annually; while another port, Ningpo, far
away on the coast, estimates it at two hundred and sixty-five
thousand. Treating all such replies as merely so many guesses, there
are, it is to be remarked, two statements which may be taken as facts
in this connection: the one is that, so far as we know to-day, the
native opium produced does not exceed the foreign import in quantity;
_and the other that native opium was known, produced, and used long
before any Europeans began the sale of the foreign drug along the
coast_.
So much for Mr. Storrs Turner's bold assertion that it is only recently
that opium has been cultivated in China; the obvious inference which he
wished the reader to draw from it being that it was the importation of the
Indian drug into China that induced the natives to plant opium there. Now,
with respect to that most unfounded charge of the Chinese disliking the
English for introducing opium into their country, and British commerce
declining in consequence, I assure you that all that is simply moonshine.
These statements are not merely false assumptions, they are simply untrue.
No one who has had any experience of China and its people, does not know
perfectly well, that of the whole foreign trade with China the British do
at least four-fifths; not only have we the lion's share of the trade, but
it is an unquestionable fact that of all the nations who have made
treaties and had dealings with China, the British are and have been for
many years the most respected by the Chinese people. It is, I say, an
indisputable fact, that notwithstanding all our past troubles about
smuggling and our wars with China, which Mr. Turner is so fond of dilating
upon, that at this day, by high and low, rich and poor, from the mandarin
to the humble coolie, England is held in higher regard than any other
nation. If trade with China has in any way declined, the fact is traceable
to other and different causes, which it is not my province to enter upon.
Now, why are England and Englishmen thought so well of by the Chinese? It
is simply because the British merchants and British people in China have
acted towards the Chinese, with whom they have been brought into contact,
with honour and rectitude--because in their intercourse with the natives
they have been kind, considerate, and obliging--because, instead of
resenting the old rude and overbearing manners of the Chinese officials
and others, they have returned good for evil, and shown by their
conciliatory bearing, and gentlemanly and straightforward conduct, that
the British people are not the barbarians they had been taught to believe.
By such means the British residents in China have gone far to break down
the barrier of prejudice towards foreigners behind which the people of
that country had hedged themselves, thus preparing the way for the labours
of the missionaries and making, in fact, missionary work possible. If
further proof were wanting that the British are held in high estimation by
the people and the Government of China, it will be found in the fact, that
our own countryman, Sir Robert Hart, who before entering the service of
the Chinese Government had been in the diplomatic service of his own
country, now occupies the high and honourable position of
Inspector-General of Chinese Customs, and is, I may add, the trusted
counsellor of the Government of China.
It is not very long since the Governor of Canton paid a visit to the
Governor of Hong Kong; such an act of courtesy to Her Majesty's
representative on the part of so great a Chinese magnate was until then, I
believe, unprecedented. The constant exclamation of the great mandarin as
he was being driven through the streets of Hong Kong was--"What a
wonderful place! What a wonderful place!" in allusion to the fine
buildings, the wide and clean streets,--a strong contrast to those of
Canton--and the dense and busy population around him. And yet more
recently, that is during the summer of 1882, a greater personage still
paid an official visit to the Hon. W. H. Marsh, who during the absence of
Sir George Bowen, the Governor, worthily administers the affairs of the
colony--I refer to the present viceroy of the provinces of Kwantung and
Kwangsi, commonly called the "two Kwangs," an official only next in
importance to His Excellency Li Hung Chang, the Governor of Petchili. Do
you think we should have such a state of things if we were demoralizing
and ruining the people of China, as is alleged by the Anti-Opium Society,
or if, indeed, the Chinese people or Government had any real grievance
against us.
Upon this point I cannot refrain from mentioning an incident that occurred
soon after I arrived in China. A respectable Chinaman asked me to prepare
his will. He gave me for the purpose, written instructions in Chinese
characters, which I had translated. On reading the translation I found his
instructions very clearly drawn up, but what was gratifying to me, and
what is pertinent to my subject, was the following passage, with which he
commenced them:--"Having," said he, "under the just and merciful laws
administered by the English Government of Hong Kong, amassed in commerce
considerable wealth, I now, feeling myself in failing health, wish to make
a distribution of the same." There are thousands like that Chinaman in
Hong Kong, and also in Shanghai, and in all the treaty ports of China. In
speaking as this man did, he was only giving expression to the feelings of
all his countrymen who have had dealings with the English in China. Are
such feelings on the part of these Chinese consistent with the
consciousness that we are enriching ourselves by ruining the health and
morals of their countrymen, as is most wrongfully put forward by the
Anti-Opium Society and its allies the Protestant missionaries? No; they
bespeak perfect confidence, respect, and gratitude towards us; for
oppressed and plundered as the Chinese have been by their own officials,
there is no other people on the face of the earth who more thoroughly
appreciate justice and equity in the administration of public affairs;
thus it is that they respect the British rule, which they have found by
experience to be the embodiment of both.
