OPIUM MORALS.
_Fal._ No abuse, Hal.
_Poins._ No abuse!
_Fal._ No abuse, Ned, in the world; honest Ned, none. I dispraised him
before the wicked, that the wicked might not fall in love with him;
in which doing, I have done the part of a careful friend, and a true
subject. No abuse, Hal; none, Ned, none;—no, boys, none.——_King Henry
IV., part II._
Scarce a flower that graces the earth, or a tree waving in the forests,
has had its character assailed so mercilessly as the poppy. Not one of
the simples or compounds of the chemist’s store, even including arsenic
and strychnine, has been so strictly interrogated as to the honourable
and dishonourable of its intentions. It is matter of surprise that
the East India Company has not been obliged, by authority of Act of
Parliament, to imprint the decalogue, at least in the Chinese language,
upon every cake or ball of opium leaving their stores. Take upon credit
all that some men would tell you, and there would not be room for
doubt, were the next informant to state that on the arrival of a cargo
of opium, at such a port, on such a day, the entire population cut
each other’s throats, on account of the pestilential miasma diffused
by the said cargo. What are really the moral effects of opium-smoking,
can best be collected from a statement of facts, the reader drawing his
own inferences: they are, at any rate, bad enough without the aid of
exaggeration.
At Singapore stands a house of correction, in which, during the month
of July, 1847, might be found forty-four Chinese criminals; and of
these, thirty-five were opium-smokers—not moderate smokers, but
indulgers to excess—not confining themselves to what they could obtain
with such money as they could spare from their wages, but in some
instances, swallowing or smoking them all up, and in certain instances,
even more than their wages.[20] The aggregate amount of the monthly
wages of seventeen of these men was £16 0s. 10d., or individually
18s. 10½d. The monthly consumption of opium of these men amounted in
value to £20 16s. 3d., or individually to £1 4s. 5½d., so that each of
these men, in addition to spending all his wages, begged, borrowed, or
stole 5s. 7d. monthly, to make up his quantity of opium alone, without
reference to any other necessaries. One of these men, who spent £1 5s.
monthly, and whose wages only reached half of that amount, was asked to
explain how it was to be accounted for. Was there not some error in the
calculation, or was he deceiving the person to whom the circumstances
were being detailed? How was it possible that, with an income of only
12s. 6d., he could spend £1 5s.? The answer was a graphic one and much
to the point:——“What am I in here for?” Of course, the tenants of a
jail can account for such discrepancies in arithmetic. The offences
for which these persons were confined were such as would stand in a
calendar under the rank of vagrants, suspicious characters, persons
attempting to steal, and such like—the crimes committed being against
_property_ and not _persons_. This distinction deserves notice, as it
will serve as the basis of some future suggestions.
In looking down the column of the table in which the above instances
occur, it will be seen that one planter, whose income was twelve
shillings and sixpence, expended in opium six times that amount; and
another, whose income is not stated, but which would not far exceed
the former, expended twelve times that amount in the drug. Occasional
instances occur in which, where the income reached twelve shillings and
sixpence, the expenditure amounted only to a trifle beyond; and where
the income was sixteen shillings and eightpence, the expenditure was
only eight shillings and fourpence or ten shillings.
The inspector of the above institution states: “During the course
of these investigations, I found some opium-smokers, who declared
that their wages only equalled the value of the opium consumed, and
in the majority of cases but little exceeded their consumption; yea,
I found instances, and these not few, where the value of the opium
consumed monthly, was more than the whole wages received. The idea
then suggested itself to me, that there must be an affinity betwixt
opium-smoking and crime; for when once the habit is formed, it cannot
be broken off, while the desire increases with the consumption. It must
happen that the wages of the individual will at last be inadequate
to supply his desire, even supposing that, after a lengthened career
of indulgence, he was able to earn the same amount of money as when,
strong, vigorous, and unimpaired, he commenced his dissipation.
I, therefore, was not at all surprised when I went to the house
of correction, to find that three-fourths of the prisoners were
opium-smokers.”
