The most extraordinary of the advocates of the opium trade is the Earl
of Shaftesbury, President of the Committee organized in London for the
suppression of the traffic. I have not the slightest doubt as to the
_bona fides_ and excellent heart of the noble lord. There is something
grand and generous in entering the lists for the welfare and
protection of a distant and foreign nation, and manfully fighting for
it against the interests of one's own country and one's native land. I
sincerely admire men of such mettle and the country which can produce
them, but I regret that Lord Shaftesbury did not act with greater
caution, and that before entering upon this question he had not
studied it more carefully; especially do I regret that he did not
adopt a more moderate and dignified tone in the expression of his
opinions. Had he done so, he would have saved himself from the
reproach of having lent his name and sanction to a document disfigured
by statistical errors, some of which are opposed to common sense, and
also of having given gratuitous and undeserved insults to others who
differed from his opinions.
He argues in his statement to the Queen's Government that opium
smoking annually kills two millions of people in China. How is it
possible that the noble Earl could for a moment imagine that every
year so many human beings voluntarily commit suicide! Two millions of
adults who destroy themselves to enjoy a pleasure! Does it not strike
His Lordship how absurd is such an antithesis as pleasure and death?
Can he believe that human nature in China is different to what it is
in Europe? Is it logical to give publicity to such strange assertions
without adducing the slightest proofs. If we inquire into the
accusations brought forward against the merchants and growers of
opium, we find the same discrepancy and the same injustice. It is a
mistake to imagine that the English alone trade in opium, for all
foreigners alike, especially the Americans, introduce and sell it.
Lord Shaftesbury, in speaking of the value of the opium imported into
China, says that the merchants "rob" the Chinese. I scarcely know
which is the funnier, the idea expressed by the noble Earl, or the way
in which he expresses it. I can assure His Lordship that amongst the
merchants who make opium their business there are men of the highest
integrity, perfect and most accomplished gentlemen, who not only are
incapable of "stealing" anything, but who are equal to any living men
in noble sentiments, justice, and practical benevolence; I need only
mention one man, and do so because he is not now living. I refer to
the late Mr. Launcelot Dent, who, during a most trying and critical
time when this question first arose, was considered one of the most
interested men in the opium trade.... Everyone who has been in China
knows the generosity and the charity for which Mr. Launcelot Dent was
renowned. Having on one occasion travelled from India to Europe with
him, I saw many of his good deeds, but will only mention one, so as
not to wander too far from my subject. A Catholic missionary was
amongst the steerage passengers; Mr. Dent having seen this, without
saying a word to any person on the subject, took a berth for him in
the first cabin and paid the difference, begging me to ask him to take
possession. The missionary expressed much gratitude, but said that as
he had not a sufficient change of linen he would not feel at home in
the state room, especially as there were lady passengers. Mr. Dent
understood the difficulty, and having casually heard that the
clergymen intended to proceed to Jerusalem, begged of him to accept
the sum which the saloon cabin would have cost,[11] which the poor
missionary accepted with heartfelt thanks.
I should like to know what Mr. Storrs Turner thinks of that. He objects to
British testimony, except when it coincides with his own views. There is
the evidence of a Spanish nobleman, a scholar, a traveller, and an
accomplished diplomatist, for him! I am afraid he will find the foreign
testimony quite as unpalatable as the home article. This Mr. Launcelot
Dent, by the way, was a member of the eminent firm of Dent and Co.--since
dissolved--which, Mr. Turner says, in his article in the _Nineteenth
Century_, were "legally smugglers."
The next fallacy, number seven, is _that the Chinese Government is, or
ever was, anxious to put a stop to or check the use of opium amongst the
people of China_. That is one of the accepted propositions or dogmas of
the Anti-Opium people. There is another fallacy, number ten, which I will
dispose of at the same time. It is _that the opposition of the Chinese
officials to the introduction of opium into China arose from moral
causes_. There never was anything more fallacious or more distinctly
untrue than that the Chinese Government is, or ever was, anxious to put a
stop to the trade upon moral grounds. The sole object of the Government of
China in objecting to the importation of Indian opium into the country, as
I have stated already, and as everybody except the infatuated votaries of
the Anti-Opium Society believes, was to protect the native drug, to
prevent bullion from leaving the country, and generally to exclude foreign
goods. This Don Sinibaldo de Mas points out in his book written some five
and twenty years ago.
If the Chinese Government really wanted to put a stop to or check the use
of opium, they would begin by doing so themselves. They would first stop
the cultivation of the poppy in their own country. We have it on the high
authority of Sir Robert Hart, that the drug was grown and used in China
long before foreigners introduced any there. The Chinese are emphatically
a law-abiding people, and if the Chinese Government really wished to put a
stop to the opium culture, they could do so without any difficulty, just
as our Government has put down tobacco culture in the United Kingdom. I
suppose that in Cornwall and Devon, and in some parts of Ireland--the
golden vein, for instance--tobacco could be grown most profitably. It
could be cultivated also in the Isle of Wight, and in many other parts of
the country. Why, then, is it not grown here? Simply because it is illegal
to do so, and the Government is strong enough to enforce the law. If a
farmer in Ireland or in England were to sow tobacco, the fact would be
soon discovered, and it would be summarily stopped. The same thing could
be done with even greater facility in China. Why, then, does not the
Government of China suppress the cultivation of the poppy there? Simply
because it does not desire to do so, because it derives a large revenue
from opium, both native and foreign, and because the smoking of the drug
is an ancient custom amongst the people, known by long experience to be
harmless, if not beneficial. If it were possible to put down opium smoking
in China, the people would assuredly resort to sam-shu, already so
abundant and cheap, and that would indeed cause China's decadence: for
then we should have the working classes there indulging in spirits, when
the quarrellings, outrages, and kicking of wives to death--which Mr.
Turner admits are never the result of opium smoking--would ensue. I only
wish we could turn our drunkards into opium smokers. If the change would
only save those wretched wives and their helpless children from
ill-treatment by their husbands and fathers, we should have secured one
valuable end. No Government will attempt to interfere with the fixed
habits of the people, especially where those habits have existed many
centuries, if not thousands of years, and where they are known to be not
injurious to themselves or the safety and stability of the State, and to
be, in fact, harmless. We have it from Sir Robert Hart's book, that as far
as can be ascertained, the probability is that there is about the same
quantity of the drug grown in China as is imported into it. That is
admittedly a mere approximation, and Sir Robert Hart gives no data for it,
save the returns of his Sub-Commissioners, each of which differs from the
other, and which he admits are not reliable. The information upon which
these Commissioners made up their returns is simply the gossip collected
by them at the Treaty Ports of China: no doubt the best, and, indeed, the
only, information which they could procure. But with the light thrown upon
the subject by Messrs. Baber and Spence, and numerous other independent
authorities, no one can doubt that there is at least three times the
quantity produced in China that is imported from abroad.
Both the Customs and Consular reports on trade in China for the year 1880
as well as 1881 bear testimony to the ever-increasing production of opium
in the northern and western provinces of China, and missionaries and
others who have recently made journeys in the interior report the poppy
crops to be much larger than before the Imperial decree purporting to
prohibit its cultivation. The report of the Customs' Assistant-in-charge
at Ichang for 1880 shows that the average annual import of the Indian drug
at that port does not exceed ten pikuls, while the native production in
the Ichang Prefecture is estimated to be over one thousand pikuls per
annum. Mr. W. Donald Spence, in his report on trade for 1880, gives an
estimate of the total crop of opium raised in Western China in 1880, which
is as follows:--Western Hupeh, two thousand pikuls; Eastern Szechuan,
forty-five thousand pikuls; Yunnan, forty-thousand pikuls; and Kweichow,
ten thousand pikuls; giving a total of ninety-seven thousand pikuls--as
much, in fact, for these districts as the whole amount of Indian opium
imported into China for that year. What his report for 1881 is I have
already shown you. This, it must be borne in mind, is the production of
Western China only. In Shantung, Chihli, the inland provinces, and
Manchuria it is extensively grown, and in all the other provinces smaller
quantities of the drug are produced. That nothing is being done to check
this widespread cultivation of the poppy is notorious. Messrs. Soltan and
Stevenson, who passed through Yunnan last year on their way from Bhamo to
Chingkiang, described the country as resembling "a sea of poppy"; and Mr.
