British government has seen fit to offer to a protesting world, the report
of the Royal Commission on Opium. Against this stout defense of the opium
traffic in all its branches, we are able to set not only the findings of
other governments, such as those of Japan, the Philippines, and Australia,
which have opium problems of their own to deal with, but also the
curious attitude of a certain British colony, amounting almost to what
might be called an opium panic, on that occasion when the Oriental drug
found its way near enough home to menace British subjects and British
children.
[Illustration: WEIGHING OPIUM IN A GOVERNMENT FACTORY, INDIA]
The men who administer the government of India have a chronically
difficult job on their hands. In order to keep it on their hands they have
got to please the British public; and that is not so easy as it perhaps
sounds. It would apparently please both the government and the public if
the whole opium question could be thrown after the twenty thousand chests
of Canton--into the sea. But the British public is hard-headed, and proud
of it; and the spectacle of the magnificent, panoplied government of India
gone bankrupt, or so embarrassed as to be calling upon the Home government
for aid, would not please it at all. Of the two evils, debauching China or
gravely impairing the finances of India, there has been reason to believe
that it would prefer debauching China. That, at least, is what successive
governments of Britain and of India seem to have concluded. It has seemed
wiser to endure a known quantity of abuse for sticking to opium than to
risk the cold British scorn for the bankrupt; and, accordingly, the Indian
government with the approval of one Home government after another, has
stuck to opium. The only alternative course, that of developing a new,
healthy source of revenue to supplant opium, the unhealthy, would involve
real ideas and an immense amount of trouble; and these two things are only
less abhorrent to the administrative mind than political annihilation
itself.
But there came a time, not so long ago, when a wave of "anti-opium"
feeling swept over England, and the British public suddenly became very
hard to please. Parliament agreed that the idea of a government opium
monopoly in India was "morally indefensible," and even went so far as to
send out a "Royal Commission" to investigate the whole question. Now this
commission, after travelling twenty thousand miles, asking twenty-eight
thousand questions, and publishing two thousand pages (double columns,
close print) of evidence, arrived at some remarkable conclusions. "Opium,"
says the Royal Commission, "is harmful, harmless, or even beneficial,
according to the measure and discretion with which it is used.... It is
[in India] the universal household remedy.... It is extensively
administered to infants, and the practice does not appear, to any
appreciable extent, injurious.... It does not appear responsible for any
disease peculiar to itself." As to the traffic with China, the Commission
states--"Responsibility mainly lies with the Chinese government." And,
finally (which seems to bring out the pith of the matter), "In the present
circumstances the revenue derived from opium is indispensable for carrying
on with efficiency the government of India."
To one familiar with this extraordinary summing-up of the evidence, it
seems hardly surprising that the Rt. Hon. John Morley, the present
Secretary of State for India, should have said in Parliament (May,
1906)--"I do not wish to speak in disparagement of the Commission, but
somehow or other its findings have failed to satisfy public opinion in
this country and to ease the consciences of those who have taken up the
matter."
The methods employed by a Royal Commission which could arrive at such
remarkable conclusions could hardly fail to be interesting. The Government
opium traffic was a scandal. Parliament was on record against it. There
was simply nothing to be said for opium or for the opium monopoly. It was
"morally indefensible"--officially so. It was agreed that the Indian
government should be "urged" to cease to grant licenses for the
cultivation of the poppy and for the sale of opium in British India. This
was interesting--even gratifying. There was but one obstacle in the way of
putting an end to the whole business; and that obstacle was, in some
inexplicable way, this same British government. The opium monopoly,
morally indefensible or not, seemed to be going serenely and steadily on.
If the Indian government was urged in the matter, there was no record of
it.
Two years passed. Mr. Gladstone, the great prime minister, deplored the
opium evil--and took pains not to stop or limit it. Like the House of
Peers in the Napoleonic wars, he "did nothing in particular--and did it
very well." So the vigilant crusaders came at the government again. In
June, 1893, Mr. Alfred Webb moved a resolution which (so ran the hopes of
these crusaders) the most nearly Christian government could not resist or
evade. Sure of the anti-opium majority, the new resolution, "having regard
to the opinion expressed by the vote of this House on the 10th of April,
1891, that the system by which the Indian opium revenue is raised is
morally indefensible,... and recognizing that the people of India ought
not to be called upon to bear the cost involved in this change of policy,"
demanded that "a Royal Commission should be appointed ... to report as to
(1) What retrenchments and reforms can be effected in the military and
civil expenditures of India; (2) By what means Indian resources can be
best developed; and (3) What, if any, temporary assistance from the
British Exchequer would be required in order to meet any deficit of
revenue which would be occasioned by the suppression of the opium
traffic."