An examination of the prisoners in jail in July of the same year, under
different sentences, showed that out of fifty-one Chinese prisoners,
fifteen only were not opium-smokers. Seventy per cent. were addicted to
the vice, each consuming quantities ranging from twelve to one hundred
and eighty grains per day. The same jail was again visited, and the
prisoners examined a month afterwards, several fresh criminals had
entered, others had been enlarged. At this time, there were sixty-nine
criminals, and of these only thirty-one were opium-smokers, being only
forty-five per cent. against the seventy per cent. of the former visit.
A quantity of criminals from Pinang under sentence of transportation
showed, on examination, the following results:—Out of twenty-one
criminals, Chinese and Malays, eight did not smoke. The crimes of
these men were murder, stabbing with intent to murder, burglary, and
larceny. Ten of these men were Chinese, all of whom smoked but one. Of
these nine, eight were condemned for offences against property, one
only against the person. Of the nine persons out of the twenty-one who
were convicted for offences against the person, four did not smoke,
three smoked but little. Hence the conclusion is inevitable, that the
criminals of the worst degree, or those committing offences against the
person, are either not smokers at all, or are so only to a moderate
extent. Other statistics show that, for crimes of this character,
highway robbery, and burglary, forty to fifty per cent. only indulge in
opium; whilst for vagrancy, misdemeanour, and petty larceny, seventy to
eighty per cent. indulged in the use of the drug, and often to a very
extraordinary extent.
Why do we find that those charged with the gravest offences are the
least addicted to opium? May it not be that this class of criminal
requires a certain ingenuity, an amount of method and calculation, and
mental vigour and excitement of the passions, greater than the debased
opium-smoker is possessed of, the want of which, therefore, unfits him
for carrying out any such enterprise requiring such adjuncts, leaving
him only capable of being a criminal on a small scale. It is well known
that the Chinese are inveterate gamblers; but it is not in connexion
with the pipe, but with the arrack-cup, that this vice is indulged in.
The influences of opium are sedative and soothing, those of arrack
stimulating and exciting; the latter, therefore, as may be supposed, is
the companion of the gambler, rather than the former. There are other
phases in which the two vices of opium-smoking and intoxication may
be compared. The abuse of ardent spirits leads to crimes against the
person; the abuse of opium leads to crimes against property. The victim
of ardent spirits commits his crimes while under their influence; the
devotee to opium, while under its influence, is at peace with all
mankind, and dreams only of his own happiness. The drunkard, when not
under the influence of liquor, may be a moral member of society, and
often a contrite one; the opium-smoker at that time is often scheming
the violation of moral and social laws, which, when effected, makes him
a criminal, but enables him to gratify his appetite.[21]
De Quincey compares the two habits, not so much for the purpose of
showing the tendency of either of them to crime, but for the proving
that opium does not produce intoxication any more than would a rump
steak. “The pleasure given by wine is always rapidly mounting, and
tending to a crisis, after which as rapidly it declines; that from
opium, when once generated, is stationary for eight or ten hours. The
first—to borrow a technical distinction from medicine—is a case of
acute, the second of chronic pleasure; the one is a flickering flame,
the other a steady and equable glow. But the main distinction lies in
this, that whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the
contrary (if taken in a proper manner) introduces amongst them the
most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of
self-possession; opium sustains and reinforces it. Wine unsettles the
judgment, and gives a preternatural brightness and a vivid exaltation
to the contempts and the admirations, to the loves and the hatreds
of the drinker; opium, on the contrary, communicates serenity and
equipoise to all the faculties, active or passive, and with respect
to the temper and moral feelings in general, it gives simply that
sort of vital warmth which is approved by the judgment, and which
would probably always accompany a bodily constitution of primeval
or antediluvian health. Wine constantly leads a man to the brink of
absurdity and extravagance, and beyond a certain point, it is sure to
volatize and disperse the intellectual energies; whereas opium always
seems to compose what had been agitated, and to concentrate what had
been distracted. In short, to sum up all in one word, a man who is
inebriated, or tending to inebriation is, and feels that he is in a
condition which calls up into supremacy the merely human, too often
the brutal part of his nature; but the opium-eater, simply as such,
assuming that he is in a normal state of health, feels that the divine
part of his nature is paramount, that is, the moral affections are in a
state of cloudless serenity, and high over all, the great light of the
majestic intellect.”
