the missionary's servant. The moment the two well-dressed thieves see
them, their guilty consciences make them conclude that the one is a
European, and the other a Chinese detective in search of them. They close
their eyes and pretend to be in profound slumber. They are really in
deadly fear of apprehension, for escape seems impossible. Mr. Howard asks
his guide who they are. "Oh, dese plaupa good men numba one; dey come dis
side to smokee. To-day dey smokee one pipe; to-mollow dey come and smokee
two, tlee pipe; next dey five, six; den dey get sik and die. Oh, opium
pipe veely bad; dat pipe kill plenty men." "You say they are good,
respectable men?" says Mr. Howard. "Yes, good plaupa men; numba one Chinee
genlman." "Oh, is not this a terrible thing?" says Mr. Howard, compressing
his lips, breathing heavily, and vowing to bear witness, on his return to
London, to all the villainy he fancies he has seen. The three men begrimed
with coal-dust, although they appear only to be semi-conscious, are in
reality taking the measure of Mr. Howard, and enjoying a quiet laugh at
his expense. One exclaims, referring to his chimney-pot hat, "Ah ya! what
a funny thing that Fan-Qui has got on his head!" The other replies, "It's
to keep the sun away." "How funny!" retorts the first speaker, "we wear
hats to keep our heads warm; they wear hats to keep their heads cool."
"Oh," returns the other speaker, "the Fan-Qui have such soft heads that if
they did not keep the sun off the little brains they have would melt away;
and they would die, or become idiots."[5] Mr. Howard, seeing them in their
dirty condition, concludes that they are some of the wretched victims of
opium smoking, in the last stage of disease, and leaves with his
conductor, pitying them from the depths of his heart; his pity, however,
is as nothing compared to the contempt with which these supposed victims
to the opium pipe regard him and his chimney-pot hat. As he leaves he asks
his guide, "Does the keeper of the opium shop expect a gratuity?" "Oh,"
returns the other, "supposee you pay him one dolla, he say, tankee you."
Mr. Howard accordingly gives a dollar to the man, who looks more surprised
than grateful, and he leaves the shop, satisfied that he has at last seen
the true effects of opium smoking in China. He returns to the missionary,
to whom he relates the horrors he has seen, makes copious notes of them,
and vows to enlighten his countrymen at home upon the subject. As for his
guide Achun, this person loses no time in returning to the opium shop,
where he compels the keeper of it to share with him the dollar he has just
received, and, having so easily earned two shillings, he quietly reclines
on one of the couches and takes a whiff or two of the pipe, the more
enjoyable because it is forbidden fruit. Thus the benevolent British
public is befooled by these ridiculous stories about opium.
Now as Achun is a representative character, many like him being in the
service of missionaries and other foreigners throughout China, I will give
you a further specimen of the way such persons cheat and delude their
masters. Achun, in whom Mr. Jenkins, the missionary, places implicit
confidence, has of late been much exercised as to his "vails," for Chinese
servants are quite as much alive to the perquisites of their office as
Jeames, John Thomas, or any others of our domestics here in England.
Indeed, I may safely lay it down as a rule that, like cabmen, domestic
servants will be found the same all over the world, "one touch of nature
makes the whole world kin," and no sooner have you engaged your Chinese
"boy" than his mind is at once set working as to the amount of drawbacks,
clippings, and parings over and above his wages he may safely count upon
in his new place. Achun is dissatisfied with the commission or drawback
allowed him by Chook Aloong, the shopkeeper or compradore, who supplies
Mr. Jenkins's family with provisions and other household necessaries; he
is allowed only ten per cent. of the monthly bill, and he considers that
in all fairness he should get double that amount. Thus impressed, he makes
energetic remonstrances on the subject to Chook Aloong, who is firm and
will give no more than ten per cent. Achun is equal to the occasion. Now
Mr. Jenkins and his family are simple and frugal in their dietary, but
there are some articles of food they insist upon having of the best kind,
in consequence of which their compradore sends them those articles and,
indeed, all others of unobjectionable quality. Eggs which are not
absolutely fresh, and meat, though it be game, if in the slightest degree
"up," they will have none of. Achun well knows all this, and he has
determined to have Chook Aloong displaced. Having himself a partiality for
eggs, he begins operations by daily appropriating to his own use some of
those fresh eggs and substituting stale ones in their stead. In the like
manner, instead of letting the family have the beef, mutton, and fowls
nice and fresh as they are delivered, he holds them over until the bloom
of freshness has departed. This state of affairs occasions some commotion
in the family circle. The boy is sent for and shown that the eggs are bad
and the meat "high"; he expresses great concern, and declares that he will
forthwith call upon the compradore and compel him to make good the damage
already done, and supply proper provisions in future. Mr. Jenkins, though
angry, is not implacable, and is willing to believe that some mishap has
occurred; for how could his old and trusted compradore treat him so badly?
His hopes are, however, disappointed, for again and yet again the meat is
bad, and, worse still, the eggs are--well, not fresh. The climax is
reached one morning when poor Mr. Jenkins, in breaking his egg, finds, not
the usual bright yellow yolk and spotless albumen within, but a young
chick almost fledged. Horror and disgust seize him, the old Adam
over-masters him for a moment, and, full of wrath, he roars for the boy.
Achun appears the very picture of innocence, when Mr. Jenkins, ashamed of
his outburst of wrath and now quite calm explains the _contretemps_. He
has even in the reaction regained some of his good humour. "Look here,
Achun," he says, showing the chick, "this is too bad, you know. Supposee I
wanchee egg,--can catchee him; supposee I wanchee chicken--can catchee
chicken. No wanchee egg and chicken alla same together." Achun perceives
the joke, and knowing his master's weakness, says, "Oh, ho, massa, velly
good, dat belong numba one. 'No wanchee egg and chicken alla same
togedda,'" continues the cunning rascal, repeating his master's words, "Oh
velly funny, velly good, massa, ho! ho! ho!" Mr. Jenkins is pleased at the
mild flattery of his boy, who has now advanced a step or two in his
estimation. "Oh, massa, dat man, Chook Aloong, velly bad man," continues
Achun when his merriment had subsided. "Him smokee too much opium pipe; he
no mind his pidgin plaupa, he smokee alla day." "Oh! ho! is that the way?"
asks the missionary, a new light dawning for the first time upon him. "And
so Chook Aloong is an opium smoker?" "Ye-s," replies Achun, prolonging the
word. "Too much opium, plenty opium. More betta you get anoda compado
sah--some good plaupa man dat no smokee." "Very well, Achun," says Mr.