Spence tells us that in 1880 and 1881 a greater breadth of land was sown
with poppies in Western Hupeh than in the previous years. In Manchuria,
which is a large territory forming part of the empire to the north-east of
China, and in the northern provinces of China proper, there was also a
general increase in the area under poppy cultivation. No efforts, in fact,
are being made to stop it. On this subject Mr. Spence, in his report for
1880, remarks:--
In Western Hupeh there has been no interference with opium farmers or
opium cultivation by the officials, nor, as far as I have been able to
ascertain, by any of the authorities of the provinces named in this
report. In Yunnan it receives direct official encouragement, and in
all the cultivation is free. Its production is regarded as a fertile
source of revenue to the exchequer, of pelf to officials and
smugglers, of profit to farmers and merchants, and of pleasure to all.
Nearly everybody smokes, and nearly everybody smuggles it about the
country when he can; and in this matter there is no difference between
rich and poor, lettered and unlettered, governing and governed.
After this testimony, which is corroborated in the strongest manner by
many other and equally disinterested persons, who can pretend to say that
the Chinese Government has any real desire to put down the poppy
cultivation?
Let us now see what Don Sinibaldo de Mas has to say upon this point.
Having gone into the history of the Indo-Chinese opium trade, and shown
that the sole object of the Chinese Government in objecting to that trade
was to prevent bullion from leaving the country, he says:--
It is totally wrong to suppose that the Mandarins are anxious to
prevent the introduction of opium into the country. Many of these
Mandarins smoke it; most of them, if not all, accept presents and
close their eyes at opium smuggling. With the exception of the famous
Lin-tsi-su and a few others who reside at Court, all the others, and I
think even Ki-Ying himself, have profited by this illegal traffic. Sir
I. F. Davis when in China as Minister Plenipotentiary frequently
called Ki-Ying's attention to the smuggling that was being carried on
under the connivance and encouragement of rural officials.
I referred in my last lecture to a valuable paper read by Sir Rutherford
Alcock at a recent meeting of the Society of Arts. Everybody knows this
gentleman's abilities and his high character, which afford the most
perfect assurance that he would be incapable of asserting anything that he
did not know from his own experience, or from unquestionable sources, to
be true. He speaks also with authority. He may be taken to be, therefore,
a perfectly unbiassed witness. He has no personal interest in the
question, and there is no reason why he should state anything but what is
perfectly accurate. He says, in the paper I have mentioned:--
Whatever may have been the motive or true cause, about which there
hangs considerable doubt, it is certain that neither in the first
edicts of 1793-6, nor as late as 1832-4, when several Imperial edicts
were issued against the introduction of opium from abroad, no
reference whatever is made to the _moral ground_ of prohibition, so
ostentatiously paraded in later issues, and notably in Li Hung Chang's
letter to the Anglo-Opium Society last July. The reasons exclusively
put forward in the first of these edicts (in 1793) were that "It
wasted the time and property of the people of the Inner Land, leading
them to exchange their silver and commodities for the vile dirt of the
foreigner." And as late as 1836, when memorials were presented to the
Emperor, showing the connection of the opium trade with the
exportation of sycee, they generally regarded the question in a
political and financial character, rather than a moral light; and
certainly, in several edicts issued between 1836 and 1839, when Lin
made his grand _coup_, there is little, if any, reference to the evils
of opium smoking, but very clear language as to the exportation of
bullion. When we reflect that this "vile dirt," as I will presently
show, was being extensively cultivated in the provinces of China, and
largely consumed by his own subjects, we may be permitted to question
whether the balance of trade turned by the large importation of opium,
and the leakage of the sycee silver, so emphatically and angrily
pointed to in after years, was not the leading motive for the
prohibition of the foreign drug. We have it on authority, that "From
the commencement of the commercial intercourse down to 1828-29 the
balance of trade had always been in favour of the Chinese, and great
quantities of bullion accumulated in China. Since that date the
balance of trade had been in the opposite direction, and bullion began
to flow out of China. As silver became more scarce, it naturally rose
in value, and the copper currency of the realm (and the only one),
already depreciated by means of over-issues and mixture of foreign
coin of an inferior standard, appeared to suffer depreciation when
compared with its nominal equivalent in sycee; and the effects of this
change fell heavily upon a large and important class of Government
officers, and ultimately upon the revenue itself. Memorials were
presented to the Emperor on the subject, and the export of sycee was
prohibited."
How, after that, it can be said for a moment that the Chinese Government
was actuated by moral considerations, or was really anxious to put down
opium smoking or opium culture, I cannot conceive. The truth is, and it is
so palpable that it really seems to me to require no advocacy whatever,
that the Government, as Sir Rutherford Alcock and Don Sinibaldo so
strongly put it, does not like to see so much bullion leaving the country.
Now, Sir Rutherford Alcock, unlike the missionaries and the agents of the
Anti-Opium Society, has acquired his knowledge of opium and the opium
trade in the regular course of his ordinary duties, and has necessarily,
therefore, acquired an authentic knowledge of the subject. His testimony,
like that of Messrs. Spence, Baber, and a host of other unimpeachable
witnesses, comes under the head of the "best evidence." But it is said of
Sir Rutherford by the agents of the Anti-Opium Society, with the view of
discrediting his testimony, that he has changed his opinions; that
formerly he was opposed to the trade which he now defends. I do not
believe there is any solid truth in this assertion; but if there is, what
does the fact prove? Why, simply nothing at all. Show me the public man
who during the past forty or fifty years has not altered or modified his
opinions more or less. Sir Robert Peel, one of the greatest of modern
statesmen, when he was past sixty years of age, changed the opinions he
had held all his life upon free trade. Was he right or wrong in doing so?
If Sir Rutherford Alcock had at an earlier period of his life held
different opinions to those he now holds on the Indo-Chinese opium trade,
it is not unreasonable that on a closer study of the subject, and by the
strong light that has been thrown upon it within the past ten or fifteen
years, he should have modified or even altogether changed his opinions.
This is, again, another instance of the desperate efforts of the
Anti-Opium advocates to hold their ground and maintain their unfounded and
untenable theories.