The crusaders had underestimated the parliamentary skill of Mr. Gladstone.
He promptly moved a counter resolution, proposing that "this House press
on the Government of India to continue their policy of greatly diminishing
the cultivation of the poppy and the production and sale of opium, and
demanding a Royal Commission to report as to (1) Whether the growth of the
poppy and the manufacture and sale of opium in British India should be
prohibited.... (4) The effect on the finances of India of the prohibition
... taking into consideration (a) the amount of compensation payable; (b)
the cost of the necessary preventive measures; (c) the loss of revenue....
(5) The disposition of the people of India in regard to (a) the use of
opium for non-medical purposes; (b) their willingness to bear in whole or
in part the cost of prohibitive measures."
Mr. Gladstone's resolution looked, to the unthinking, like an anti-opium
document. He doubtless meant that it should, for in his task of
maintaining the opium traffic he had to work through an anti-opium
majority. Mr. Webb's resolution, starting from the assumption that the
government was committed to suppressing the traffic, called for a
commission merely to arrange the necessary details. Mr. Gladstone's
resolution raised the whole question again, and instructed the commission
not only to call particular attention to the cost of prohibition (the
shrewd premier knew his public!), not only to find out if the victims of
opium in India wished to continue the habit, but also threw the whole
burden of cost on the poverty-stricken people of India--which he knew
perfectly well they could not bear. The original resolution had sprung
out of a moral outcry against the China trade. Mr. Gladstone, in beginning
again at the beginning, ignored the China trade and the effects of opium
on the Chinese.
But more interesting, if less significant than this attitude, was the
suggestion that the Indian government "continue their policy of greatly
diminishing the cultivation of the poppy." Now this suggestion conveyed an
impression that was either true or false. Either the Indian government was
putting down opium or it was not. In either event, if Mr. Gladstone was
not fully informed, it was his own fault, for the machinery of government
was in his hands. The best way to straighten out this tangle would seem to
be to consult the report of Mr. Gladstone's commission. This commission,
on its arrival in India, found no trace of a policy of suppressing the
trade. Sir David Balfour, the head of the Indian Finance Department, said
to the commission: "I was not aware that that was the policy of the Home
government until the statement was made.... The policy has been for some
time to sell about the same amount every year, neither diminishing that
amount nor increasing it. I should say decidedly, that at present our
desire is to obtain the maximum revenue from the opium consumed in India."
As regarded the China trade, Sir David added: "We will not largely
increase the cultivation because we shall be attacked if we do so." And
this--"We have adopted a middle course and preserved the _status quo_ with
reference to the China trade."
Mr. Gladstone's resolution was adopted by 184 votes to 105, the anti-opium
crusaders voting against it. And the Royal Commission, with instructions
not, as had been intended, to arrange the details of a plan for stopping
the opium traffic, but with instructions to consider whether it would pay
to stop it, and if not, whether the people of India could be made to stand
the loss, started out on its rather hopeless journey.
One thing the crusaders had succeeded in accomplishing--they had forced
the government to send a commission to India. They had got one or two of
their number on the body. The commission would have to hear the evidence,
would be forced to air the situation thoroughly, showing a paternal
government not only manufacturing opium for the China trade, but actually,
since 1891, manufacturing pills of opium mixed with spices for the
children and infants of India. If the Indian government, now at last
brought to an accounting, wished to keep the opium business going, they
could do two things--they could see that the "right" sort of evidence was
given to the commission, and they could try to influence the commission
directly. They adopted both courses; though it appears now, to one who
goes over the attitude of the majority of the commission and especially of
Lord Brassey, the chairman, as shown in the records, that little direct
influence was necessary. Lord Brassey and his majority were pro-opium,
through and through. The Home government had seen to that.
The problem, then, of the administrators of the Indian government and of
this pro-opium commission was to defend a "morally indefensible" condition
of affairs in order to maintain the revenue of the Indian government. It
was a problem neither easy nor pleasant.
The Viceroy of India was Lord Lansdowne. He went at the problem with
shrewdness and determination. His attitude was precisely what one has
learned to expect in the viceroys of India. A later viceroy, Lord Curzon,
has spoken with infinite scorn of the "opium faddists." Lord Lansdowne
approached the business in the same spirit. He began by sending a telegram
from his government to the British Secretary of State for India, which
contained the following passage: "We shall be prepared to suggest
non-official witnesses, who will give independent evidence, but we cannot
undertake to specially search for witnesses who will give evidence against
opium. We presume this will be done by the Anti-Opium Society." This
message had been sent in August, 1893, but it was not made public until
the 18th of the following November. On November 20th Lord Lansdowne sent a
letter to Lord Brassey, "which," says Mr. Henry J. Wilson, M. P., in his
minority report, "was passed around among the members [of the commission]
for perusal. It contained a statement in favour of the existing opium
system, and against interference with that system as likely to lead to
serious trouble. This appeared to me a departure from the judicial
attitude which might have been expected from Her Majesty's
representatives."