Jenkins with a sigh. "It is plain I must get somebody else. Find me out
some other man, and, mind, he must not smoke opium." "Hab got, massa,"
returns the boy delighted with his success. "Hab got velly good man, him
numba one good compado"; and in walks the person indicated, who has been
listening outside all the time. "This belong Sam Afoong, him do all ting
plaupa," the fact being that this very Sam Afoong is the greatest cheat in
the whole market. "Oh, you're the man," says Mr. Jenkins. "I hope you
don't use opium." "Oh no, sah," returns the other, who is in fact an
inveterate smoker, "my neba smokee; dat opium pipe velly bad. It hab kill
my fadda, my six bludda, my----." But here he is stopped by a signal from
Achun, who saw that his friend, in familiar parlance, was "laying it on
too thickly." Sam Afoong vows to supply the best of good things, and does
so, and the Jenkins family are no longer troubled with bad provisions; but
had the lady of the establishment gone through the formality of weighing
every joint of meat that her new compradore supplied, she would have found
that every pound was short of two or three ounces, for thus Sam Afoong
recouped himself for the large per-centage bestowed on Achun.
To prove that the missionaries are deceived in the way I have described I
will refer you to a passage in Mr. Storrs Turner's own book, where even he
admits that one of his own converts, who had assured him that he never
smoked, and no doubt had pledged himself never to do so, was found
regaling himself with the iniquity. At p. 32 Mr. Turner says, "I have
caught a man smoking who had only half an hour before denied to me that he
was a smoker, and condemned the habit." Yet such are the men from whom the
missionaries derive their information about opium smoking. For further
proof of this I will quote again from Dr. Ayres' article, in _The Friend
of China_. This is what he says:--
At the Tung Wah Hospital the stranger may at any time see the most
dreadful and ghastly-looking objects in the last stages of scrofula
and phthisis smoking opium, who had never previously in all their
lives been able to afford the expense of a pipe a day, yet the
European visitor leaves the establishment attributing to the abuse of
opium effects which further inquiry would have satisfied him were due
to the diseases for which the patients were in hospital. From what I
have seen there, there is no doubt that the advanced consumptive
patient does experience considerable temporary relief to his difficult
breathing by smoking a pipe of opium, though it is a very poor quality
of drug that is given to patients at the Tung Wah Hospital.
Thus, as I have shown, it has come to pass that whilst the missionary
clergymen, owing to their sacred calling and their unquestionably high
character, are accepted in England as the most reliable witnesses and
entitled to the greatest credit, they are really the men who are the very
worst informed upon the opium question which they profess to understand so
thoroughly. They are, in fact, the victims of their own delusions. But
saddest fact of all, these missionary gentlemen, with the best intentions
and in the devout belief that by carrying on this anti-opium agitation
they are helping to remove an obstacle to the dissemination of the Gospel
in China, are of necessity by so doing obliged to neglect more or less the
very Gospel work they are really so desirous to spread, leaving the
missionary field open to their Roman Catholic rivals.
The information placed before the public here in England upon the opium
question, tainted as it is at the very fountain head, is sent forward from
hand to hand, meeting in its filtrations from China to this country with
impurity after impurity, until it reaches the form of the miserable trash
retailed at Exeter Hall, or by the agents of the Anti-Opium Society. It is
an accepted adage that "a story loses nothing by the carriage." The maxim
becomes, more strongly pointed when it is remembered that the opium tales
partake so much of the marvellous, and that the various transmitters of
those accounts are, in almost every instance, fanatical believers in the
supposed wickedness of the Indo-Chinese opium trade. I am quite sure that
out of every thousand people who believe in the anti-opium delusion, you
will not find two who have ever set their foot in China, or know anything
with respect to the alleged evils they denounce, except from the
unreliable sources I have mentioned. Such people, as a rule, are by far
the most violent and uncompromising opponents of the Indo-Chinese opium
trade. The people I describe generally speak with such an air of authority
on the question, that an ordinary person would suppose they had personally
witnessed all the evils they describe. If you ask one of them in what part
of China he has lived, or when and where he has seen the horrors he speaks
of, he will jauntily tell you, "Oh, I have heard Mr. A. or the Rev. Mr. B.
explain the whole villainy at Exeter Hall." Another will say he has read
Mr. Storrs Turner's great work upon opium smoking, with which I have
already made you somewhat acquainted. When General Choke rebuked Martin
Chuzzlewit for denying that the Queen lived in the Tower of London when
she was at the Court of St. James, Martin inquired if the speaker had ever
lived in England. "In writing I have, not otherwise," responded the
General, adding, "We air a reading people here, Sir; you will meet with
much information among us that will surprise you Sir." Just so. These
anti-opium enthusiasts have been in China in writing, and understand the
opium question upon paper only--a few months in Hong Kong or Canton, freed
from missionary influence, would soon disillusionize them. I remember
hearing a story once of a most estimable gentleman who had the misfortune
to be the defendant in an action for breach of promise. The plaintiff's
counsel, who had a fluent tongue and a fertile imagination, painted him in
such dreadful colours, and so belaboured him for his alleged heartless
conduct towards the lady that the gentleman so denounced, persuaded for
the moment that he was really guilty, rushed out of court, exclaiming, "I
never thought I was so terrible a villain before." That is just the kind
of feeling that first comes over one upon hearing of those opium-smoking
horrors; for it must not be forgotten that the indictment of the
Anti-Opium Society, and of its secretary Mr. Storrs Turner in particular,
not only includes the Imperial Government, and the Government of India,
during the past forty years, but all the British merchants connected with
the Chinese trade, and, indeed, the entire British nation.