It is not to be wondered at that the abuse of opium should be a fertile
source of poverty, when so much of the wages of many of its votaries
are devoted to it. This diseased habit is progressive, and the quantity
taken must be daily increased to produce the necessary effects; but the
capability of furnishing the means does not keep pace with the desire
of consumption. The cooly, who, when strong and vigorous, could earn
twenty-five shillings per month, has only to commence opium-smoking,
and in two years he will not receive more than two-thirds of that
amount, whilst he still smokes his quantity of opium; and as years roll
on, he finds that, mainly on account of the vice he has adopted, he
can no longer endure the toil that formerly was to him only as child’s
play, the amount of excitement having still to be kept up under a
decreased income, he has to lessen his expenditure for clothes, and
then for food, and lastly, the quantity of opium itself; until worn
out, exhausted, and diseased, he finds himself the inmate of a jail or
a poorhouse. A sad reflection, truly, but a history repeated over and
over again, with but little variation, in the lives of thousands of
Chinamen and Malays.
Were poverty to be succoured in places where this description of
persons most do congregate, as it is at home, thousands would become
public burdens; but there the hand of charity has been closed, and
the springs of compassion for the poor dried up. In Singapore, it was
not until the horrid spectacle of miserable Chinese daily crawling
in front of their doors, exposing their loathsome sores and leprous
bodies, and polluting the air they breathed; it was not until these
wretched beings, without food or friends, and deprived of the power
of supporting themselves, laid them down to die in the streets, of
disease and starvation, that by the active philanthropy of two or three
individuals a shed was erected to keep these paupers out of sight. When
the novelty passed away, the philanthropy declined, and the monthly
contribution dwindled down to about three pounds, which was the sum
total of the public charity of the European residents in behalf of the
diseased poor of Singapore. In this shed were to be found two classes
of persons, united in the same individuals, the _diseased poor_. These
are the only kind of poor that excite _any_ sympathy in such places,
and an examination of the inmates of the _shed_ will give some insight
into the propensities of this class. Out of 125 under relief at the
time, 70 were opium-smokers and 55 were not (or would not acknowledge
it). Of these 70, some before their admission, were reduced to the
alternative of _Tye_ or _Samshing_, or no opium at all. The total
consumption of these paupers before their admission amounted to upwards
of four pounds (2022 grains) daily, giving an average daily consumption
to each smoker of upwards of 28 grains, being nearly the average
consumption of the opium-smoker in general, under more favourable
circumstances. The greatest consumption of any one of these individuals
had amounted to 120 grains, but at that rate his finances soon failed
him, and he had to be content with one fourth of that amount shortly
before he became an invalid. Sixty-two of these men consumed opium to
the monthly value of £38 7s. 6d., while their aggregate income amounted
in the same period to but £50 11s. 3d.; or, individually, the value of
each man’s monthly consumption of opium was 12s. 4½d., and his income
was but 16s. 6d., leaving only about 4s. monthly, or 1s. per week to
feed, clothe, and house himself, and in fact, for every other purpose
for which money is required. Some of these did not confine themselves
to this. Fifteen of them (as will be seen from Table XVI.) consuming
all, or more than their income in opium. Surely such men were worthy
not only of a pauper hospital, but also of a jail.
These paupers at one time all received even more than the average
amount of wages, sufficient to have clothed and fed them and their
families, and kept them comfortable, whilst at that time they were
dependent on a charity which allowed them to exist on the rice which
was supplied to them, and five doits a day or about a shilling per
month. Thousands more, not incapacitated so much by disease as to be
unable to work and not therefore inmates of the hospital, were no
better off, for what they had they spent in chandu.
The Dutch Commissioners report that, “the use of opium is so much
more dangerous, because a person who is once addicted to it can never
leave it off. To satisfy that inclination he will sacrifice everything,
his own welfare—the subsistence of his wife and children, and neglect
his work. Poverty is the natural consequence, and then it becomes
indifferent to him by what means he may content his insatiable desire
after opium; so that at last he no longer respects either the property
or life of his fellow creature.”