The Government of China have always been protectionists in the strictest
sense of the term. Their idea has been that China can support itself; that
the people can provide themselves with everything they want, and need
nothing from abroad. They will sell the foreigner as much of their produce
as he wishes to buy, and cheerfully take his gold in exchange, but they
will not buy from him if they can help doing so. This is the real end they
are aiming at; but they would not be at all so persistent, or put their
case so much forward as they do, were it not for the attitude taken up by
the missionaries and that most mischievous, intermeddling, un-English
confederacy the Anti-Opium Society, as revealed to them by _The Friend of
China_. The Government of China have in their employment Chinese clerks
and interpreters who are excellent English scholars. These men explain
everything about the objects of the Anti-Opium Society, and, whilst the
Mandarins laugh at the absurdities put forward by that association, they
are still quite ready to accept the Society as their ally. Hence Li Hung
Chang's letter to Mr. Storrs Turner, mentioned in Sir Rutherford Alcock's
paper; one would almost fancy that this letter had been written for Li by
Mr. Storrs Turner himself. No one knew better than Li Hung Chang that this
letter was one tissue of hypocrisy and mendacity. But, stay, there is one
part of it that is certainly true. Li says to Mr. Turner: "_Your Society
has long been known to me and many of my countrymen_." There can be no
doubt of the fact. Whilst despising Mr. Storrs Turner and his Society, and
cordially hating him and his fellow missionaries, Li Hung Chang and his
friends play into their hands and humour them in this matter to the top of
their bent. Their real object is to get rid of the Indian opium if they
can; or, if they cannot, to have a higher duty fixed upon it, so as to
reduce its supply; or, at all events, to augment their own revenues by the
higher duty. As matters stand at present, the Chinese Government obtains a
net revenue of over two million pounds sterling from the Indian drug, and
they derive, perhaps, half that amount from the duty on the home-grown
article. They have revenue cruisers constantly watching to put down opium
smuggling, and they adopt other rigid steps to prevent the practice; but
it is still carried on to a considerable extent, not by Englishmen or
other foreigners, mark you, but by their own countrymen. Very great
misconception, I may here say, prevails upon this point artfully spread
abroad by agents here of the Anti-Opium Society, but I shall sweep this
away before I close. The Chinese Government is quite willing to perpetuate
the Indo-China opium trade if it can only get the duty raised to suit its
purpose. Therein lies their whole object. Mr. Turner speaks about the
paternal character of the Chinese Government. In the _Peking
Gazette_--which is in some respects analogous to the _London
Gazette_--Imperial decrees are from time to time published. Amongst
others, there will appear proclamations addressed to the people, warning
them to abstain from this and that evil practice. But they have not the
least effect, nor is it expected that they will have effect. They are mere
shams, and are not heeded; yet they please the people. These proclamations
or injunctions are never seriously intended, and Mr. Turner knows this
perfectly well. Dr. Wells Williams mentions in his book that two thousand
years before Christ the manufacture of spirits was forbidden in China; yet
the trade still flourishes there. Spirits are still drunk in moderation
throughout China, just as opium is smoked.
Sir R. Hart says that "Native opium was known, produced, and used long
before any Europeans began the sale of the foreign drug along the coast."
Mr. Watters, one of Her Majesty's Consuls in China, states that the poppy
is largely cultivated throughout Western China; Mr. Colborne Baber, who
has travelled through nearly the whole of China, not only confirms Mr.
Watters' statement, but says that from his own experience one-third of the
province of Yunnan is under opium culture. Mr. W. Donald Spence and a host
of others thoroughly well informed upon the question also give the
strongest corroborative testimony. Now, in the face of the statements of
such witnesses as these, can you credit for a moment Mr. Storrs Turner
when he says--believing only what he wishes to be true, but having no data
whatever for his statements--that it is only recently that opium has been
cultivated in China? Of all the existing nations of Asia, the only one
that can now be described as civilized is China; and this is the country
where Mr. Turner, because it suits his purpose, tells us that this
invaluable drug has been only _recently_ known.
China may be said to be the garden of Asia. Opium has been grown
throughout the fertile plains of that immense continent for thousands of
years, and is it likely that the oldest and most civilized of all Asiatic
nations would be the last to introduce into their country the culture of
that drug to whose curative properties Mr. Storrs Turner bears such strong
testimony in the opening chapter of his book? The only reason that
gentleman could have had for making such a statement is simply, as I have
already intimated, to induce his readers to believe that the Chinese would
not have cultivated the drug, nor have used it for smoking, were it not
for the importation of Indian opium into China. Upon this part of my
subject, I may mention that a book has been written by a very learned man,
Dr. W. A. P. Martin, President of the Tungwen College at Peking, who shows
that China was the cradle of Alchemy, which was known there five hundred
years before it was ever heard of in Europe. Are these a people likely to
be ignorant of this indispensable medicine, as Mr. Turner characterizes
it, or to neglect its cultivation throughout their fertile country? I may
add that all, or nearly all, the medicines of the British Pharmacopoeia,
and a great many more also, have been known to the Chinese for hundreds,
if not thousands, of years.
The eighth fallacy is, _that the British merchants in China are making
large fortunes by opium_. I have already, I think, pretty well disposed of
this, and I need not say much more upon the subject now. One of the great
points of the Anti-Opium Society and its supporters seems to be that the
British merchants are birds of prey, a set of rapacious and ravenous
creatures, without the feelings of humanity in their breasts, who have
gone out to China to make princely fortunes, after the manner of that
apochryphal youth who, on his departure from the paternal roof, is said to
have received this admonition from his canny sire, "Mak money, ma
boy--honestly if you can--but mak money"; that thus animated the British
merchant arrives in China like a hawk amid a flock of pigeons, and helps
himself to one of those princely acquisitions, which, to Mr. Storrs
Turner, seem to be as plentiful as blackberries in the flowery land, and
who, after having helped to demoralise and ruin the nation, gracefully
returns home to enjoy his ill-gotten gains. The best answer to this is the
amicable relations that now exist and have always existed between the
natives and these merchants. The British merchants, as a body, have no
interest in the opium trade; nor are any of them engaged in smuggling or
in any practices detrimental to the natives of China. In point of
education, thorough mercantile knowledge, strict integrity, and sound
practical Christianity, these gentlemen are second to no other body of men
in the British Empire.
Another fallacy, or false assumption, number nine, which the advocates of
the Anti-Opium Society are fond of propagating, and which is as fully
believed in by themselves as by their deluded followers, is--_that the
discontinuance of the supply of opium from India would stop or check the
practice of opium smoking_. They fully believe that if they could only
succeed in suppressing the Indo-China opium trade they would deal such a
death-blow to this ancient custom, which prevails more or less over the
eighteen provinces of the Chinese empire, that we should in a very short
time hear of there being no opium smoking at all in China! That is as
great a delusion as was ever indulged in. Imagine a person saying that if
we ceased to ship beer, stout, and whiskey to Denmark, France, or Italy,
we should check the consumption of brandy or other alcoholic liquors
throughout Europe, and you have a pretty fair parallel to this assumption.
Suppose it were possible to stop the supply of opium from British India,
and that such stoppage had in fact taken place, the result would be that
the Chinese would increase the cultivation of the poppy in their own
country still more than they have already done, and the Indian drug known
as "Malwa opium" would still continue to be imported into China, for the
British Government, even if desirous to do so, could not prohibit its
manufacture and exportation. The Portuguese, who were the first to import
Indian opium into China, would cultivate the drug, not only in their
Indian possession of Goa, but in Africa, where they have colonies.
Further, they would encourage its increased cultivation in the native
states of India, which produce the Malwa opium, and which, as I have just
said, we could not prevent. A great stimulus would also be given to the
cultivation of Persian opium. Hear, how I am borne out by Don Sinibaldo de
Mas, an authentic and thoroughly impartial witness. This is what he says,
in his very valuable book:--
It is another fallacy to say that if the East India Company were to
prohibit the cultivation of opium in her territories that the article
would disappear from China altogether. The poppy grows freely between
the equator and latitudes 30° to 40°; it is produced in large
quantities in Java, the Phillipines, Borneo, Egypt, and other places,
as well as in China itself, where for many years past some thousands
of chests are annually produced. It may be that the opium grown at
Java has perhaps a different taste from that grown at Malwa and
Benares, and may seem to be of inferior quality, but the consumers
would soon become accustomed to that, and would probably prefer the
former to the latter. Persons who are in the habit of smoking Havanna
dislike Manilla cigars, and those who generally smoke Manillas prefer
them to Havannas. At present opium is not exported from other
countries because Indian Opium is so cheap.