Before proceeding to deal with the fallacies I have enumerated, it is
necessary that I should again address a few words to you on the subject of
evidence, so as to enable you to discriminate between the value of the
various witnesses who have attempted to enlighten public opinion on the
subject before us. I dislike very much to trouble the reader with dry
professional matters, but, under the circumstances, I cannot avoid doing
so. It is a rule of law which will, I think, commend itself to the common
sense of everybody, that the evidence to be adduced on a trial should be
the best that the nature of the case is susceptible of, rather than
evidence of a subsidiary or secondary nature, unless, indeed, no better be
forthcoming. In determining matters of fact, the best witnesses would be
held to be those who have become acquainted with those facts in the course
of their ordinary employment, or in the performance of their professional
duties, rather than mere amateurs or volunteers, whose knowledge is
derived from accident or casual observation only. For illustration, let us
suppose the case of a collision at sea between two steamers, A and
B,--that previous to and at the time of the collision, besides the usual
officers and seamen in charge of A, there were on deck the steward of the
vessel and a passenger. Now, the best witnesses on board of A as to the
catastrophe would not be the two latter, although they saw the whole
occurrence, but the men who were in actual charge of the navigation of the
ship, viz. the look-out man in the bows--whose duty it would be to watch
for rocks or shoals, or any ship or vessel ahead, and to give immediate
notice to the officer of the watch and the man at the wheel of the
presence of such object;--the officer of the watch, usually stationed on
the bridge;--and the man at the wheel. Why? Because, it being the peculiar
duty of the first two men to look out for and avoid striking on rocks or
shoals, or coming into collision with any other vessel, and the duty of
the third man not only to keep a look out but to steer as directed by the
officer on the bridge, they necessarily paid more attention to, and had
their intellects better sharpened in respect to such matters than the
others, who had no such duty cast upon them. The next best witnesses would
be the other seamen during whose watch the accident occurred, their duty
being generally to attend to the management of the ship, her sails and
cordage, and obey the orders of the officer of the watch, but who, not
having immediate connection with the steering and course of the vessel,
would not be expected to have the same accurate knowledge of the
circumstances that led to and occurred up to the time of the collision as
the first three. The least valuable witnesses would be the steward and the
passenger, for the reasons already mentioned. Applying these rules to the
question now before us, it follows that the testimony of such a man as Dr.
Ayres--some of which I have given you already--and of others which I shall
lay before you, should have far greater weight and be more reliable than
that of ordinary persons having no special knowledge or experience of
opium or its effects, nor any opportunity of obtaining such knowledge,
much less any duty cast upon them to acquire it, _e.g._ missionaries and
other persons unconnected with native and foreign merchants, and having no
duties to perform which would bring them into constant intercourse with
the Chinese community.
The first of these fallacies which have so much tended to warp the
understanding of these Anti-Opium people is this: "That the poppy is not
indigenous to China, but has been recently introduced there, presumably by
British agency." With this let us take the second fallacy, viz.: "That
opium smoking in China is now and has always been confined to a small
per-centage of the population, but which, owing to the introduction of
Indian opium, is constantly increasing." Here I would first inquire--what
is the poppy? To this question one person would say, It is the plant that
produces that deadly drug, morphia. Another would answer, It is the herb
from which laudanum is made; and a third would say, It is the plant which
supplies opium, smoked so much in China and eaten so largely in India.
These answers would all be correct enough, so far as they go; but they
would not be complete, for there are many other uses to which the poppy is
applied besides all these. That valuable plant produces not only opium,
but an oil used for lighting and for edible purposes, the Chinese using
the oil to mollify their daily rice and other food, mixing it also very
commonly with another and richer quality of oil. The seeds, when the oil
is expressed, are given to cattle, or allowed to rot and form manure. If
the oil is not expressed, the seeds can be worked up into cakes. From the
capsules medicine is made, and lastly, the stalks and leaves when burnt
produce potash. Mr. William Donald Spence, one of Her Majesty's Consuls in
China, to whose valuable "Report on the Trade of the Port of Ichang, and
the Opium-culture in the Provinces of Szechuan and Yunnan," I shall
presently introduce you, knows all this as matter of fact, and, indeed, I
am mainly indebted to him for the information I now give you. It is
admitted by Mr. Storrs Turner that the poppy is indigenous to China, and
when it is remembered that the people of that country are and have been
for thousands of years the most civilized in Asia,--that agriculture is
considered the most honourable industry in the country, as evidenced by
the annual practice of the Emperor to turn over the earth with the plough
at the beginning of Spring,--that the Chinese are skilled husbandmen, and
of most frugal and thrifty habits, it becomes a matter of irresistible
inference that those people must have known that most useful plant, the
poppy, and must have cultivated it for economic purposes long before opium
was known in Europe. Sir Robert Hart, in his Yellow Book, says "that
native opium was known, produced, and used _long before_ any Europeans
began the sale of the foreign drug along the coast." Compare that with the
misleading passage at page 2 of Mr. Storrs Turner's book, where he says
"that the poppy had long been cultivated in Egypt, Turkey, Persia, India,
and _recently_ in China and Manchuria," and ask yourselves what credit you
can give to that gentleman as a trustworthy guide on the subject of opium.
Here is Sir Robert Hart, a great Chinese authority, practically admitting
that three or four hundred years ago at the least native opium was grown
and produced in China, and Mr. Storrs Turner, in this fallacious statement
of his, trying to induce his readers to infer that the drug was only
recently produced in that Empire! The reader can choose between these
authorities for himself. Now the fact is, that in very ancient Chinese
works mention is made of the poppy. In the "History of the Later Han
Dynasty" (A.D. 25-220), the brilliant colour of the poppy blossom, of the
charms of the juice, and the strengthening qualities of the seeds of the
plant, formed the themes of Chinese poets as far back as a thousand years,
and probably much farther. The poet Yung T'aou, of the T'ang dynasty (A.D.
618-907), celebrates the beauty of the flower. The poet Soo Cheh (A.D.
1039-1112), dwells, in an ode, on the curative and invigorating effects of
the poppy seeds and juice, and another poet, Soo Sung, of the same period,
praises the beauty of the plant, which he speaks of as being grown
everywhere in China. I am not a Chinese scholar, but I have high authority
for these statements. You will thus clearly perceive that opium is a
native plant, that its various uses have for many centuries been known to
the Chinese, and that the British are in no way responsible for the
introduction of opium into China, much less for the practice of smoking
the drug.