A Chinaman, who himself is a smoker and consumes opium to the monthly
value of £2, says, that in one hundred Chinese about Hong-Kong and
Singapore, seventy of them smoke, and that all the coolies do so
more or less. If a cooly earns £1 monthly, 4s. goes for food, l0d.
for house rent, a small outlay for a jacket and trowsers once in six
months, and all the rest goes in opium. From his own experience, and
what he has seen of others, he would say if a man had been accustomed
to smoke opium for seven or eight years, and gives it up for a day
he is attacked with diarrhœa, while during the time he is smoking
the opposite is the case. And he who uses six grains a day will soon
require twelve.
To give up opium-smoking, after it has once been commenced, all declare
to be a very difficult achievement. A Malay who was apprehended on some
criminal charge some years ago, when locked up, previous to examination
was, as a matter of course, deprived of opium for some days, he pined
away so rapidly that, although only four or five days in the lock-up
house, he could not leave it when released, but was carried out, having
entered the place as strong and muscular a man as can be met with.
Dr. Oxley states, “that the lower class of Chinese when deprived of
their allowance, are very liable to become dropsical. The effect of
deprivation at first appears to produce desperation, a heart-rending
despondency, something like the low state of delirium tremens, but
differing in many respects from that malady. Death certainly does occur
from deprivation, and generally by dropsy.”
A great many women smoke, generally the wives of opium-smokers. A
woman was discovered by a surgeon in Singapore in an opium shop up
stairs smoking away, as she had done for three years, at the rate of
thirty-six grains a day. She stated that she had two children, but
that they were very sickly and always crying. And how did she stifle
their cries? She conveyed from her lips to those of the child the fresh
drawn opium vapour, which the babe inspired. This was repeated twice,
when it fell back a senseless mass into its mother’s arms, and allowed
her quietly to finish her unholy repast. This practice she had often
recourse to, as her child was very troublesome, adding that it was no
uncommon thing for mothers to do so.
Another inveterate opium-smoker makes his “confession,” that after his
quantity is consumed, he feels no desire for sleep until twelve or
two in the morning, when he falls into disturbed slumbers, which last
till eight or nine. When he awakes, his head is giddy, confused, and
painful—his mouth is dry, he has great thirst, he has no appetite, can
neither read nor write, suffers pains in all his bones and muscles,
gasps for breath; he wishes to bathe, but cannot stand the shock. This
state continues till he gets his morning pipe, when he can eat and
drink a little, and after that attend to his business. The force of
example taught him this habit, and he knows no class of people exempt
from it except Europeans. “Look,” says he, appealing to himself, “I
was, ere I gave way to this accursed vice, stout, strong, and able
for anything. I loved my wife and children, attended to my business,
and was happy; but now I am thin, meagre, and wretched. I can receive
enjoyment from nothing but the pipe, my passions are gone, and if I am
railed at, and abused like a dog, I return not an angry word.”
Although opium-smoking is carried to such an excess among some of the
Chinese coolies, yet there is no gambling amongst them at the opium
shops at Singapore. It is true that this vice has been suppressed,
but it is not secretly indulged in; and a gentleman who was formerly
the opium farmer, says, “that the consumption of opium is but little
affected by gambling, from arrack or samshu being the intoxicating
medium used, a much better instrument for raising excitement and
stimulating to excessive play than opium, whose effects are much more
sedative than exciting.”
The consideration of the morals and influence of these customs leads
us to a remarkable passage in one of M. Quetelet’s works, it refers to
the certainty of natural laws in states as well as individuals:——“All
those things which appear to be left to the free will, the passions,
or the degree of intelligence of men, are regulated by laws as fixed,
immutable, and eternal as those which govern the phenomena of the
natural world. No one knows the day or the hour of his own death; and
nothing appears more entirely accidental than the birth of a boy or of
a girl in any given case. But how many out of a million of men living
together in one country, shall have died in ten, twenty, forty, or
sixty years, how many boys and girls shall be born in a million of
births; all this is as certain, nay, much more certain, than any human
truth.”