What, then, may I ask, is the reproach constantly hurled at the East
India Company? That it derives an annual income by the culture of
opium of at least three millions of pounds sterling. Should the
Company prohibit the culture of the drug in order to allow other
nations to derive the emoluments arising from it? I who have travelled
in both upper and lower India, and know something of the country, am
persuaded that the people there are already over-taxed, and to demand
from them a substituted tax for those three millions would be a very
serious matter indeed. And for whom pray would this sacrifice be made?
To reduce the quantity of opium smoked in China? Most assuredly not;
for the Chinese would still smoke just as much. This sacrifice on the
part of England would only benefit those countries which would take up
the cultivation of opium in order to supply the Chinese markets from
which the Indian drug had been withdrawn. And what fault can be found
with the merchants? Is it not the Chinese who ask for opium, and who
buy it of their own free will, although not a single foreigner, either
by example or precept, encourages them to do so. Is it not the Chinese
who go out of their ports to the "Receiving Ships" to fetch it? Is the
Chinese nation composed of children, or of savages who do not know
right from wrong? Ought, for instance, the Queen of England to
undertake to redress Chinese habits, or let us say vices, and to
reform her Custom-house administration by watching the Chinese Coast?
By what right could the English Government or any other Government do
such things? If that is not what is wished, what is? Against whom and
against what is all this outcry?
It is said that the receiving ships are anchored at the mouth of
rivers, that British war-ships anchor alongside of them, and that the
consuls know this. That is quite true. The consuls admit all this--in
fact, they often send their despatches by these very opium ships to
Hong Kong. How many times has it happened that the consuls have had
discussions with the Chinese governors respecting these receiving
ships? They say, "We do not protect these ships; why do you not drive
them away?" All this, I repeat, is notorious, and it is to be
regretted that it is so; because, under proper legal authorisation,
opium might be introduced into the Chinese Empire with such great
advantage to the Imperial treasury....
It cannot be expected that the English Government through its naval
commanders should prevent its subjects from carrying on a remunerative
commerce, whilst Americans, Dutchmen, Danes, Swedes, and Portuguese
would continue to carry on the trade with increased profit through the
withdrawal of the English.
Were the supply of opium from British India discontinued we should have a
class of merchants who would form syndicates to buy up all the opium that
could be found, and Macao would become the great depôt for Persian,
Javanese, and Malwa opium for the China market, so that we should have
probably four times the quantity of the foreign drug shipped to China that
is now imported into that country, and thus the alleged evils of opium
smoking in China would be intensified. By a stupid though well-meaning
policy, that ultimate demoralisation, degradation, and ruin which the
Anti-Opium Society allege is now being wrought upon the natives of China
by the existing Indo-China opium trade would be enormously accelerated,
whilst England and English missionaries would only earn the contempt of
the Chinese nation and the ridicule of the whole world. I have shown you
that the Government of China is not sincere in its professed desire to put
down opium smoking; for if it was we should never have had the poppy grown
so extensively as it is at present all over the empire. The evidence of
Sir Robert Hart alone upon this point puts the matter beyond the question
of a doubt. How, in the face of that gentleman's book, this Anti-Opium
agitation can continue I really cannot understand. He is an officer of the
Chinese Government, and he would be the last man to publish anything
damaging to the Government or people of China. Here have these Anti-Opium
agitators been forty years in the wilderness without making any progress,
but only getting deeper into the quagmire of error and delusion. Even now,
although defeated at all points, they persist, as I shall show by and by,
in obstructing public business in the House of Commons by again
ventilating their unfounded theories.
As matters stand, this book of Sir Robert Hart's must show to every
impartial mind that the teaching of the Anti-Opium Society, from its
formation to the present time, has been fallacious, misleading, and
mischievous. Yet, in the face of this most damaging official Yellow-Book,
we are still calmly and seriously told from many platforms, by dignitaries
of the highest position in the Church, and by clergymen of all
denominations, that we are demoralising and ruining the whole nation,
because we send the Chinese a comparatively small quantity of pure and
unadulterated opium, which is beneficial rather than injurious to them.
But what does Sir Robert Hart, with all his official information, say?
That all this opium, amounting to about six thousand tons annually, is
consumed in moderation by one million of smokers, or one-third of one per
cent. of the whole population of China, estimating the number of people at
three hundred millions only.
The missionaries and the Anti-Opium Society, in the face of facts which
directly contradict them, say that the Chinese Government has a horror of
opium; but they never tell us that that Government has a horror of
themselves. What was the celebrated saying of Prince Kung to the British
Ambassador? "Take away your opium and your missionaries," said he. Now the
Chinese Government does not hate opium; it derives a very large revenue
from the drug at present, and it is only anxious to increase the amount. I
have very little doubt that Prince Kung, and all the other Imperial
magnates, including Li Hung Chang, that strictest of moralists, revel in
the very Indian drug they affect so to abhor. But they do detest the
missionaries most cordially; so do the whole educated people of the
empire, and so do Chinamen generally. None know this better than the
missionaries themselves. That disgraceful book, written by a Mandarin,
called "A Death-blow to Corrupt Practices," which was, by the aid of his
brother Mandarins, extensively circulated throughout China, but too
plainly proves the fact. That infamous volume was aimed at the whole
missionary body in China, Roman Catholic as well as Protestant; it
attributed the foulest crimes, the most disgraceful and disgusting
practices to the missionaries. It was, in fact, the precursor of the
fearful Tientsin massacre; yet the missionaries tell us that if we will
only discontinue the Indo-China opium trade the millennium will arrive. I
may here observe that if opium was the terrible thing, and was productive
of so much misery to its votaries, as the Protestant missionaries and the
Anti-Opium Society would have us believe, it seems strange that no mention
of opium or opium smoking appears in this book. If half the outcry raised
against the Indo-Chinese opium trade were true, here was an excellent
opportunity for the writer to have inveighed against the wickedness of
foreigners in introducing the horrible drug into the country. If the
Gospel is objected to because of this Indian opium, what a fine occasion
for the author to have enlarged upon the iniquity. If the Chinese mind
had been in any way impressed with the evils proceeding from opium
smoking, can it be supposed for a moment that the author of this book, an
educated Mandarin--one of the _literati_, in fact--would have omitted the
opportunity of denouncing the missionaries and foreigners generally for
introducing the terrible drug into the country and making profit by the
vices and misery of the Chinese people? Does not the entire omission of
opium from this book prove most eloquently that there is no real truth in
the outcry raised by these missionaries against the opium trade? The real
fact, believe me, is this, the Chinese dislike and distrust the
missionaries not because opium is an evil but because they hate and
despise Christianity. From the Anti-Opium Society one never hears anything
about the removal of the missionaries; it is all "take away your opium." I
am perfectly sure that, if we agreed to exclude our missionaries from
China, the Government of that country would unhesitatingly admit Indian
opium into the country duty free. No greater proof can be adduced of this
than the zeal and persistency with which the Chinese Government recently
and successfully prosecuted the celebrated Wu Shi Shan case, which was in
the nature of an action of ejectment against a Protestant missionary body
at Foochow. The late Mr. French, the Judge of Her Majesty's Supreme Court
for China and Japan, tried the case, the hearing of which occupied nearly
two months. It cost the Chinese Government about one hundred thousand
dollars, or twenty thousand pounds; they were well satisfied with the
result, although the land they recovered was not worth a tenth of the
money.
It is declared by Mr. Turner and the other advocates of the Anti-Opium
Society that we have treated the Chinese with great harshness; that we
have extorted the Treaty of Tientsin from them, and bullied them into
legalizing the admission of opium into the empire; that we began by
smuggling opium into China, and ended by quarrelling with the Chinese. It
must not be forgotten, on the other hand, how the Chinese have treated us.