I have mentioned Mr. W. Donald Spence as one of Her Majesty's Consuls in
China. Now, every foreign resident in that country knows who and what
those consular gentlemen are; but I do not think the public here in
England are equally well informed upon the subject, because it is only
natural that they should confound them with the ordinary British Consuls
at the European and American ports; but that would be a very great
mistake, for the two sets of Consuls form quite distinct and separate
bodies. The Consuls at the latter ports are no doubt highly respectable
gentlemen, often indeed, men who have distinguished themselves in science
and literature, or in the army or navy, but still they are simply
commercial agents of the British Government, and no more, having little or
no diplomatic or other duties to discharge. The Consular Service of China
stands upon a totally different footing. In this country Her Majesty's
Consuls are not only commercial agents, but are trained diplomatists,
entering the service in the first instance as cadets, after passing most
difficult competitive examinations. They are always Chinese scholars, many
of them holding high rank as such. The Consuls have very important
diplomatic duties to discharge, and have also magisterial duties to
perform towards their countrymen in China, all of which demand qualities
of a high order, and which only superior education and careful training
enable them to discharge. England has acquired by treaty ex-territorial
rights, as regards her own subjects, in the ports of China thrown open to
her commerce, known as "Treaty ports," the most important of which are the
exclusive right to hear and determine all civil and criminal cases against
British subjects. These onerous and important duties are performed by Her
Majesty's Consuls at those ports. These gentlemen, indeed, have more power
in many respects than is possessed by the Queen's Ambassadors and
Ministers Plenipotentiary at the various Courts in Europe. They have, in
fact, all the powers now vested in the Judges of Her Majesty's High Court
of Judicature here in England, as well as the powers possessed by the
Judges of the Admiralty, Probate, and Bankruptcy Courts. Further, and in
addition to all these multifarious duties, they are Her Majesty's special
commercial agents at these treaty ports, with the usual jurisdiction over
British ships, their officers, and crew. It is, therefore, a matter of the
first necessity that the persons in whom such tremendous powers are placed
should not only be gentlemen of the very highest characters and assured
abilities, but men of superior education specially trained to fill these
important positions and discharge the varied and onerous duties
appertaining to them. Such are the present British Consuls in China, and
such they have been in the past. There is not, I believe, in this or any
other country, a more highly-educated, intelligent, and efficient body of
men to be found. If any proof of these high qualities is required, it will
be furnished in the fact that notwithstanding the difficult, delicate, and
onerous duties cast upon them, no instance of their abuse of these powers
has ever occurred. I certainly know of none. I am only here stating, I
assure you, what is actually true. It has, indeed, always been to me a
marvel that no complaints--no political entanglements, no troubles--have
arisen from the abnormal state of things arising out of our commercial and
political relations with China, and the extraordinary and exceptional
powers necessarily entrusted to our Consular Agents in that Empire in
consequence. We can now look back, after a quarter of a century of
experience, and congratulate ourselves that all our complicated machinery
has worked so well, that no clouds obscure the vista, and that our present
position in China is one of serenity and sunshine; that we stand upon the
very best terms with the Chinese Government from the central authority at
Peking to all its ramifications throughout the vast empire. Nothing, in
fact, blurs the landscape, save the miserable opium phantom created by our
own countrymen, the missionaries, and magnified to a monster of large
dimensions by the "Chinese jugglers," who here in England keep the
machinery of the Anti-Opium Society in motion. These happy results are due
to Her Majesty's Diplomatic and Consular Service in China, controlled by
Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in England.
And here I cannot but remind you of that distinguished veteran statesman
Sir Rutherford Alcock, formerly Her Majesty's Minister to the Court of
Peking, to whose wise and far-seeing policy much of the present happy
relations with China is due. There is not an English resident in China
who cannot bear testimony to the splendid talents and genuine patriotism
which has marked his career in that vast and interesting country. There is
no greater authority living upon Anglo-Chinese affairs than he, especially
as regards the period of the famous treaty of Tientsin, some of whose
testimony on these points I will lay before you. After a long and
honourable career he is now in England enjoying his well-earned repose,
and is, happily, a powerful living witness to the fallacies I am now
trying to efface.
Now, one of the ablest and most accomplished men at present in the
Diplomatic and Consular Service of China is Mr. W. Donald Spence, Her
Majesty's Consul at Ichang, a port on the Yangtze, to whom I have before
shortly referred. This gentleman, in the year 1881, paid a visit to
Chungking, the commercial capital of Szechuan in Western China. Whilst
there he availed himself of the opportunity to make inquiries and
investigations into the commercial products of that immense province, and
especially into the cultivation of native opium, the extent and condition
of opium culture in Western China, and the attitude respecting it of the
Chinese Government, and on the effect of opium smoking on the people of
those provinces where it appears that habit is all but universal. It was
his especial duty to make these investigations. No better proof could be
produced as to the abilities of this gentleman than this valuable document
on the subject presented by him to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs which Mr. Spence, in his covering letter to Lord
Granville modestly styles "his Report on the Trade of the Port of Ichang
for the Year 1881." If anyone will read the whole of this Report--and it
will well repay careful perusal--he will pronounce it, I think, one of the
ablest and most admirable State papers that have ever been penned. In
giving you some extracts from it I will, therefore, ask you to treat the
author of it, not as a mere hireling, having an interest in certain
matters which it is desirable to place in a particular light, as the
agents of the Anti-Opium Society would, no doubt, have you believe, but as
the honest statement of an upright, high-minded, honourable English
gentleman, of superior talents and a cultivated mind, who values truth
above everything, who can have no other object in the matter but to do
what is honest, just, and right, and who on this question of opium smoking
tells the truth and nothing but the truth to Her Majesty's Minister. This
is what he says as to the cultivation of the poppy in Szechuan:--
Of all the products of Szechuan, the most important nowadays is native
opium. In September last year it was my fortune to be sent on the
public service to the commercial metropolis of Szechuan, Chungking. I
was four months in the province. In the course of that time I visited
parts of the great opium country, questioned many people regarding
opium culture, consumption, and export, and carefully noted the
observations and conclusions on these subjects come to by Mr. Colborne
Baber and Mr. E. H. Parker during their official residence there, with
a view to giving, as far as possible, exact information in my Trade
Report on a matter of great commercial, and no little political,
interest at the present moment. The cultivation of the poppy is
carried on in every district of Szechuan except those on the west
frontier, but most of all in the Prefectures of Chungking Fu and
Kweichow Fu. In all the districts of Chungking Fu, south of the
Yang-tsze, and in some of the districts of Kweichow Fu, north of that
river, it is the principal crop, and, in parts, the only winter crop
for scores upon scores of square miles. The headquarters of the trade
are at the city of Fuchow, in the first of these prefectures, and, in
a considerably less degree, at Fengtu, a district city in Kweichow Fu.