From this Mr. Wilson goes on, in his report, to lay bare the methods of
the Indian government in preparing evidence for the commission. To say
that these methods show a departure from the expected "judicial attitude"
is to speak with great moderation. It is not necessary, I think, to weary
the reader with the details of these extended operations. That is not the
purpose of this writing. It should be enough to say that Lord Lansdowne
and his Indian government ordered that all evidence should be submitted to
the commission through their offices; that only pro-opium evidence was
submitted; that a government official travelled with the commission and
openly worked up the evidence in advance; that the minority members were
hindered and hampered in their attempts at real investigation, and were
shadowed by detectives when they travelled independently in the
opium-producing regions; and, finally, that Lord Brassey abruptly closed
the report of the commission without giving the minority members an
opportunity to discuss it in detail. The result of these methods was
precisely what might have been expected. Opium was declared a mild and
harmless stimulant for all ages. No home, in short, was complete without
it.
There is an answer to the report of the Royal Commission on opium more
telling than can be found in speeches or in minority reports. In an
earlier article we examined into the beginnings of opium. We saw how it is
grown and manufactured; how it passes out of the hands of the British
government into the currents of trade; how it is carried along on these
currents--small quantities of it washing up in passing the Straits and the
Malay Archipelago--to China; how it blends at the Chinese ports in the
flood of the new native-grown opium and divides among the trade currents
of that great empire until every province receives its supply of the
"foreign dirt." Now let us follow it farther; for it does not stop there.
The Chinese are great traders and great travellers. The weight of the
national misery presses them out into whatever new regions promise a
reward for industry. They swarmed over the Pacific to America in a yellow
cloud until America, in sheer self-defense, barred them out. They swarmed
southward to Australia until Australia closed the doors on them. They
swarm to-day into the Philippines and into Malaysia. In the Straits
Settlement, in a total population of a little over half a million, more
than half (282,000) are Chinese. When America would build the Panama
Canal, her first impulse is to import the cheap Chinese labourer, who is
always so eager to come. When Britain took over the Transvaal she imported
70,000 Chinese labourers. And where the Chinese travel, opium travels too.
The real answer to the Royal Commission on opium should be found in the
attitude of these countries which have had to face the opium problem along
with the Chinese problem. Let us include in the list Japan, a country
which has had a remarkable opportunity to view the opium menace at short
range. What Japan thinks about opium, what Australia and the Transvaal and
the United States think, what the Philippines think, is more to the point
than any first-hand statements of a magazine reporter. We will take Japan
first. Does Japan think that opium is invaluable as a general household
remedy? Does Japan think that opium is good for children?
Here is what the Philippine Opium Commission, whose report is accepted
to-day as the most authoritative survey of the opium situation, has to say
about opium in Japan:
"Japan, which is a non-Christian country, is the only country visited by
the committee where the opium question is dealt with in the purely moral
and social aspect.... Legislation is enacted without the distraction of
commercial motives and interest.... No surer testimony to the reality of
the evil effects of opium can be found than the horror with which China's
next-door neighbour views it.... The Japanese to a man fear opium as we
fear the cobra or the rattlesnake, and they despise its victims. There has
been no moment in the nation's history when the people have wavered in
their uncompromising attitude towards the drug and its use, so that an
instinctive hatred possesses them. China's curse has been Japan's warning,
and a warning heeded. An opium user in Japan would be socially a leper.
"The opium law of Japan forbids the importation, the possession, and the
use of the drug, except as a medicine; and it is kept to the letter in a
population of 47,000,000, of whom perhaps 25,000 are Chinese. So rigid are
the provisions of the law that it is sometimes, especially in interior
towns, almost impossible to secure opium or its alkaloids in cases of
medical necessity.... The government is determined to keep the opium
habit strictly confined to what they deem to be its legitimate use, which
use even, they seem to think, is dangerous enough to require special
safeguarding.
"Certain persons are authorized by the head official of each district to
manufacture and prepare opium for medicinal purposes.... That which is up
to the required standard (in quality) is sold to the government: and that
which falls short is destroyed. The accepted opium is sealed in proper
receptacles and sold to a selected number of wholesale dealers
(apothecaries) who in turn provide physicians and retail dealers with the
drug for medicinal uses only. It can reach the patient for whose relief it
is desired only through the prescription of the attending physician. The
records of those who thus use opium in any of its various forms must be
preserved for ten years.