There are very few, perhaps, in this country who know what Hong Kong
really is. It is now a flourishing and beautiful city, standing upon a
site which, but the other day, was a barren rock. Commerce with its
civilising influence has transformed it into a "thing of beauty," "an
emerald gem of the _eastern_ world." Forty years ago, the English
Government sent out a commissioner to report upon the capabilities of the
place for a town or settlement. He sent home word that there was just room
there for _one_ house. He little dreamt that upon that barren inhospitable
spot within a few years would be realised the poet's dream when he
wrote:--
Oh, had we some bright little isle of our own
In a blue summer ocean far off alone,
Where a leaf never dies, midst the still blooming bowers,
And the bee banquets on through a whole year of flowers.
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,[2] 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:--
More opium is consumed in China than in all the rest of the world, and
nearly the whole of the opium imported into China is shipped from
Calcutta and Bombay. The East and the West, England, India, and China,
act and re-act upon each other through the medium of poppy-juice.
Simple mention of the relations which these three great countries bear
to the drug is enough to show that a very grave question is involved
in the trade. England is the grower, manufacturer, and seller; India
furnishes the farm and the factory; China is buyer and consumer. The
question which obviously arises is this, Is it morally justifiable and
politically expedient for the English nation to continue the
production and sale of a drug so deleterious to its consumers? Before,
however, we enter upon a consideration of this question, we must
explain how it has come to pass that the British nation has got into
this unseemly position. Otherwise, the fact that the British
Government is actually implicated in such a trade may well appear
incredible. If, for instance, any minister could be shameless enough
to suggest that England should embark on a vast scale into the
business of distillers, and with national funds, by servants of
Government, under inspection and control of Parliament, _produce and
export annually ten or twenty millions' worth of gin and whisky to
intoxicate the populous tribes of Central Africa, he would be greeted
by a general outcry of indignation. Yet the very thing which we scout
as an imagination, we consent to as a reality._ We are maintaining our
Indian Empire by our profits as wholesale dealers in an article which,
to say the best of it, is as bad as gin.
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.[3] 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 (who was more Chinese than
the Chinese themselves), 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.[4] 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.
The first of these fallacies is, _that the poppy is not indigenous to
China, but has been recently introduced there, presumably by British
agency_. The truth being that the poppy is indigenous to China, as it
admittedly is to Asia generally, and has been used in China for various
purposes for thousands of years.
The second is, _that opium smoking in China is now and always has been
confined to a small per-centage of the population, but which, owing to the
introduction into the country of Indian opium, is rapidly increasing_. The
fact being that the custom is, and for many centuries has been, general
among the male adults throughout China, its use being limited only by the
ability to procure the drug.
The third is, _that opium smoking is injurious to the system, more so than
spirit drinking_. The truth being that the former is not only harmless but
beneficial to the system, unless when practised to an inordinate extent,
which is wholly exceptional; whilst spirit drinking ruins the health,
degrades the character, incites its victims to acts of violence, and
destroys the prospects of everyone who indulges to excess in the practice.
The fourth is, _that the supply of opium regulates the demand, and not the
demand the supply_. When I come to consider this in detail, I think I
shall rather surprise you by the statements in support of this
extraordinary theory put forward by Mr. Storrs Turner in this wonderful
book of his. The use of so utterly untenable a proposition shows to what
extremes fanatical enthusiasts will resort in support of the hobby they
are riding to death; how desperate men, when advocating a hopeless cause,
will grasp at shadows to support their theories. When such persons wish a
certain state of things to be true and existing, they never stop to
scrutinize the arguments they use in support of them. If Mr. Storrs Turner
had not opium on the brain to an alarming extent, and was writing by the
light of reason and common sense, he would no more dream of putting
forward such a theory than he would entertain the faintest hope of finding
any person silly enough to believe in the doctrine.
The fifth fallacy is, _that opium smoking and opium eating are equally
hurtful_. The fact being that there is the widest difference in the world
between the two practices, as I shall hereafter conclusively prove to you.
Upon this point, I may tell you, that Mr. Storrs Turner, in the appendix
to his book, gives numerous extracts from evidence taken on various
occasions as to opium _eating_, which has no relevancy to opium smoking;
not that I am even disposed to admit that even opium eating in moderation
is a baneful practice, the medical evidence on the subject being at
present very conflicting. And here I may appropriately say, that although
an overdose of opium may cause death, the mere _smoking_ of the drug in
any quantity will not do so. No case of poisoning by opium smoking has
ever been reported or heard of; such a thing, in fact, is a physical
impossibility. I daresay this may surprise some people, but it is,
nevertheless, an irrefragable fact.