For more than a century before we introduced opium into China, and began,
as it is said, to quarrel with the Chinese, we had been buying their teas
and silks, and paying for them in hard cash. During all that time we were
treated by the Mandarins with the greatest indignity. Our representatives
and our people were insulted, often maltreated, and sometimes murdered. As
to opium smuggling, about which so much is sought to be made by the
Anti-Opium people, there is one point that the writers and speakers upon
the subject seem to have forgotten. In the first place, I think I will
show you that smuggling, in the proper sense of the term, has never, in
fact, been carried on in China by Englishmen--or, indeed, by other
foreigners--at all. But even admitting, for argument's sake, that
smuggling in its ordinary acceptation did, in fact, exist, how does the
matter stand? It has been for centuries the recognized international law
of the civilized world that one nation is not bound to take cognizance of
the revenue laws of another. This principle has been carried out in past
times with the greatest strictness. For instance, there was once a very
large contraband trade done between England and France. When brandy was
heavily taxed, and when it was thought more of than it is now, smuggling
it into England was a very profitable business. It was the same as regards
silks, lace, and a great many other articles before free trade became the
law of this country. Our Government knew this very well, but they never
dreamt for a moment of sending a remonstrance to the French Government
upon the subject. Had they done so, the latter would probably have
replied: "We cannot prevent our people from doing this. We give them no
encouragement whatever. We have enough to do to prevent your people from
smuggling English goods into our country, and you must do your best on
your side to prevent our subjects from introducing French goods into
yours." For I suppose our people, carrying out the principle of
reciprocity, had some contraband dealings with French contrabandists on
their own account. That was the law for centuries, and it is so still.
But of late years what is called "the comity of nations" has become more
understood, and there is a better spirit spreading between different
states on this subject, although, as I have said, the law is still the
same. If our Government knew that there was now an organized system of
smuggling carried on here with France, they would, I dare say, try to put
a stop to the practice, and would, at the least, give such information to
the Government of France as would put their revenue officers on their
guard, and I am sure that the French Government would act in the same way
towards us. That would be due to the better feeling that has arisen
between the two countries within the last forty years. The moment,
therefore, it was found that there was a considerable demand in China for
Indian opium, British and other vessels brought the article to China; and
there can be no doubt that they met with great encouragement from the
Chinese officials, but they got no assistance from us. The opium shippers
carried on the trade at their own risk. All this has been very clearly
shown by Don Sinibaldo de Mas. There was no actual smuggling on the part
of the owners of these vessels. The Chinese openly came on board and
bought and took away the opium, "squaring" matters, so to speak, with the
Mandarins. These so-called smugglers belonged to all nationalities. There
were Americans, Portuguese, and Germans, as well as English, engaged in
it. According to the international law of European countries, the Chinese
Government ought, under the circumstances, to have had a proper preventive
service, and so put down the smuggling. But, instead of this, the practice
was openly encouraged by the Chinese officials, some of them Mandarins of
high position.
Now and then an explosion would occur; angry remonstrances would be
addressed to the British Government, and bad feeling between the two
nations would be engendered, the Chinese all along treating us as
barbarians, using the most insulting language towards us, and subjecting
our people, whenever opportunity offered, to the greatest indignities. The
missionaries have ignored all this. They appear to have satisfied
themselves so completely that we forced this trade upon the Chinese that
they have lost sight both of fact and reason. The very existence of an
opium-smuggling trade with China shows that the article smuggled was in
very great demand in that country. People never illegally take into a
country an article that is not greatly in request there. They will not
risk their lives and property unless they know large profits are to be
acquired by the venture, and such profits can only be made upon articles
in great demand. It was because there was found to be a demand for Indian
opium that this so-called contraband trade sprang up. This furnishes the
strongest proof that the Chinese valued the opium highly, and that it was
on their invitation that the drug was introduced. There is, I believe, a
considerable contraband trade now carried on in tobacco between Germany
and Cuba and England, just because the article is in demand here, and
there is a very high duty upon it. The fact is, that if the arguments of
the Anti-Opium people are properly weighed, they will be found, almost
without exception, to cut both ways, and with far greater force against
their own side.
Now with respect to smuggling, it is right that I should clear up the
misconception that seems to prevail upon the subject. Whatever may have
been the practice previous to the Treaty of Nankin, which was signed on
the 29th of August 1842, and ratified on the 26th of June 1843--forty
years ago, I say it advisedly, and challenge contradiction, that _no
smuggling or quasi smuggling, or any practice resembling smuggling, has
been carried on in China by any British subject_ since the signing of that
treaty. Although no mention is made of opium in that convention, it is an
indisputable fact that from the time of the making of it until the Treaty
of Tientsin in 1858, Indian opium was freely allowed into the country at
an _ad valorem_ duty. This is shown by Don Sinibaldo de Mas, in his book,
and also by Sir Rutherford Alcock, in his valuable paper. No doubt the
Chinese themselves have since then smuggled opium into their country, and
are doing so still. They are, in truth, inveterate smugglers, and it has
been found impossible for the British authorities of Hong Kong to prevent
the practice. For the past thirty years laws have from time to time been
passed in the colony with the object of checking the practice, which have
not been wholly unsuccessful; for instance, some twenty-five years ago an
Ordinance was passed prohibiting junks from leaving the harbour between
sunset, and, I think, 6 a.m. on the following morning, and compelling
every outward-bound junk to leave at the harbour master's office a copy of
the "Manifest" before starting, and I have known many prosecutions for
breach of this Ordinance.
Still smuggling by Chinamen goes on more or less, but not now, I think, to
any large extent. As for any connivance or participation in the practice
by the British authorities or the British people, and, indeed, I may say
the same for all foreigners in China, there is none whatever. I am fully
borne out in this statement by the _Friend of China_, which you will
remember is the organ of the Anti-Opium Society. It would appear that Sir
John Pope Hennessy, lately Governor of Hong Kong, made a speech last
autumn at Nottingham, on the occasion of the meeting of the Social Science
Congress, in the course of which he made some allusion to smuggling by the
British community of Hong Kong. I have not myself read the speech, but
collect this from the statement of the journal in question, which I shall
now read to you. This is the passage:--
The present governor of Hong Kong is extremely unpopular with the
British community under his jurisdiction. Into the occasion and merit
of the feud we do not pretend to enter, but in reproducing the
Governor's condemnation of the Colony it is only fair to note the fact
of the existing hostility between governor and governed. _We are
sorry, too, that Sir John did not state that these desperate smugglers
are of Chinese race. So far as we know there is no ground for
inculpating a single Englishman in Hong Kong in these nefarious
proceedings; the English merchant sells his opium to Chinese
purchasers, and there his connection with the traffic ceases._
So much for the delusion as to smuggling by British subjects in China. As
for the "Hoppo" of Canton, who farms from the Chinese Government the
revenue of the provinces of Kwantung and Kwangsi, and whose object it is
to squeeze as much as he can from the mercantile community of these
provinces during his term of office, he has a fleet of fast English-built
steam cruisers, heavily armed, ostensibly to put down smuggling, but
really to cripple the commerce of the port of Hong Kong, they keep the
harbour blockaded by this fleet of armed cruisers to prey upon the native
craft coming to and sailing from the colony. Wild with wrath at the
prosperity of Hong Kong, the Hoppo and his cruisers lose no opportunity of
oppressing the native junks resorting to the place. All those vessels they
think should go to Canton to swell the Hoppo's income. Many Chinese
merchants have put cases of oppression of the kind in my hands, where
those armed cruisers simply played the part of pirates, seizing
unoffending junks, taking them to Canton, and confiscating junk and cargo;
but I regret to say that only in a very few cases have I been able to
obtain redress. This state of things has been going on for the past
fifteen or twenty years, and should be put down by the British Government.