"The people not merely obey the law, but they are proud of it; they would
not have it altered if they could. It is the law of the government, but it
is the law of the people also.... Apparently, the vigilance of the police
is such that even when opium is successfully smuggled in, it cannot be
smoked without detection. The pungent fumes of cooked opium are
unmistakable, and betray the user almost inevitably.... There is an
instance on record where a couple of Japanese lads in North Formosa
experimented with opium just for a lark; and though they were guilty only
on this occasion, they were detected, arrested, and punished."
That is what Japan thinks about opium.
The conclusions of this Philippine Commission formed the basis of the new
opium prohibition in the Philippines, which went into effect March 1,
1908. The plan is a modification of the Japanese system of dealing with
the evil.
Australia and New Zealand have also been forced to face the opium problem.
New Zealand, by an act of 1901, amended in 1903, prohibits the traffic,
and makes offenders liable to a penalty not exceeding $2,500 (L500) for
each offense. In the Australian Federal Parliament the question was
brought to an issue two or three years ago. Petitions bearing 200,000
signatures were presented to the parliament, and in response a law was
enacted absolutely prohibiting the importation of opium, except for
medicinal uses, after January 1, 1906. All the state governments of
Australia lose revenue by this prohibition. The voice of the Australian
people was apparently expressed in the Federal Parliament by Hon. V. L.
Solomon, who said: "In the cities of the Southern States anybody going to
the opium dens would see hundreds of apparently respectable Europeans
indulging in this horrible habit. It is a hundredfold more damaging, both
physically and morally, than the indulgence in alcoholic liquors."
That is what Australia and New Zealand think about opium.
The attitude of the United States is thus described by the Philippine
Commission: "It is not perhaps generally known that in the only instance
where America has made official utterances relative to the use of opium in
the East, she has spoken with no uncertain voice. By treaty with China in
1880, and again in 1903, no American bottoms are allowed to carry opium in
Chinese waters. This ... is due to a recognition that the use of opium is
an evil for which no financial gain can compensate, and which America will
not allow her citizens to encourage even passively." By the terms of this
treaty, citizens of the United States are forbidden to "import opium into
any of the open ports of China, or transport from one open port to any
other open port, or to buy and sell opium in any of the open ports of
China. This absolute prohibition ... extends to vessels owned by the
citizens or subjects of either power, to foreign vessels employed by them,
or to vessels owned by the citizens or subjects of either power and
employed by other persons for the transportation of opium." Thus the
United States is flatly on record as forbidding her citizens to engage, in
any way whatever, in the Chinese opium traffic.
The last item of expert evidence which I shall present from the countries
most deeply concerned in the opium question is from that British colony,
the Transvaal. Were the subject less grim, it would be difficult to
restrain a smile over this bit of evidence--it is so human, and so
humorous. For a century and more, Anglo-Indian officials have been kept
busy explaining that opium is a heaven-sent blessing to mankind. It is
quite possible that many of them have come to believe the words they have
repeated so often. Why not? China was a long way off--and India certainly
did need the money. The poor official had to please the sovereign people
back home, one way or another. If a choice between evils seemed
necessary, was he to blame? We must try not to be too hard on the
government official. Perhaps opium _was_ good for children. Keep your
blind eye to the telescope and you can imagine anything you like.
[Illustration: WHERE THE CHINAMAN TRAVELS, OPIUM TRAVELS TOO A Consignment
of Opium from China to the United States, Photographed in the Custom
House, San Francisco]
The situation was given its grimly humorous twist when the monster opium
began to invade regions nearer home. It came into the Transvaal after the
Boer War, along with those 70,000 Chinese labourers. The result can only
be described as an opium panic. I quote, regarding it, from that
"Memorandum Concerning Indo-Chinese Opium Trade," which was prepared for
the debate in Parliament during May, 1906:
"The Transvaal offers a striking illustration of the old proverb as to
chickens coming home to roost.
"On the 6th of September, 1905, Sir George Farrar moved the adjournment of
the Legislative Council at Pretoria, to call attention to 'the enormous
quantity of opium' finding its way into the Transvaal. He urged that
'measures should be taken for the immediate stopping of the traffic.' On
6th October, an ordinance was issued, restricting the importation of opium
to registered chemists, only, according to regulations to be prescribed
by permits by the lieutenant-governor--under a penalty not exceeding L500
($2,500), or imprisonment not exceeding six months.
"Any person in possession of such substance ... except for medicinal
purposes, unless under a permit, is liable to similar penalties. Stringent
rights of search are given to police, constables, under certain
circumstances, without even the necessity of a written authority.
"The under-secretary for the colonies has also stated, 'that the Chinese
Labour Importation Ordinance, 1904, has been amended to penalize the
possession by, and supply to, Chinese labourers of opium.'"