Drugging a Nation

India Company, the great Warren Hastings

production and manufacture of opium was made a government monopoly. China, after all, was a long way off-and Chinamen were only Chinamen. That the East India Company might be loosing an uncontrollable monster not only on

uman affairs; and its law is the law of the balance sheet. So long as any commodity remains in the currents of trade the law of trade must reign, the balance sheet must balance. It is difficult to get a commodity into these currents, but once you have got the commodity in, you will find it next to impossible to get it out. There has been more than one prime minister, I fancy, more than one secretary of

stand the narrative of that greed, with its attendant smuggling, bribery and bloodshed which has brought the Chinese empire to its knees. In speaking of it as a "monopoly," I am not employing a cant word for effect. I am not making a case. That is w

x truths cannot overtake one lie. That is why, in this day of popular rule, the really irresponsible power that makes and unmakes history lies in the hands of the journalist. As the charge I am bringing is so serious as to be almo

e will probably deal shortly with you for dragging up an absurd bit of fanaticism. For a century or more, about all the missionaries, and goodness knows how many other observers, have protested against this monstrous traffic in poison. Sixty-five years ago Lord Ashley (afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury) agitated the question in Parliament. Fifty years ago he obtained from the Law Officers of the Crown the opinion that the opium trade was "at variance" with the "spirit and intention" of the treaty between England and China. In 1891, the House of Co

just how does it work? An excerpt from the rather ponderous blue book will t

nd partly by the levy of a duty on all opium imported from native states.... In these two provinces, the crop is grown under the control o

der outline. Now for

ble him to prepare the land for the crop, and he is required to deliver the whole of the product at a f

dian government lends money without interest in no other cases. Produce

he opium must be disposed of in

erm, "provision opium," we have only to read on a little further. "The opium is received and prepared at the government factories, where the out-turn for the year included 8,774 chests of opium for the Excise Department, about 300 pounds of various opi

nue to the treasury, including returns from auction sales, duties, and license f

ng the green seed pod with a four-bladed knife. After the first gathering, the pod is gashed a second time, and the gum that exudes makes an inferior quality of opium. The raw opium from the country districts is sent down to the

CRUDE OPI

LAT CAKES MAKING R

to stoop beneath the taking in of profits; it leaves the details of a dirty business to dirty hands. This is as it has been from the first. The directors of the East India Company, years and years before that splendid corporation relinquished the actual gov

ave that the most nearly Christian of governments has officially succeeded the company

n filled with water and boiled over a slow fire. Various kinds of opium are mixed with each other, and some shops acquire a reputation for their ingenious and tasteful blends. After the opium has been boiled to about the consistency of coal tar or molasses, it is put into jars and sold for daily consumption in quantities ranging from the fiftieth part of an ounce to four or five ounces.

ow and then, a face that looks distressingly like the face of old Respectability himself. I have found myself in momentary bewilderment when walking through the splendid masonry-lined streets of Hongkong, when sitting beneath the frescoed ceiling of that pinnacled structure that houses the most nearly Christian of parliaments, trying to believe that this opium drama can be real. And I have wondered, and puzzled, until a smell like the smell of China has come floating to the nostrils of memory; until a picture of want and disease and misery-of crawling, swarming human misery unlike anything which the untravelled Western mind can conceive-has appeared before the eyes of memory. I have thought of those starving thousands from the famine districts creeping into Chinkiang to die, of those gaunt, seemed

orm in which it has presented itself to me. If Clean and Dirty appear in cl

all quantities of the drug were brought in from Java, the Chinese government objected. In 1729 the importation was prohibited. As late as 1765, this importation, carried on by energetic traders in spite of official resistance, had never exceeded two hundred chests a year. But with the advent of the company in 1773, the trade grew. In spite of a second Chinese pro

ed the opium thread back to the tangle of early missionary reports and imperial edicts, that the habit started either in Formosa or on the mainland across the Straits, where malaria is common. Opium had been used, generations before, as a remedy for malaria; and these first smoker

, but finding no demand were obliged to sell the lot of 1,600 chests at a loss to Sinqua, a Canton "Hong-merchant," who, not being able to dispose of it to advantage, reshipped it. The price in that year was $550 (Mexican) a chest; Sinqua had paid the company only $200, but even at

eing strongly prohibited by the Chinese government, and a business altogether new to us, it

ese sent out an increasing number of armed revenue junks or cruisers. The traders usually found it possible to buy off the commanders of the revenue junks, but as this could

sts and in general to fill the position of a combined consul and unaccredited minister. In the late 1830's this agent, Captain Charles Elliot (successor to Lord Napier, the first agent), found himself in the delicate position of protecting English smugglers, who were steadily drawing their country towards war because the Chinese government was making strong efforts to drive them out of business. From what Captain Elliot has left on record it is plain that he was having a

