ground from under the Agitators.—India would not lose all her Revenue.—The Agitation the outcome of mistaken Philanthropy.—Their method of propagandism most objectionable.—Conclusion

A VINDICATION OF ENGLAND’S POLICY WITH REGARD TO THE OPIUM TRADE.

Again there has been a debate in Parliament on the opium traffic:[1] again has the same weary series of platitudes and misrepresentations been repeated, and no one has taken the trouble to defend the policy of England as it should and can be defended. But it is high time that the falsities and the fallacies of the statements of the Anti-opium Society should be exposed, and that everyone to the best of his ability should enlighten the people of England on a subject which so nearly concerns the honour of our country. Isolated voices have indeed been raised to protest against the views disseminated by the Society for the Abolition of the Opium Trade; but these efforts have been too few and far between to reach the mass of the nation. At present the agitators have it all their own way. The majority of people, having heard nothing but what the agitators have told them, denounce the iniquitous traffic with a fervour that varies proportionately with their ignorance. In contemplating the success of this misdirected enthusiasm we are irresistibly reminded of a very “judicious” remark of Hooker’s, who says: “Because such as openly reprove supposed disorders of State are taken for principal friends to the common benefit of all, and for men that carry singular freedom of mind; under this fair and plausible colour whatsoever they utter passeth for good and current.”

For more than forty years the opium trade between India and China has been a subject for keen discussion and hostile comment in England. Being as it was the immediate cause of our first war with China in 1840, the opium traffic could not fail, in Parliament and elsewhere, to be brought prominently before the notice of the people of England, and of course there were not wanting public men to denounce the policy pursued by this country towards China in that matter. This denunciation, at first of a vague and desultory character, took a definite shape in the memorial presented to Her Majesty’s Government in the Earl of Shaftesbury’s name, and backed by all his great personal authority. The specific charges contained in this document will be noticed hereafter, when we come to sketch the present position of the “Society.” Suffice it here to say that it teemed with misstatements and exaggerations of the grossest and most palpable kind, which, having been exposed and refuted again and again, need not detain us now. But so far were those random statements from furthering the cause which the memorialists had at heart, that they only served to steel the minds of unprejudiced people against further representations, however just, from the same quarter.

Since then, however, the agitation has taken a more organized form, and there is now a society for the suppression of the trade, numbering its hundreds of supporters, and linked with the names of such men as Lord Shaftesbury, Cardinal Manning, Sir J. W. Pease, and Sir Wilfrid Lawson. Nearly the whole of the clergy from the Archbishops downwards, and ministers of every denomination, have declared for the same side. Add to this that the Society has a large income, derived from voluntary subscriptions, which is assiduously employed in the dissemination of its peculiar doctrines. The country is flooded with tracts, pamphlets, reports of addresses, speeches, and petitions, all inculcating the same extreme opinions.

Under these conditions it is not surprising that the anti-opiumists have succeeded in enlisting popular sympathy to a certain extent on their side. But, with the single exception of missionaries, they have against them the vast majority of those who, from personal knowledge and experience, are competent to form an opinion on the subject. Sir Rutherford Alcock, for twenty years Her Majesty’s Minister in China, who has had opportunities for forming a correct judgment on the subject such as have fallen to the lot of few, and who can have no bias[2] or prejudice in the matter, has recently before the Society of Arts, in a paper of singular ability and fairness, vindicated the policy of the British Government. Mr. Brereton, for fifteen years resident in Hongkong, has challenged and, on the authority of his own experience, denied every assertion of the Anti-opiumists. As to the missionaries, from whom the majority of the arguments against the trade are drawn, no one doubts their good faith, and everyone gives them credit for the best of motives; but, for reasons to be afterwards given, their evidence is likely to be biassed, and in any case cannot be considered worthy to be set against that of all the other residents in China.

But what are the enormities of which England has been guilty? Here is the indictment, stated with all the energy of conviction: That England, and England only, is responsible for the introduction into China of a highly deleterious, if not wholly poisonous, drug, for which, till India took upon herself to supply it, there was in China no demand whatever; that she is responsible, further, for forcing this opium vi et armis upon the Chinese, contrary to all obligations of international morality, and in the face of the sincere and determined opposition of the Chinese people; that, in fine, Christian England, with a single eye to gain, is wilfully and deliberately compassing the ruin of heathen China. Such is the indictment brought against England by her own sons; and the tribunal which they would arraign her before is the public opinion of their own countrymen and of Europe.

The original habitat of the poppy plant, which is now extensively cultivated in Asia Minor, Persia, Egypt, India, China, and even in Africa, was probably Central Asia. It must have made its way very early into India, as it is mentioned in the Laws of Manu. But it was not till the tenth century that the Hindoos learnt from the Mohammedans the narcotic qualities of the plant.

In China there can be no doubt that opium has been known from the earliest[3] times; even if the poppy be not indigenous to that country, as we might be led to suppose from its mention in a Chinese[4] herbal compiled more than two centuries ago. In the General History of South Yünnan, published in 1736, opium is noted as a common product of Yung-chang-foo; and it is remarked by Mr. Hobson, Commissioner of Customs at Hankow,public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@33376@[email protected]#f5" id="f5.1" class="pginternal"