So far as respects the Chinese authorities, and the junk owners, and
native merchants, it is simply legalised robbery; whilst as regards the
British Government and people of the colony, foreigners as well as
natives, it is a system of insult and outrage--a very serious injury, and
a glaring breach of international law, which no European Government would
tolerate in another. I mention this to show how forbearing and
long-suffering the Government of Hong Kong and the Imperial Government
have been towards China during the continuance of this most nefarious and
unjustifiable state of things. This is in truth a very serious matter.
When Sir Henry Elliott took possession of Hong Kong in 1841 on behalf of
the Queen, he invited by proclamation the Chinese people to settle in the
place, promising them protection for their lives and property, upon the
faith of which the natives took their families and property to the colony.
But how can it be said now that their property is protected when this
piratical fleet, like a bird of prey, hovers round the colony, pouncing
down upon the native craft going to or leaving the port?
To close this part of my subject, I may say in short, that the charges
brought by the Anti-Opium Society against the importation of Indian opium
into China are exactly on a par with the objections of a Society
established in France for the purpose of prohibiting the importation into
England of cognac, on the grounds that that spirit intoxicated,
demoralised, and ruined the English people. If any set of men in France
were fanatical and insane enough to set forth such views, they would be
laughed down at once. The answer to the objection to the brandy trade
would be, "That the English people manufacture and drink plenty of gin and
whisky, and if they, the French, discontinued sending them brandy the
English would simply manufacture and drink more spirits of their own
production." No two cases could be more alike.
Before proceeding to the last of the fallacies by which the opponents of
the Indo-Chinese opium trade have been so long deluding society, I wish to
refer to the statements made by Mr. Storrs Turner in his book, and by the
advocates of the Anti-Opium trade, respecting the Treaty of Tientsin. It
is alleged that Lord Elgin, who bore the highest character as a statesman
and Christian gentleman, extorted the treaty from the Chinese, and forced
them to include opium in the schedule to that treaty. Mr. Turner, at p. 95
of his book, typifies the conduct of England thus:--
The strong man knocks down the weak one, sets his foot upon his chest
and demands:--"Will you give me the liberty to knock at your front
door and supply your children with poison _ad libitum_?" The weak man
gasps out from under the crushing pressure--"I will, I will; anything
you please." And the strong man goes home rejoicing that he is no
longer under the unpleasant necessity of carrying on a surreptitious
back-door trade.
This metaphor is really absurd, and has no application whatever. Were a
man so infamous as to act in the manner stated, it would be a matter of
little concern to him whether his poison entered by the front or the back
door, so long as he got paid for the article. The fact is, as I have
stated, that since the Treaty of Nankin, in 1842, opium has been openly
allowed in the country without any difficulty or objection. If there is
any point in this metaphor of Mr. Storrs Turner's at all, it applies not
to the insertion of opium in the tariff, but to the clause in the treaty
as to the admission of missionaries into China, for that was really the
bitter pill the Chinese swallowed. In 1858, when the Treaty of Tientsin
was being drawn up, the tariff upon British goods had to be settled. The
Chinese Commissioners, not only as a matter of course, and without any
pressure whatever, proposed to put down opium in the schedule at the
present fixed duty of thirty taels a pikul, but actually insisted upon
doing so. There was no necessity for using pressure at all, and none in
fact was used. It was included in the tariff just like other goods. Mr. H.
N. Lay, who jointly with Sir Thomas Wade, Her Majesty's present minister
at Pekin, was Chinese Secretary to Lord Elgin's special mission, and who
then, I believe, filled the important post in the Chinese service now
occupied by Sir Robert Hart, expresses his opinion on the subject as
follows:--
Statements have been advanced of late, with more or less of precision,
to the effect that the legalisation of the opium trade was wrung from
Chinese fears. At the recent meeting in Birmingham Lord Elgin is
credited, in so many words, with having "extorted" at Tientsin the
legalisation of the article in question. There is no truth whatever in
the allegation, and I do not think, in fairness to Lord Elgin's
memory, or in justice to all concerned, that I ought to observe
silence any longer. Jointly with Sir Thomas Wade, our present minister
in China, I was Chinese Secretary to Lord Elgin's special mission. All
the negotiations at Tientsin passed through me. Not one word upon
either side was ever said about opium from first to last. The revision
of the tariff, and the adjustment of all questions affecting our
trade, was designedly left for after deliberation and arrangement, and
it was agreed that for that purpose the Chinese High Commissioners
should meet Lord Elgin at Shanghai in the following winter. The Treaty
of Tientsin was signed on the 26th of June 1858; the first was
withdrawn, and Lord Elgin turned the interval to account by visiting
Japan and concluding a treaty there. In the meantime the preparation
of the tariff devolved upon me, at the desire no less of the Chinese
than of Lord Elgin. _When I came to "Opium" I inquired what course
they proposed to take in respect to it. The answer was, "We have
resolved to put it into the tariff as Yang Yoh_ (foreign medicine)."
This represents with strict accuracy the amount of the "extortion"
resorted to. And I may add that the tariff as prepared by me, although
it comprises some 300 articles of import and export, _was adopted by
the Chinese Commissioners without a single alteration_, which would
hardly have been the case had the tariff contained aught objectionable
to them. Five months after the signature of the Treaty of Tientsin,
long subsequently to the removal of all pressure, the Chinese High
Commissioners, the signatories of the treaty, came down to Shanghai in
accordance with the arrangement made, and after conference with their
colleagues, and due consideration, signed with Lord Elgin the tariff
as prepared, along with other commercial articles which had been drawn
up in concert with the subordinate members of the Commission who had
been charged with that duty. _The Chinese Government admitted opium as
a legal article of import, not under constraint, but of their own free
will deliberately._
Now Mr. H. N. Lay is a gentleman whose testimony is altogether
unimpeachable, and this is his statement. He explains the whole
transaction, and it is substantially and diametrically contrary to the
allegations of Mr. Turner and the Anti-Opium Society. His account of the
matter has the greater force, because I believe he is rather anti-opium in
his views than the opposite, and at the time of the treaty he was in the
service of the Chinese Government. The truth is, that we never should have
had the Chinese urging us to increase the duty had they not been supported
by the Anti-Opium Society. Mr. Laurence Oliphant was Lord Elgin's
secretary at the time of the Tientsin Treaty. This is what he says on the
subject:--
As a great deal of misconception prevails in the public mind upon this
subject, I would beg to confirm what Mr. Lay has said as to the views
of the Chinese Government in the matter.
I was appointed in 1858 Commissioner for the settlement of the trade
and tariff regulations with China; and during my absence with Lord
Elgin in Japan, Mr. Lay was charged to consider the details with the
subordinate Chinese officials named for the purpose. On my return to
Shanghai I went through the tariff elaborated by these gentlemen with
the Commissioner appointed by the Chinese Government. When we came to
the article "opium," _I informed the Commissioner that I had received
instructions from Lord Elgin not to insist on the insertion of the
drug in the tariff, should the Chinese Government wish to omit it.
This he declined to do. I then proposed that the duty should be
increased beyond the figure suggested in the tariff; but to this he
objected, on the ground that it would increase the inducements to
smuggling._
I trust that the delusion that the opium trade now existing with China
was "extorted" from that country by the British Ambassador may be
finally dispelled.
But Mr. Storrs Turner will doubtless still say, "Oh! these gentlemen are
Englishmen; you cannot believe them." I do not think, however, this kind
of objection will have much weight with my readers or the country at
large.