The sixth is, _that all, or nearly all, who smoke opium are either
inordinate smokers or are necessarily in the way of becoming so, and that
once the custom has been commenced it cannot be dropped; but the victim to
it is compelled to go on smoking the drug to his ultimate destruction_.
That, I shall show you, upon the best evidence, is altogether untrue,
thousands of Chinese having been to my knowledge habitual and occasional
opium smokers, who showed no ill effects whatever from the practice,
which, by the way, is far more easily discontinued than the use of
alcoholic liquors.
The seventh is, _that the Chinese Government is, or ever was, anxious to
put a stop to the custom, or even to check the use, of opium amongst the
people of China_. This is one of the most ridiculous and unfounded notions
that ever entered the mind of man. There is a saying that "none are so
blind as those who will not see," and here, I shall show you, is the
strongest proof of the adage.
The eighth is, _that the British merchants in China are making large
fortunes by opium_. The fact being that the Indo-China trade is profitable
to a very few merchants only, whilst the British merchants as a body have
no interest in the trade whatever. This is a pet fallacy of Mr. Storrs
Turner, and he has shown throughout his book, and notably in his article
in the "Nineteenth Century," a determination to make the most of it. He
has evidently persuaded himself that some large English firms have made
enormous fortunes by the drug, and he seems to have made up his mind never
to forgive the enormity.
The ninth is, _that the discontinuance of the supply of opium from British
India would stop, or effectually check, the practice of opium smoking in
China_. The fact being that the suppression of the present Indo-China
opium trade, if indeed it were possible to suppress it, would have
precisely the contrary effect. I shall prove to you clearly, that if the
Indo-China opium trade, as at present carried on, were put an end to, such
an impetus would be given to the importation of opium into China as would
enormously add to the consumption of the drug, and that then British and
other merchants who have now no dealings in opium, would in such case
become largely engaged in the trade; whilst opium smuggling, the cause of
so much strife and unpleasantness in past times, would again become
general upon the coast of China.
The tenth is, _that the opposition of Chinese officials to the
introduction of opium into China arose from moral causes_. The fact being,
as every sane man acquainted with China knows, that the true reason for
such opposition was a desire to protect and promote the culture of native
opium to keep out the foreign drug, and thus prevent the bullion payable
for the latter from leaving the country.
Last, but by no means least, is the fallacy and fond delusion, _that the
introduction of Indian opium into China has arrested and is impeding the
progress of Christianity in that country, and that if the trade were
discontinued, the Chinese, or large numbers of them, would embrace the
Gospel_. The fact being, that opium smoking has had nothing whatever to do
with the propagation of Christianity in China, any more than rice or
Manchester goods, as I confidently undertake to show you when I come to
deal more fully with this outrageous fallacy. I will only now observe that
it is a remarkable fact, that while China is covered with a network of
Roman Catholic missionaries, some of whom I had the pleasure of knowing
quite intimately, I have never heard of a similar complaint having been
made by any of them, but, on the contrary, have always known them to speak
triumphantly of their great success in their missionary labours; but then
it must be remembered that these Roman Catholic missionaries, greatly to
their credit, throw their whole soul into their work, and devote their
whole time to their missionary labours, never mixing in politics or
interfering with matters of State. These are the figments which have got
hold of the Anti-Opium mind, from which has sprung the monstrosity put
forward by the Anti-Opium Society. I shall, in future lectures, return to
these fallacies, and dispose of each in turn.
I will close this lecture by giving you the testimony of a very high and
entirely impartial authority as to the innocuous effects of opium, which
strongly confirms all that I have already stated. The late John Crawfurd,
F.R.S., was a _savant_ of high reputation in England, throughout the East,
and, I believe, in Europe. He was the contemporary and intimate friend of
the late Sir Benjamin Brodie, the eminent surgeon. Mr. Crawfurd had,
previous to 1856, been Governor of the three settlements of Singapore,
Penang, and Malacca. He resided for a great number of years in the far
East, studying there the country and people; he visited Siam, Java,
Borneo, and the Phillipine Islands, making himself thoroughly acquainted
with those places, the Malay peninsula, and various other countries in the
Indian Ocean and China Sea. In 1820 he published, in London, "A History of
the Indian Archipelago" (then comparatively but seldom visited by, and
less known to, Europeans), a work, I understand, of considerable merit.