The statistics of courts of justice have disclosed to us the
regular repetition of the same crimes, and have established the
fact—incomprehensive to our understandings, because we do not know the
connecting links—that in every large country, the number of offences,
and of each kind of offence, may be predicted for every coming year,
with the same certainty as the number of the births and of the natural
deaths. Of every 100 persons accused before the supreme tribunal in
France, 61 are condemned; in England, 71. The variations, on an
average, amount hardly to 1/100th part of the whole. We can predict
with confidence, for fifteen years to come, the number of suicides
generally—that of the cases of suicide by fire-arms, and that of the
cases of suicide by hanging.
Every large number of phenomena of the same kind, which rise and
fall periodically, leads to a fixed proportion. This is the law of
large numbers to which all things and all events without exception,
are subject. These laws have nothing to do with the essence of vice
and virtue in the moral world, but with the external causes, and the
effects they produce in human society. No one denies the influence of
education, and of habits of labour and order on the conduct of men, but
no one thinks of regarding this moral conduct as a mere result of those
habits. Good education and improved cultivation diminish the number
of offences, as well as that of the annual deaths in our tables of
mortality.
The results, therefore, of a collection of statistical information
carefully arranged for Singapore, one of the most inveterate of opium
localities, should, on comparison with the results obtained from
other quarters, show that the per centage of deaths is greater, the
per centage of births less; the per centage of criminals higher, and
of suicides larger, in this population of opium-smokers, than in any
other equally conditioned country in which opium is indulged, or it is
not proven that the habit tends to shorten life, decrease production,
increase crime, and induce suicide, all of which charges have been made
against it.
With this evidence we are not at present satisfactorily supplied. That
opinion has an influence, though probably only a minor one, on moral
and social development, is not to be denied. Because man is so entirely
a creature of relation, that nothing is unimportant to him. “If the
movements of the remotest star that glitters in the heavens affect
those of our earth, assist in determining its position in space, its
climate, its productions, and thus influence the lot of man, who is the
creature of these circumstances; what combinations subsisting upon the
surface of the earth, or developing themselves in the bosom of society,
can be deemed wholly indifferent to his conduct, and without power over
his well being and happiness?”
If, as Dr. Lyon Playfair recently noticed, it is worthy of observation,
that the character of the nations through which Dr. Livingstone passed
in his recent travels, depended upon the habits of the people, in the
acquisition of their food, as well as upon the food itself, we may
expect to find opium exerting also its influence. If, for instance,
the Kaffirs who lived by hunting, and were flesh-eaters, were wild
and warlike; and the Wampoos, who lived principally on grain, were of
a more quiet and peaceable disposition. Then again, the Bechuanos,
who lived upon grain, were more civilized than the Kaffirs, and the
Macololas, who combined as their food both grain and flesh, did not
lose the warlike character, and made incursions upon their more feeble
neighbours. It was an axiom amongst the latter people, that if it were
not for the gullet (alluding to their appetites) there would be no war
or fighting amongst mankind. In those parts, such as Loando, where the
people lived upon starchy varieties of food, they had become diminutive
in their stature; and this applied not merely to the natives, but
also to the Portuguese settlers there, for they had lost the physical
characters of their ancestors, and had become feminine in their frames
and habits, and this extended even to their handwriting. Where more
nitrogenous food was taken, the physical character of the people had
not undergone that very marked change. If food exerts this influence
upon the people of a country or district, we cannot doubt that any
habit, such as smoking tobacco or opium, chewing betel or coca, must
exert some influence upon the nations so indulging, whether that
influence be good or bad.
Who will say that tobacco has no portion in the formation of the German
character? Yet the subtle and profound Germans exhibit no extraordinary
evidence in their national character of the baneful influences on
their moral and social development, by their indulgence in this habit.