Baron Richthofen, writing in 1872, says that the poppy then was
cultivated only on hill slopes of an inferior soil, but one sees it
now on land of all kinds, both hill and valley. Baron Richthofen
himself anticipates this change when he says:--"The Government may at
some time or other reduce the very heavy restrictions, and if Szechuan
opium then should be able to command its present price at Hankow, the
consequence would be an immediate increase in the area planted with
the poppy." Since he wrote, the area given to the poppy has much
increased, though not from the cause alleged. Being a winter crop, it
does not interfere with rice, the food staple of the people,
displacing only subsidiary crops, such as wheat, beans, and the like.
When it is planted in paddy and bottom lands, which nowadays is often
the case, it is gathered in time to allow rice or some other crop to
follow. It can hardly be said of Szechuan that the cultivation of
opium seriously interferes with food supplies. The supply of rice
remains the same, and the opium produced, less the value of the crops
it replaces, is so much additional wealth to the province.
I shall presently show that opium is a more remunerative crop than its
only possible substitutes, beans or wheat, and no per-centage of the
opium crop being due to the landlord, its cultivation has been greatly
stimulated in consequence. Of late years, however, in the districts I
have named as being in winter one vast poppy-field, owners of land
have become alive to the value to occupiers of the opium crop, and
have stipulated for a share of it in addition to their share of the
summer crop. Rents, in fact, where opium is in universal cultivation,
have practically doubled. Before leaving the subject of tenure, I may
add that, in the event of non-payment of rent from causes other than
deficient harvests, the landlord helps himself to the deposit in his
hands. In bad years remissions are willingly made by the Government to
owners of the land-tax, and by owners to occupiers of the
rent-produce.
Now you will remember that this very province of Szechuan, where such
extensive cultivation of the poppy is carried on, is the largest and most
distant of all the provinces of China; it is one of the westernmost of the
eighteen provinces of the empire, being bordered on the west by Thibet.
Until quite recently Szechuan was about as accessible to Englishmen as
Moscow was fifty years ago, a _terra incognita_, in fact, to Europeans, so
that it cannot be pretended for one moment that the introduction into
China of Indian opium has had anything to do with the cultivation of the
drug there. Indian opium could hardly ever have found its way into the
province, which is not less than one thousand two hundred miles from the
sea. It is only since the opening of the port of Ichang in the adjoining
province of Hupeh, which took place in April 1877, that the district has
become at all accessible. But let us return to Mr. W. Donald Spence. This
is another extract from his report:--
The poppy is now grown on all kinds of land, hill slopes, terraced
fields, paddy and bottom lands in the valleys. Since 1872, when Baron
Richthofen visited the province, a great change has taken place in
this respect, for it appears to have been cultivated then on hill
lands only. All the country people whom I asked were agreed that opium
is most profitably grown on good land with liberal manuring. In India
it is best grown on rich soil near villages where manure can be easily
obtained, and the Szechuan cultivator has found this out for himself.
Poppy cultivation, as practised in Szechuan, is very simple. As soon
as the summer crop is reaped the land is ploughed and cleaned, roots
and weeds are heaped and burnt, and the ashes scattered over the
ground; dressings of night soil are liberally given. The seeds are
sown in December, in drills a foot and a half apart. In January, when
the plants are a few inches high, the rows are thinned and earthed up
so as to leave a free passage between each: the plants are then left
to take care of themselves, the earth round them being occasionally
stirred up and kept clear of weeds. In March and April, according to
situation, the poppy blooms. In the low grounds the white poppy is by
far the most common, but red and purple are also grown. As the
capsules form and fill, dressings of liquid manure are given. In April
and May the capsules are slit and the juice extracted. The raw juice
evaporates into the crude opium of commerce increasing in value as it
decreases in weight.
Mr. Spence then goes on to compare the value of the wheat with the opium
crop, showing that the cultivation of the latter is just twice as
profitable as the former. Space will not allow me to give you full
extracts on this subject, but, as some portion of it is germane to this
part of my lecture, I give a short extract on the point:--
It must be remembered, too, that every single part of the poppy plant
has a market value. The capsules, after the juice has been extracted,
are sold to druggists, and made into medicine; oil is expressed from
the seeds, and largely used for lighting and adulterating edible oils;
the oil-cake left in the oil-press is good manure, as are also the
leaves; and the stalks are burnt for potash. Against these advantages
opium is subject to a rent, and requires, for profitable cultivation,
plenty of manure; whereas wheat, when followed by a summer crop, pays
little or no rent, and gets, in general, no manure. Into the relative
profits of opium and wheat both Mr. Baber and Mr. Parker have gone
very carefully, and their results correspond, in the main, with my own
observations.
I will now give you a short account of opium-culture in the province of
Yunnan, a more inaccessible part of China still perhaps than Szechuan. Mr.
E. Colborne Baber, like Mr. Spence, belongs to the diplomatic service, and
is now the secretary of the British Legation at Peking. All that I have
stated as to Mr. Spence applies alike to him. He is a gentleman in whom
the most implicit confidence should be placed. In 1877 he travelled
through Western Szechuan, having, in his own words, on the morning of the
8th July in that year, passed the western gate of Ch'ung-Ch'ung "full of
the pleasurable anticipations which precede a plunge into the unknown."
Having finished his journey through Szechuan, he struck into Yunnan,
following the route of Mr. Grosvenor's mission. He has recounted his
adventures in a most valuable and interesting book, written in such a
pleasing and graphic style, that the reader, when looking at it for
reference only, is irresistibly compelled to read further. His book has
been published by the Royal Geographical Society, and is well worthy of
general perusal. It is one of the few readable books of travel to be met
with nowadays. There is very little respecting opium culture in the
volume, but what there is upon the subject is very much to the point. This
is what he says:--
Of the sole agricultural export, opium, we can speak with some
certainty. We were astounded at the extent of the poppy cultivation
both in Szechuan and Yunnan. We first heard of it on the boundary line
between Hupah and Szechuan, in a cottage which appears in an
illustration given in the work of Captain Blakiston, the highest
cottage on the right of the sketch. A few miles south of this spot
the most valuable variety of native opium is produced.
In ascending the river, wherever cultivation existed we found numerous
fields of poppy. Even the sandy banks were often planted with it down
to the water's edge: but it was not until we began our land journey in
Yunnan that we fairly realised the enormous extent of its production.
With some fear of being discredited, but at the same time with a
consciousness that I am under-estimating-the production, I estimate
that the poppy-fields constitute a third of the whole cultivation of
Yunnan.