And now, as I am on the political side of the question, I will say a few
words on the Indian aspect of the case. The Government of India is charged
by Mr. Storrs Turner and the Anti-Opium people generally with descending
to the position of opium manufacturers and merchants, and quotes an
alleged proposal of the late Lord Lawrence to drop the traffic, leaving
the cultivation and exportation of the drug to private enterprise, and
recouping itself from loss by placing a heavy export duty on the article.
If Lord Lawrence ever proposed such an arrangement, which I doubt very
much, I hardly think he could have carefully considered the question. No
doubt, in an abstract point of view, it is contrary to sound policy for
the Government of a country to carry on mercantile business, much less to
take into its own hands a monopoly of any trade, yet the thing has been
done for a great number of years, and is still practised by some
continental Governments without the existence of any special reason for so
doing. The Indo-China opium trade, however, is an entirely exceptional
one. When an exceptional state of things has to be dealt with,
corresponding measures must be resorted to. The opium industry in India is
an ancient one; and the exportation of this drug to China began under the
Portuguese, several centuries ago. Were the Government of India to adopt
the alleged proposals of Lord Lawrence, the result would be that a much
larger quantity of opium than is now produced in India would be turned
out, so that not only would the alleged evils now complained of by the
missionaries and the Anti-Opium Society be intensified, but the Government
of India would find its revenue greatly increased by its export duty on
the drug. This is very conclusively shown by Don Sinibaldo de Mas, a most
competent authority, who has studied the question deeply and can have no
possible object but the revelation of the truth.
There are numerous objections to throwing open the Indian trade. As
matters now stand, the Government of India annually makes advances to the
opium growers, to enable them to produce the drug. These advances are made
at a low or nominal rate of interest. Let the Government once drop the
monopoly and throw open the trade, and then the small farmers--and they
form perhaps seventy-five per cent. of the whole, whether they cultivate
the poppy or any other crop--would be at the mercy of the usurers, who are
the curse of India. Thus the poor cultivator, instead of paying the
Government two or three per cent. interest for the advance, would have to
pay perhaps five times that amount, with a bill for law costs; and a much
larger bill staring him in the future, in case he should be so unfortunate
as not to be up to time with his payments. The usurers or Márwáris as I
believe they are called, would in such cases profit by the fruits of the
soil instead of the growers. As to the morality of the proposed change, I
do not see what could be gained by such an arrangement. If it is wrong to
derive a revenue from opium by direct, it is equally wrong to do so by
indirect means. Before closing this part of the subject, there is another
point I wish to say a few words upon. It is put forward by Mr. Turner in
his book, with great plausibility, and is, no doubt, accepted by his
disciples as fact, that every acre of land put under opium cultivation
displaces so much rice, the one being a poison, the other the staff of
life. This is perfectly fallacious; wherever rice is grown in China--and I
fancy it is the same in India--there are two crops taken in the year. Rice
is cultivated during the spring and summer months (that is, the rainy
season), for the grain only grows where there is abundance of water.
The poppy thrives only in the dry season, that is, during the latter part
of the autumn and the winter, when the rice crops have been saved. The
poppy requires a rich soil, so that before planting it the farmers have to
manure the ground well; then, when the poppy crop has been secured, the
land is in good heart for rice, and so the rotation goes on. This I stated
in the first edition of this lecture; since then Mr. Spence's Report for
1881 has appeared which fully confirms my view. Thus much for the accuracy
of this statement of Mr. Storrs Turner.
I come now to the last of the fallacies, follies, and fantasies, upon
which the huge superstructure of delusion put forward for so many years by
the Anti-Opium Society has been built. At once the least sustainable, it
is the one which carries the most weight with the supporters of that
Society, for it furnishes the _raison d'être_ of their whole action. It is
_that the introduction of Indian opium into China has arrested the
progress of Christianity in that country, and that if the trade were
discontinued the Chinese would accept the Gospel_. No greater mistake, nor
more unfounded delusion than this could be indulged in; indeed, it seems
to me something very like a profanation to mix up the Indo-China opium
trade with the spread of the Gospel in the Empire of China. If the
objection to embrace Christianity because we send opium to that country
has ever, in fact, been made by natives, that objection was a subterfuge
only.
The Chinese are an acute and crafty race; when they desire to attain an
object, they seldom attempt to do so by direct means, but rather seek to
gain their ends indirectly. They despise and hate Christianity, although
they will not tell you so, much less will they argue with you, or enter
into controversy upon the subject. They will rather try to get rid of it
by a side-wind. They are a very polite and courteous people, and
understand this style of tactics very well. I have no doubt whatever that
if the British trade in opium were suppressed to-morrow, and that no
British merchant dealt any longer in the drug, or sent a particle of it
into China, and if a missionary were to go before the Chinese and say, "We
can now show clean hands, our Government has stopped the opium trade," and
then were to open his book and begin talking to them of Christianity, he
would only be met with derisive laughter. "This man," they would say,
"thinks that because the English have ceased to sell us opium we should
all become Christians. If they sold us no more rice or broadcloth, we
suppose they would say that we should become Mahomedans."
Knowing the cunning and keen sense of humour of the people, I have no
doubt they would use another argument also. There is a story told of a
Scotch clergyman who rebuked one of his congregation for not being quite
so moderate in his potations as he ought to be. "It's a' vera weel,"
returned the other, who had reason to know that the minister did not
always practise what he preached, "but do ye ken how they swept the
streets o' Jerusalem?" The clergyman was obliged to own his ignorance,
when Sandy replied, "Weel, then, it was just this, every man kept his ain
door clean." And I can well fancy in the case I have supposed, an equally
shrewd Chinaman saying to the missionary, "What for you want to make us
follow your religion? Your religion vely bad one. You have plenty men
drink too muchee sam-shu, get drunk and fight, and beat their wives and
children. Chinaman no get drunk. Chinaman no beat or kill his wife. Too
muchee sam-shu vely bad. Drink vely bad for Inglismen; what for you don't
go home and teach them to be soba, plaupa men?" Believe me, the Chinese
know our little peccadilloes and are very well informed respecting our
doings here at home.
We send but six thousand tons of opium annually to China, which, according
to Sir Robert Hart, who ought to be a reliable authority on the subject,
inflicts no appreciable injury upon the health, wealth, or extension of
the population of that vast empire. The truth is, that the alleged
objection of the Chinese against Christianity amounts simply to this:
because some of our people do what is wrong, and we are not as a nation
faultless in morals, we should not ask them to change their religion for
ours. Perfection is not to be attained by any nation or the professors of
any creed. If we had the ability, and were foolish enough to stop the
exportation of Indian opium to China, the natives of the country would
find some other reason for clinging to their own creeds and rejecting
Christianity. They could, and doubtless would, point to the fearful plague
of intemperance prevailing amongst us; they could also refer to the great
number of distilleries and breweries in the United Kingdom, to our Newgate
Calendar, and to the records of the Divorce Court. In short, they would
say, "You do not practise what you preach. What do you mean, then, by
trying to make Christians of us?" The same doctrine has been used over and
over again even in Christian countries, and it is lamentable to see
educated and intelligent men becoming victims to such a delusive mode of
reasoning. This sad hallucination on the part of the missionary clergymen
is the origin of the mischievous and very stupid agitation going on
against the Indo-China opium trade, but now rapidly, I believe and hope,
coming to an end.
A few years ago I paid a short visit to Japan. Whilst I was at Tokio, the
capital, a lecture was given there by an educated Japanese gentleman, who
spoke English well and fluently. He introduced religion into his lecture,
and considered the question why the Japanese did not embrace Christianity.