Compare with them the Turks and Chinese, and let the balance be shown
in favour of the most elevated in the ranks of civilization. Yet
the most deficient must claim the influence of other equally potent
circumstances in extenuation, for neither opium nor tobacco moulds the
entire national character, it is only one of many influences. Let the
Papuan stand beside the Chinaman and the Turk, and in spite of opium,
the Papuan standard will exhibit a woeful short-coming. The waters of
the great Amazon river must exert some influence on the currents of the
Atlantic, but none will venture to assert that therefore the influx of
such a body of water, vast in itself, but small in comparison to the
whole, is the cause of the gulf stream. The drinking of tea will bear
just such a relation to the currents in the life of nations who indulge
in that luxury, but who will declare that the Chinese soldiers fly from
the points of the British bayonets, or are expert in the carving of
ivory balls, because they indulge in a beverage admired by other old
ladies who can neither run nor carve. Neither because certain Javanese
or Malays, under the influence of an over dose of opium, will “run
amok,” or other Arabs, intoxicated with “haschish,” have made the name
of assassin to become an object of dread, is it to be concluded hence
that all men who indulge in the use of either of these narcotics will
be dangerous members of society, or that they will rush into the jaws
of death without a shudder at the sight of his fangs?
Is it because the Scot loves whisky that he is generally so cautious
and shrewd in his business transactions as to win himself a name? Is it
because the Cockney imbibes sundry deep potations of London porter or
gin, that the enterprise and commerce of those great citizens of the
world have become the envy of surrounding nations? Or is it because
the Russian persisted in his love of raw turnip and sour quass, that
the Malakoff and Sebastopol passed into the hands of the frog-eating
Frenchman, and the beef-eating Englishman?
May we not impute to beef and tobacco, gin and opium, porter and hemp,
results infinitely in advance of their power?
Dr. Eatwell writes, “It has been too much the practice with narrators
who have treated on the subject, to content themselves with drawing
the sad picture of the confirmed opium debauchee, plunged in the last
stage of moral and physical exhaustion, and having formed the premises
of their argument of this exception, to proceed at once to involve
the whole practice in one sweeping condemnation. But this is not the
way in which the subject can be treated; as rational would it be to
paint the horrors of _delirium tremens_, and upon that evidence, to
condemn at once the entire use of alcoholic liquors. The question for
determination is not what are the effects of opium used to excess, but
what are its effects on the moral and physical constitution of the mass
of the individuals who use it habitually, and in moderation, either as
a stimulant to sustain the frame under fatigue, or as restorative and
sedative after labour, bodily or mental. Having passed three years in
China, I may be allowed to state the results of my observation, and I
can affirm thus far, that the effects of the abuse of the drug do not
come very frequently under observation; and that when cases do occur,
the habit is frequently found to have been induced by the presence of
some painful chronic disease, to escape from the sufferings of which
the patient has fled to this resource. That this is not always the
case, however, I am perfectly ready to admit, and there are, doubtless,
many who indulge in the habit to a pernicious extent, led by the same
morbid impulses which induce men to become drunkards in even the most
civilized countries; but these cases do not, at all events, come before
the public eye. It requires no laborious search in civilized England to
discover evidences of the pernicious effects of the abuse of alcoholic
liquors: our open and thronged gin-palaces, and our streets, afford
abundant testimony on the subject; but in China this open evidence of
the evil effects of opium is at least wanting. As regards the effects
of the habitual use of the drug on the mass of the people, I must
affirm that no injurious results are visible. The people generally are
a muscular and well-formed race, the labouring portion being capable
of great and prolonged exertion under a fierce sun, in an unhealthy
climate. Their disposition is cheerful and peaceable, and quarrels
and brawls are rarely heard amongst even the lower orders, whilst in
general intelligence, they rank deservedly high amongst orientals.
“The proofs are still wanting to show that the moderate use of opium
produces more pernicious effects upon the constitution, than does the
moderate use of spirituous liquors, whilst at the same time, it is
certain, that the consequences of the abuse of the former are less
appalling in their effect upon the victim, and less disastrous to
society at large, than are the consequences of the abuse of the latter.
Compare the furious madman, the subject of _delirium tremens_, with the
prostrate debauchee, the victim of opium; the violent drunkard, with
the dreaming sensualist intoxicated with opium; the latter is at least
harmless to all except to his wretched self, whilst the former is but
too frequently a dangerous nuisance, and an open bad example to the
community at large.”