We saw the gradual process of its growth, from the appearance of the
young spikelets above ground in January, or earlier, to the full
luxuriance of the red, white, and purple flowers, which were already
falling in May. In that month the farmers were trying the juice, but
we did not see the harvest gathered. We walked some hundreds of miles
through poppies; we breakfasted among poppies; we shot wild ducks in
the poppies. Even wretched little hovels in the mountains were
generally attended by a poppy patch.
The ducks, called locally "opium ducks," which frequently supplied us
with a meal, do really appear, as affirmed by the natives, to stupefy
themselves by feeding on the narcotic vegetable. We could walk openly
up to within twenty yards of them, and even then they rose very
languidly. We are not, however, compelled to believe, with the
natives, that the flesh of these birds is so impregnated with laudanum
as to exercise a soporific influence on the consumer. They are found
in great numbers in the plain of Tung-ch'uan, in Northern Yunnan, and
turn out to be the _Tadorna vulpanser_.
In the same district, and in no other, we met with the _Grus cinerea_,
an imposing bird, which is also a frequenter of opium-fields.
The poppy appeared to us to thrive in every kind of soil, from the low
sandy borders of the Yang-tyu to the rocky heights of Western Yunnan;
but it seemed more at home, or at any rate was more abundant, in the
marshy valleys near Yung-ch'uan, at an elevation of seven thousand and
sixty feet (seven thousand one hundred and fifty feet according to
Garnier).
I am not concerned here with the projects or prospects of the Society
for the Abolition of Opium: _if, however, they desire to give the
strongest impetus to its growth in Yunnan, let them by all means
discourage its production in India_.
Now I have given you some very important evidence upon the two fallacies
before us; but perhaps, after all, the best testimony upon the subject is
that of Mr. Turner himself. He says, at page 13 of his book:--
"Everywhere, in all climates, on every soil, in every variety and
condition of circumstances throughout that vast empire, the Chinese
smoke opium, but nowhere do they all smoke. The smokers are but a
per-centage, greater or smaller in different places."
I quite agree with him on this point. But here the question arises, where
is the drug procured which is smoked in every part of the eighteen
provinces of this vast Empire, equal in extent to Europe? Surely not from
abroad, because that great China authority, Sir Robert Hart, tells us in
his Yellow Book that all the Indian and Persian opium imported into China
is sufficient only to supply one third of one per cent. of the population
with a small portion annually of the drug. Not from India, because there
are many provinces in China--and a province there means a territory as
large as Great Britain--into which a particle of the Indian drug has
seldom or never been introduced. Whence, then, comes the great bulk of the
drug to satisfy all these smokers? Surely it must be from Chinese soil,
from the opium fields surrounding their own homes, which are to be seen in
every province of the Empire.
Let us now return to the Yellow-book of Sir Robert Hart, to which I have
referred in the former lecture, and which seems to me to afford all the
evidence on this subject that is really wanted. It is admitted on both
sides that opium smoking is more or less prevalent throughout every
province of China, on every soil, whether in the valleys or on the hills
and mountains. Sir Robert Hart sent out a circular to the foreign
Commissioners of Customs at all the Treaty Ports in China, Hainan, and
Formosa,--two large islands lying respectively off the south and
south-east coast of China,--and the returns show that there are many
opium-smoking shops in each of these Treaty Ports, and that the gross
quantity of Indian and other foreign opium imported into China is about
one hundred thousand chests. Those returns also reveal the fact that in
almost every case foreign opium is used for mixing with the native drug,
which is of inferior quality and, there can be no doubt, invariably
adulterated; that a large amount of native opium is grown and sold; and
that the custom of opium smoking is more or less universal. Suppose we
take the case of Canton, as being a very large city. We may find, perhaps,
two or three hundred opium shops there, but the people who attend them are
not the better class of Chinese. They are exactly the same class of people
who frequent the drinking shops of London and other large cities in
England. The respectable, well-to-do people in Canton, who can afford to
keep the drug in their own houses, would not enter an opium shop any more
than a respectable person here would frequent a public-house. If a
stranger in London looked into the public-houses and saw men and women
drinking there, he would come to a false conclusion if he thought that
none but such people drank beer, spirits, or wine. We know that in almost
every private house here there is more or less liquor of all kinds kept
and consumed. The drinking shops furnish a mere indication of the amount
of alcoholic liquors drunk in a town. It is exactly the same with the
opium shops. They show the prevalence of the custom throughout the
country. If you find two hundred opium shops in Canton, and I am sure
there are not fewer there, you may be not less certain that opium is
smoked in the great majority of private and business houses in Canton. It
is the same in all the Treaty Ports. The opium-smoking shops in China may
be counted by hundreds and thousands, because China is as large as Europe,
and more populous.
Sir Robert Hart's Report, although to a certain extent an anti-opium one,
is in this and other respects very valuable, and forms in itself a
complete answer to the false and unfounded allegations of the Anti-Opium
Society. It is not likely that he would exaggerate the amount of opium
grown or smoked in China; the inference, indeed, would be that he, as an
official of the Chinese Government, would do just the contrary. There are
a great many other important ports in China besides the twenty ports with
which foreigners are not allowed to trade, and from which, indeed, they
are rigidly excluded; and in the interior of the country there are immense
and numerous cities and towns, large, thriving and densely populated,
where the opium pipe is used as freely as the tobacco pipe is with us. The
provinces in which opium is most grown are Szechuan and Yun-Nan, two of
the largest of the eighteen provinces constituting China proper. They are
the two great western provinces; but it is also grown in the eastern and
central provinces, in fact, more or less, all over the country. Though
there are no certain statistics, there cannot be a doubt that opium
smoking is more prevalent in the interior provinces than on the coast,
because it is there that the most opium is grown, and it is but reasonable
to infer that where opium is largely cultivated, especially in a country
like China, having no railroads, and few ordinary roads, there you will
find it to be most cheap and abundant, and therefore most consumed. Upon
this point I would refer to a most authoritative work by the late lamented
Captain Gill, R.E.,[6] whose barbarous murder the whole country deplored.
At page 235 of vol. ii. Captain Gill says:--
As we had such vague ideas of the distance before us we were anxious
to make an early start, but we were now in Yunnan, the province of
China in which there is more opium smoked than in any other, and in
which it is proportionately difficult to move the people in the
morning. There is a Chinese proverb to the effect that there is an
opium pipe in every house in the province of Kweichow, but one in
every room in Yunnan, which means that men and women smoke opium
universally.