"Our minds," said he, "are like blank paper; we are ready to receive any
religion that is good, we are not bigoted to our own, but we object to
Christianity because we do not consider it a good religion, because we see
that Christians do not reverence old age, and because they are so
licentious, and so brutal to the coolies." But these reasons are again
merely subterfuges. The Japanese do not smoke opium, and the very same
objection they urge against Christianity might also be used by the
Chinese. The Oriental mind is very much the same, whether Chinese,
Japanese, or Indian. Upon religious or political questions they well know
how to shift their ground. As to the Chinese embracing Christianity, I
trust the day will come when they will do so. They would then be the most
powerful nation in the whole world, and probably become our own best
teachers on religion and morals; but at present I see no immediate hope of
their conversion. I say this in view of the stand taken by the Protestant
missionaries on this opium question. Nothing, in my opinion, is more
calculated to impede the progress of missionary work than this most absurd
and unfounded delusion. The reason given by the missionaries for the
apparently small success which has hitherto attended their efforts, is
that the so-called iniquitous traffic in opium has been the one stumbling
block in their way. Put a stop to this villanous trade, they say, and the
Gospel will flourish like a green bay-tree. This sort of argument takes
with the missionaries themselves and with religious people generally, and
thus converts to the anti-opium policy are made. Yet all these statements
rest, I can assure you, on an entirely fallacious foundation. We are not
dealing with a savage but with a civilized people. You may change a
nation's religion, but you cannot alter its customs, and if China were
evangelised to-morrow the Chinese would still continue opium smokers. The
Reverend Mr. Galpin has hit the nail on the head when he said in his
letter to the missionaries of Peking:--
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 apparently 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.
As before mentioned, the Roman Catholic missionaries have never complained
that their missionary labours were impeded by the opium trade. I had the
honour of being Solicitor at Hong Kong to a wealthy and important
religious community of that persuasion which has missionary stations all
over China, Formosa, and Tonquin, and might call the head of the order a
personal friend, yet I never heard a complaint of the kind from him or any
of his clergy. I was on very intimate terms with a Roman Catholic
gentleman who was in the confidence of the Catholic Bishop at Hong Kong,
and the Roman Catholic community generally, and I have had conversations
with him on missionary matters. He has never uttered such a complaint,
but, on the contrary, has always spoken of the success which attended the
Roman Catholic missions throughout China. In this connection it should not
be forgotten that the Chinese treat all foreigners alike; they know no
distinction between them--English, French, German, Spanish, Americans,
Portuguese, are to them one people. The victims of the Tientsin massacre
were, with the exception, I think, of a Russian gentleman, a community of
French nuns. The petition to the House of Commons set out in my first
letter emanated from the Protestant missionaries alone, and it has not, I
am well assured, been signed by a single Roman Catholic missionary. It is
plain, therefore, that this alleged obstacle to the spread of the Gospel
in China by the English and American missionaries is a monster of their
own creation, and has no real existence. Bishop Burden, of Hong Kong, the
missionary bishop for South China, who, although no authority on the opium
question, ought, on this point at all events, to be well informed,
estimates the number of Protestant converts in China at forty thousand,
and of Roman Catholics at one million. The disparity is great, but then it
should not be forgotten that Roman Catholic missions in China date from a
period probably two centuries earlier than Protestant missions. If out of
these forty thousand converts I allow five per cent., or two thousand, to
be really sincere and able to give a reason for the faith that is in them,
I believe that I am not underrating the precise number of true and _bona
fide_ converts which these missionaries have made. But knowing this as I
do, it is very far from my intention to cast blame upon the missionaries
in consequence. To those who understand the difficulties those devoted men
have to contend with in the progress of their labours, the wonder is not
that they have done so little, but that they have achieved so much. Upon
this point, I would say again, I am very far from attributing any blame to
our missionaries, save in so far as they have allowed themselves to be
cajoled by certain Chinese and others as to opium smoking. No one is more
sensible of their piety, learning, zeal, and industry; and a very sad task
it has been to me to impugn their conduct and controvert their views as I
have done. A good cause, however, cannot and ought not to be promoted by
falsehood; for such this Anti-Opium delusion amounts to, and nothing more,
and there can be no hope for more solid results from the missionary field
until it is swept from the missionaries' path. Two thousand sincere
converts after all is, in my belief, a great and encouraging result,
considering the tremendous obstacles our missionaries have to encounter in
overcoming in the first instance the prejudice of the Chinese against
foreigners, and then in displacing in their minds the idolatrous and
sensuous creed that has taken such firm root there, and become, so to
speak, engrained in the Chinese nature, and implanting in its stead the
truths of the Gospel. Each of these two thousand converts will prove, I am
well assured, like the grain of mustard seed that will fructify and in
time bring forth much fruit. But it must not be forgotten that China, in
the terse and apposite words of the Rev. Mr. Galpin, is "a world in
itself," containing as it does about a fourth of the whole human race.
The custom of opium smoking has existed in the Empire of China from time
immemorial. You might as well try to reverse the course of Niagara as to
wean the Chinese from the use of their favourite drug. As to the Treaty of
Tientsin, it is unfair and ungrateful of the missionaries to speak of it
as they do. It did no more than reduce to a formal settlement a state of
things that had been for several years tacitly acquiesced in and agreed to
by the Chinese and British authorities and people. That treaty was
prepared with the greatest deliberation by an eminent statesman who was
singularly remarkable for his humanity and benevolence, assisted by able
subordinates who were in no way deficient in those qualities. The
missionaries seem to forget that this very Treaty of Tientsin, which they
so denounce, is the charter by which they have now a footing in China,
with liberty to preach the Gospel there. They would have no _locus standi_
in China but for this sorely abused treaty. There is a special clause in
it drawn up by Lord Elgin himself, providing that we should be at liberty
to propagate Christianity in the country. That treaty is the missionaries'
protection. It is to it they would now appeal if molested by the Mandarins
or people of China. They cry it down for one purpose, and rely upon it for
another. I may here not inappropriately observe that the missionaries of
Peking seem to have been under a misapprehension as to the nature of this
treaty. From their petition to the House of Commons it would appear that
they were under the impression that some special clause legalizing the
importation of opium into China was introduced into it under pressure from
the British Government; but that was a mistake. There is no "clause"
whatever in the treaty on the subject of opium. The only place that the
word "opium" appears is in the schedule, where it is set down amongst
other dutiable articles, such as pepper and nutmegs, exactly as stated by
Mr. H. N. Lay. It is plain, then, that these missionary gentlemen had not
a copy of the Treaty of Tientsin before them when they drew up their
petition, and I doubt very much if any of them ever read the treaty at
all. They appear to have got the delusion so strongly into their heads
that the legalization of opium was wrung from the Chinese Government that
it seems they thought it quite unnecessary to read the treaty and took
everything for granted.
I have now, I think, shown and fully refuted the fallacies which within
the past thirty years have crept into the minds of the opponents of the
Indo-China opium trade, dimming the faculties, blinding the reason,
warping the judgment, ministering to the prejudices, deluding the senses,
gratifying the feelings, until these fallacies have become so interwoven
and welded together as to form and culminate into one CONCRETE PLAUSIBLE,
FASCINATING, DEFAMATORY LIE! A cruel, false, and treacherous lie, that
misleads alike its votaries and its victims, and that, too, in the names
of religion and charity.--A lie circumstantial,--so highly genteel and
respectable,--so sentimental and pious,--so sleek and unctuous,--so
caressed and flattered,--so bravely dressed, and so beflounced and trimmed
with the trappings of truth, that even those who have bedecked the jade
fail to see the imposture they have created, so that the tawdry quean
struts along receiving homage as she goes, whilst plain honest TRUTH in
her russet gown wends her way unnoticed.--I have shown that this
Anti-Opium scare is a sham, a mockery, a delusion--a glittering piece of
counterfeit coin, which I have broken to pieces and proved to you that,
for all its silvery surface, there is nothing but base metal beneath.