" But when the war cloud broke, and responsibility for the welfare of Britain's subjects and trade interests in China devolved upon him, he compromised. "

essor, the government, towards the whole miserable business. The company's board of directors, in 1817, had sent this dispatch from Calcutta in answer to a quest

s of the balance sheet, organized representatives of the mighty laws of trade. I have already quoted enough evidence to show that the company was not only awake to the dangers of opium, but that it had deliberately and painstakingly worked up the traffic. Had there been, then, a change of heart in the directorate? I fear not. Among the East Indian correspon

e years as one of the ablest defenders of the whole opium policy. He believes that "The daily use of opium in moderation is not only harmless but of positive benefit, and frequently even a necessity

t given by Robert Inglis, of Canton, a partner in the large opium-trading firm of Den

tain Elliot) that I was sure

ve you told him that you were s

or four or fiv

t gave you tha

forced upon the Chinese every year, and that in

rcing it upon them,' do you mean that

y year, without reference to the demand in China; that is to say, there was always an immense

ce as a British official in the East, said in the House of Commons, "I never denie

es taken by the East India Company to promote its growth, which almost quadrupled the supply, I believe it would never have created th

: "By increasing its supply of 'provision' opium, it (the Bengal government) has repeatedly caused a g

e after sixty years' experience in Indian affairs, protesting against "continuing this trading upon the sins and

able official named Lin Tse-hsu from Peking to Canton with orders to put down the traffic at any cost. Commissioner Lin was a man of unusual force. He perfectly understood the situation in so far as it concerned China. He had his orders. He knew what they meant. He proposed to put them into effect. There was only one important consideration which he seems to have overlooked-it was that India "needed the money." His proposal that the foreign agents deliver up thei

xposure of others to death. Such acts are bitterly abhorrent to the nature of man and are utterly opposed to the ways of heaven. We would now then concert with your 'Hon. Sovereignty' m

. Now, the avenues of trade do not lead to martyrdom. Traders rarely die for their principles-they prefer living for them. The 20,000 chests were delivered up, with a rapidity that was almost haste; and the merchants, under the leadership of the agent, withdrew to the doubtful shelter of their own guns, down the river. Commissioner Lin, still with that exasperatingly thorough air, mixed the masses of opium with lime and emptied it into the sea. England, her di

aty ports." 3. The Island of Hongkong was to be ceded to Great Britain. 4. An indemnity of $21,000,000 was to be paid, $6,000,000 as the value of the opium destroyed, $3,000,000 for the destruction of the property of British subjects, and $12,000,000 for the expenses of the war. It was further understood that the Br

ind, China was the greatest of nations, occupying something like five-sixths of the huge flat disc called the world. England, Holland, Spain, France, Portugal, and Japan were small islands crowded in between the edge of China and the rim of the disc. That these small nations should wish to trade with "the Middle Kingdom" and to bring tribute to the "Son of Heaven," was not unnatural. But that the "Son of Heaven" must admit them whether

was a great and undeveloped market and therefore the trading nations had a right to trade with her willy-nilly, and any effective attempt to stop this trade was, in some vague way, an infringement of their rights as

of all the trouble, was still unrecognized by either government as a legitimate commodity, while, indeed, the Chinese, however chastened and humiliated, were still making desperate if indirect efforts to keep it out of the country and the English were making strong efforts to get it into the country, is a problem I leave to subtler minds. The upshot was, of course, that the "lasting peace" did not last. Within fifteen years there was another war. By the second treaty (that of Tientsin, 1858) Britain secured 4,000,000 taels of indemnity money (about $3,000,000), the openi

hina. She sounded England on the subject,-once, twice. There seemed to have been some idea that England, convinced that China had her own possibility of crowding out the Indian drug, might, after all, give up the trade, stop the production in India, and make the great step unnecessary. But England could not see it in that light. China wavered, then took the great step. The restrictions on opium-growing were removed. This was probably a mistake, though opinions still differ about that. To the men who stood responsible for a solution of Chinese fiscal problem it doubtless seemed necessary. At all events, the l

ehind it a misery, a darkness, a desolation that has struck even the Chinese, even its victims, with horror. China has passed from misery to disaster. And as if the laws of trade had chosen to turn capriciously from their inexorable business and wreak a grim joke on a prostrate race, the solution, the great step, has failed in its purpose. The trade in Indian opium has been hurt, to be sure, but not supplanted. It will never be supplanted until the British government deliberately puts i

dangerous remedy-legalized native opium-not because we approve of it, but to compete with and drive out the foreign drug; and it is expelling it,

nce, again, after a weary century of struggle, they have approached the British government. Once again the British government has been driven from the Scylla of healthy Anglo-Saxon moral indignation to the Charybdis behind that illuminating

**

at leads to Frenchtown-past a half mile of warehouses and chanting coolies and big yellow Hankow steamers-until we turn out on the French Bund? It

ING SHIP OR "GO

ored in These Ships Until it Pa

HULKS OF

ize China's

the river front is crowded close with sampans and junks, rows on rows of them, each with its round little house of yellow matting, each with its swarm of brown children, each with its own pungent contribution to the all-pervasive odour. Gaze out through the forests of masts, if you please, and you will see two old hulks, roofed with what looks suspiciously lik

um which the government of British India has grown and manufactu