That is the report of a man who was not only a sagacious and close
observer of all that he saw in his interesting journey, but who was wholly
impartial and disinterested on the subject of opium smoking. Sir Robert
Hart does not purport to give in this book correct returns of the quantity
of opium smoked or imported, much less of the quantity grown in China. The
replies of his subordinates at the different ports, many of them seven
hundred or a thousand miles apart, all concur in speaking of the great
difficulties they had in getting any figures at all. They are, therefore,
not to be taken as absolutely trustworthy, and Sir Robert candidly admits
that they are mere approximations. Before I had seen his book I had made a
calculation of the probable number of opium smokers in China, on the
assumption that the population of China proper was three hundred and sixty
millions, and that the custom was universal, limited only by the means of
procuring the drug; and I arrived at the conclusion that there were in
China three millions of habitual smokers, and about the same number of
occasional smokers. Mr. Lennox Simpson, Commissioner at Chefoo, in reply
to Sir Robert Hart's circular, says, at page 13 of the Yellow Book:
Much difficulty has been experienced in eliciting answers to the
various questions put to the native opium shops and others, all
viewing with suspicion any inquiries made, evidently fearing that some
prohibition is about to be put on the trade, or that their interests
are in some way to suffer. _Hence some of the figures given in the
return can scarcely be considered reliable, although every pains has
been taken to collect information._
These commissioners are all gentlemen of good standing and education, and
they have a great many subordinates under them, so that they possess means
of collecting information such as no foreigner, not engaged in the public
service of China, could possibly command. Mr. Francis W. White, the
Commissioner at Hankow, replied:
Owing to the entire absence of all reliable figures, the amount of
opium put down as produced within the province and within the empire
yearly, must be taken as approximate only. I have been careful to
collect information from various sources, and this has been as
carefully compared and verified as means will allow.
Mr. Holwell, the Commissioner at Kiukiang, wrote:
The total quantity of unprepared native opium, said to be produced
yearly in the province of Kiangsi, I find it next to impossible to
ascertain with any degree of certainty. Native testimony differs.
I will point out by-and-by the reason why these returns are so unreliable.
The most extraordinary of them all are the returns of Mr. E. B. Drew, the
Commissioner at Ningpo, and Mr. H. Edgar, the Commissioner at Ichang. The
former estimates the entire quantity of native opium grown and consumed in
China at two hundred and sixty-five thousand chests, the latter at only
twenty-five thousand--less than a tenth of Mr. Drew's estimate. In the
face of all these discrepancies, Sir Robert Hart takes an arbitrary
figure, and says, in effect, there is at least as much opium produced in
China itself as is imported into China. With the knowledge I have of the
Chinese and the opium trade generally, from the calculations I have made,
and by the light thrown upon the question by Sir Robert Hart's Yellow
Book, and the Reports of Messrs. Spence and Baber and others, I am induced
to come to the conclusion that two hundred and sixty-five thousand chests
is much nearer the mark than a hundred thousand chests.
The reason the Chinese opium dealers have been so reticent in affording
information to the Commissioners of Customs at these Treaty Ports is, that
they are afraid to do so, fearing if they gave correct information, they
might in so doing furnish to the Mandarins reasons for "squeezing" them,
or for placing taxes and other restrictions on their trade; for the
Government officials in China, from the highest to the lowest, are, as I
have before said, the most corrupt, cruel, and unscrupulous body of men
in the whole world. Mr. Storrs Turner has told us that the Chinese
Government is a paternal one, exercising a fatherly care of its people,
and always exhorting them to virtue. Nothing can be more fallacious than
this. Theoretically, there is much that is good in the system of
government in China, but practically it is quite the reverse. There is
little sympathy between the supreme Government and the great body of the
people. The Emperor, his family, and immediate suite, are all Tartars,
quite another race from the Chinese, differing totally in customs,
manners, dress, and social habits. The Governors or Viceroys are pretty
much absolute sovereigns within their own provinces. Each has under him a
host of officials, commonly known as Mandarins, who are generally the most
rapacious and corrupt of men; their salaries, in most cases, are purely
nominal, for they are expected to pay themselves, which they well
understand how to do. Their system of taxation is irregular and
incomplete, and the process of squeezing is openly followed all over the
country. There is nothing a Chinese dreads so much as disclosing his
pecuniary means, or, indeed, any information that might furnish a clue to
them. If he admitted that he cultivated fifty acres of opium, or bought a
hundred pikuls of opium in a year, his means and his profits could be
arrived at by a simple process of arithmetic, and although he might feel
sure that, so far as Sir Robert Hart and the foreign Commissioners under
him were concerned, no wrong need be apprehended, yet he is so distrustful
and suspicious, that he would fear lest the facts should reach the ears of
the higher Chinese officials through the native subordinates in the
Commissioners' Offices.
A Chinaman, therefore, will never tell the amount or value of his
property, or the profits he is making by his business. He fears being
plundered; that is the simple fact. I know a respectable man in Hong Kong,
the possessor of considerable house property there, a man who would be
called wealthy even in England. Some years ago, when at Canton, where he
had a house, a Mandarin suddenly arrested and put him into prison. What a
Chinese prison is you will find in Dr. Gray's book. It is not the place
where a paternal Government ought to house the worst of criminals, or even
a wild beast. The man had committed no crime, and had done nothing
whatever to warrant this treatment; in vain he asked what he had been
imprisoned for, and demanded to be confronted with his accusers, if there
were any. His gaolers shrugged their shoulders and gave him no answer. He
was kept there for two or three months. Ultimately he received a hint,
which he recognized as an official intimation, that unless he came down
handsomely, as the phrase is, and that speedily, he would lose his head.
He took the hint, made the best bargain he could, and ultimately had to
pay seventy thousand dollars, or about fourteen thousand pounds, for his
release. There never was any accusation brought against him.
I knew another man, living at Swatow, who had made a great deal of money
in trade. He bought a large piece of foreshore at that place, which he
reclaimed and turned into profitable land. A military Mandarin living
there thought him a fair object for a squeeze; the same process was gone
through as in the case I have before mentioned; but this man, not having
the same wisdom as the other, held fast to his dollars. The result was
that a false charge of kidnapping, alleged to have been committed twenty
years before, was brought against him, and he was taken out and beheaded.