Thirty-six years afterwards, that is, in the year 1856, having during the
interval spent seven years in travelling through India and otherwise
making himself perfectly acquainted with his subject, he published "A
Dictionary of the Indian Islands and Adjacent Countries." The book was
brought out in London by the well-known firm of Bradbury and Evans, and I
have it now before me. It was lent to me by a friend since the first
edition of these lectures was published. It is an interesting and valuable
volume, affording abundant evidence of the learning, research, vast
information and talents, and the studious and energetic character of the
writer. The book was published many years before this wonderful
confederation "The Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium
Trade" sprang into existence, and, indeed, before there was any
considerable controversy upon the opium question. The opinions of this
eminent man on the subject of opium should, therefore, be viewed as wholly
unbiassed, for it is certain that he had no selfish ends to gratify.
Turning to the word "Opium" at page 313, we find the following:--
Opium is at present largely consumed in the Malayan Islands, in China,
in the Indo-Chinese countries, and in a few parts of Hindustan, much
in the same way in which wine, ardent spirits, malt liquor, and cider
are consumed in Europe. Its deleterious character has been much
insisted on, but generally, by parties _who have had no experience of
its effects_. Like any other narcotic or stimulant, the habitual use
of it is amenable to abuse, and as being more seductive than other
stimulants, perhaps more so; but this is certainly the utmost that can
be safely charged to it. Thousands consume it without any pernicious
result, as thousands do wine and spirits, without any evil
consequence. I know of no person of long experience and competent
judgment who has not come to this common-sense conclusion. Dr. Oxley,
a physician and a naturalist of eminence, and who has had a longer
experience than any other man of Singapore, where there is the highest
rate of consumption of the drug, gives the following opinion:--"The
inordinate use, or rather abuse, of the drug most decidedly does bring
on early decrepitude, loss of appetite, and a morbid state of all the
secretions; but I have seen a man who had used the drug for fifty
years in moderation, without any evil effects; and one man I recollect
in Malacca who had so used it was upwards of eighty. Several in the
habit of smoking it have assured me that, in moderation, it neither
impaired the functions nor shortened life; at the same time fully
admitting the deleterious effects of too much." There is not a word of
this that would not be equally true of the use and abuse of ardent
spirit, wine, and, perhaps, even tobacco. The historian of Sumatra,
whose experience and good sense cannot be questioned, came early to
the very same conclusion. The superior curative virtues of opium over
any other stimulant are undeniable, and the question of its
superiority over ardent spirits appears to me to have been for ever
set at rest by the high authority of my friend Sir Benjamin Brodie.
"The effect of opium, when taken into the stomach," says this
distinguished philosopher, "is not to stimulate but to soothe the
nervous system. It may be otherwise in some instances, but these are
rare exceptions to the general rule. The opium eater is, in a passive
state, satisfied with his own dreamy condition while under the
influence of the drug. He is useless but not mischievous. It is quite
otherwise with alcoholic liquors."--"Psychological Inquiries," p. 248.
It may be worth while to show what is really the relative consumption
in those countries in which its use is alleged to be most pernicious.
In the British Settlement of Singapore, owing to the high rate of
wages, and the prevalence of a Chinese population, the consumption is
at the rate of about three hundred and thirty grains, or adult doses,
a year for each person. In Java, where the Chinese do not compose
above one in a hundred of the population, and where wages are
comparatively low, it does not exceed forty grains. Even in China
itself, where the consumption is supposed to be so large, it is no
more than one hundred and forty grains, chiefly _owing to the poverty
of the people, to whom it is for the most part inaccessible_. It must
not be forgotten, that some of the deleterious qualities of opium are
considerably abated, in all the countries in question, by the manner
in which it is prepared for use, _which consists in reducing it to a
kind of morphine and inhaling its fumes in this state_. Moreover,
everywhere consumption is restricted by heavy taxation. The opium of
India pays, in the first instance, a tax which amounts to three
millions sterling. The same opium in Singapore, with a population of
sixty thousand, pays another impost of thirty thousand pounds; and, in
Java, with a population of ten millions, one of eight hundred thousand
pounds. _Not the use, then, but the abuse, of opium is prejudicial to
health_; but in this respect it does not materially differ from wine,
distilled spirits, malt liquor, or hemp juice. There may be shades of
difference in the abuse of all these commodities, but they are not
easily determined, and, perhaps, hardly worth attempting to
appreciate. There is nothing mysterious about the intoxication
produced by ordinary stimulants, because we are familiar with it; but
it is otherwise with that resulting from opium, to which we are
strangers. We have generally only our imaginations to guide us with
the last, and we associate it with deeds of desperation and murder;
_the disposition to commit which, were the drug ever had recourse to
on such occasions, which it never is, it would surely allay and not
stimulate_.