That is the way money is raised by the governors and their subordinates in
China. So much for Mr. Turner's benign and paternal Government. There is
no regular Income Tax in China, but there is a Property Tax levied in the
way I have mentioned. The Chinese authorities will let a man go on making
money for many years, and when they think he has accumulated sufficient
wealth for their purpose, they pounce down upon him and demand as much as
they think they can extort. That is the reason the Chinese opium dealers
are so reticent when inquiries are made concerning opium. If the
Commissioners at the Treaty Ports had got fair returns, I have no doubt
that it is not a hundred thousand pikuls of native opium that Sir Robert
Hart would have estimated as the quantity of opium grown in China, but
probably four or five times that amount.
Here, again, I must quote from Mr. Spence's report. Nothing can possibly
show better the prevalence of opium smoking in the provinces of Szechuan
and Yunnan and Hupah, they being about equal in extent to France, Spain,
and Portugal. This is what he says on the prevalence of opium smoking in
those provinces:--
Before giving an estimate of the amount of opium produced in Szechuan,
I must refer, in explanation of the large figures I shall be obliged
to use, to the extraordinary prevalence of the habit of opium smoking
in Western Hupei, in Szechuan, and in Yunnan. It prevails to an extent
undreamt of in other parts of China. The Roman Catholic missionaries,
who are stationed all over Szechuan to the number of nearly one
hundred, and who, living amongst the people, have opportunities of
observation denied to travellers, estimate that one-tenth of the whole
male adult population of the province smoke opium. Mr. Parker, after
travelling all over the thickly-settled parts of the province,
estimates the proportion of smokers thus:--
Per cent.
Labourers and small farmers 10
Small shopkeepers 20
Hawkers, soldiers 30
Merchants, gentry 80
Officials and their staffs 90
Actors, prostitutes, thieves, vagabonds 95
I agree with Mr. Parker that the proportion of smokers varies in
different classes according to their means and leisure, but I feel
sure his estimate of the per-centage amongst the labouring classes is
much too low. One of the most numerous class of labourers in China is
the coolie class, day labourers who live by picking up odd jobs,
turning their hands to any kind of unskilled work that may be offered.
Certainly more than half of them smoke. Of the labouring classes who
are not "coolies," as a whole this much may be said--they only have
money at stated intervals; and when out of a gang of forty or fifty
workmen or sailors only four or five smoke opium, it does not mean
that only ten per cent. are smokers. In all probability half of the
whole gang squandered their wages the day they got the money, and have
nothing left to buy opium or anything else until the job or voyage for
which they have been engaged is finished.
For example, of my junk crew on my voyage to Chungking, only four
smoked opium regularly, but seven others who had spent all their wages
before we started smoked whenever I gave them a few cash. The total
abstinence of a British sailor at sea for months on end proves
nothing; it is what he will do when he has ten pounds in his pocket,
and is in a street with fifteen public-houses, that decides his
sobriety. So of workmen in the west of China, a large number smoke
opium when they have money, and do the best they can when they have
none. Whatever be the exact per-centage of the opium smokers in
Szechuan in the whole population, it is many times larger than in the
east.
Now, after all this absolutely irrefutable testimony, many might think it
unnecessary to go further. They little know, however, how strong a hold
fanaticism takes of the human mind; they little think how difficult it is
to eradicate a fascinating LIE from the mind, once its glittering
meretricious form has got hold of it and supplanted wholesome truth. I
have, therefore, to deal not only with those whose minds are as a sheet of
white paper, but with those in whom the fallacious seeds that beget error
and fanaticism have been sown and taken firm root. I will now give you an
extract from Sir Rutherford Alcock's paper, which is deserving of careful
study:--
I may say here, that although most of the staple arguments and
misleading opinions on opium and its disastrous effects come from the
missionaries in China, whose good faith I do not question, there is no
stronger protest against exaggerated and sensational statements on
record than has been supplied by one of their number, the late Dr.
Medhurst, of whom it has been truly said, he was "one of the most
able, experienced, zealous missionaries in China." Opposed in
principle to the opium trade in all its aspects, his statements will
be readily accepted as unimpeachable evidence. The following remark
appears in an official paper, forwarded to the Chief Superintendent of
Trade of Hong Kong in 1855. Alluding to a speech of an American
missionary who had visited England, and was reported to have told the
British public "that the smokers of the contraband article have
increased from eight to fifteen millions, yielding an annual death
harvest of more than a million," and further characterizing the
traffic as "staining the British name in China with the deepest
disgrace," Dr. Medhurst observes, "_such statements do great harm;
they produce a fictitious and groundless excitement in the minds of
the religious and philanthropic public at home, while they steel
against all reasonable and moderate representations the minds of the
political and mercantile body abroad. The estimate given has not even
the semblance of truth; it is an outrageous exaggeration._" And yet in
a memorial presented to Lord Clarendon by two distinguished and justly
respected noblemen, the Earls of Shaftesbury and Chichester, on the
extent of the opium trade in 1855, these, and still more "outrageous
exaggerations" appear with the authority of their names. Lord
Shaftesbury officializes the estimate that twenty millions of Chinese
are opium smokers, and assumes that of this number one-tenth, that is,
two millions, die yearly, and states it as "an appalling fact."
Appalling, indeed! But what if it be a mere figment of the
imagination, and absolutely devoid, as Dr. Medhurst says, of a
semblance of truth?
This is the way the benevolent British public have been cajoled and misled
for the last twenty years, or more, by opium-phobists. No wonder that the
Anti-Opium Society can raise fifty thousand pounds so easily, for the
British public is a benevolent one, and will subscribe its gold readily
where what they believe a proper object presents itself. Sad, indeed it
is, that in the present case its munificence represents, not merely so
much money lost, but vast sums recklessly squandered in a mischievous
agitation, that whilst it tends to sap and ruin one of the loveliest of
all virtues--that charity that endureth long and is kind--paralyses
missionary labour, prejudices the trade and revenue of our great Indian
Empire, and defames our country in the eyes of the whole world. Sad, sad
also to see that venerated nobleman, Lord Shaftesbury, after his long and
honourable career, and so many other good and eminent men, made the
victims of such miserable delusions.
I think it is now clear, both from the testimony I have adduced, and from
Mr. Turner's own admission, that the poppy is not only indigenous to
China, but that it has been cultivated there from time immemorial, and
that opium is smoked generally throughout China, the only limit to its use
being the means of procuring the drug.