Second Opium War

“ Since the war, both Turkey and Persia are more or less under control of the British Empire, which gives Great Britain virtual control of the world's output of opium. With this monopoly of the opium-producing countries, and with a million or so square miles added to her immense colonial Empire, one wonders what use Great Britain will make of the mandatory powers she has assumed over the lives and welfare of all these subject peoples! Will she find these helpless millions ready for her opium trade? ”

“ Before the middle of the nineteenth century Chinese sentiment was so strong against the importation of opium from India that war broke out with England, with the result that the curse was fastened upon the Orient. The evil increased, spreading through many countries. Meantime international fortunes brought the United States to the Philippines and trade carried opium to the United States. Foreigners in China combated the evil. The nation took a determined stand, and finally, through international agreement under American leadership, the trade and the consumption of opium were checked. ”

“ Many writers on Chinese topics delight to dwell upon the slow but sure destruction of morals, manners, and men, which is being gradually effected throughout the Empire by the terrible agency of opium. Harrowing pictures are drawn of once well-to-do and happy districts which have been reduced to know the miseries of disease and poverty by indulgence in the fatal drug. The plague itself could not decimate so quickly, or war leave half the desolation in its track, as we are told is the immediate result of forgetting for a few short moments the cares of life in the enjoyment of a pipe of opium. ”

“ Opium has been the cause of at least one war, namely, the war between England and China, and a perusal of the accounts of piracy in the eastern seas during the sixteenth century affords numerous instances of pitched battles between traders and pirates whose one object seems to have been to get possession of valuable cargoes of opium.
The cultivation of the poppy, as a garden flower at any rate, was certainly practised as far back as eight hundred years before Christ. ”

“ This irritation is connected with the remembrance of the wars which led to the Treaties about opium. Had eggs or apples been the cause of the wars, i.e. had the Chinese objected to the import of eggs, and we had insisted on their being imported, and carried out such importation in spite of the Chinese wish by force of war, it would be to my own mind the same thing as opium now is to Chinese. We do not give the Chinese credit for being so sensitive as they are. As Black Sea Treaty was to Russia so opium trade is to China. ”

“ Opium, being the commodity which the people most imperatively demanded, was always paid for in hard cash, while ordinary merchandise might be bartered against Chinese produce. It is not therefore difficult to understand how, without prejudice to moral or political considerations, the article opium should have become so conspicuous a factor in the agony which preceded the war. ”

“ It would, however, be inaccurate to represent Chinese objection to British opium as the sole cause of the ``Opium War'' of 1840, for the indignities to which foreign traders and foreign diplomats were continually subjected in their efforts to establish commercial and political relations with the Chinese were rapidly drifting the two nations into war. ”

“ What are our daily murders, incendiary fires, robberies, but the direct result of the use of opium? True, the desire for opium is not so great an evil as long as one can get it—when one has money to buy the poison; but when one cannot obtain it—when one has no money with which to buy it, and is a confirmed user of it? Then one is dangerous, then one is lost. Hunger will make a man a thief, but the hunger for opium will make him a murderer. There is a saying here—"At first you eat opium, but in the end it will devour you." ”

“ With the end of the war, the increase in ships, and general trade revival, we may yet see compensation for the loss of China. With the increase of drug addicts in the United States, it may be that in time America will no longer be classed under "other countries" but will have a column all to itself.
In another table we find a comparison as to the number of chests of provision or export opium and of excise opium, or that intended for consumption in India. Thus:
Each chest contains roughly about one hundred and forty pounds. ”

“ I am pleased to learn from your letter, that anti-opium leagues are being formed among the Chinese in British Columbia, with the object of trying to check the use of opium voluntarily. Among the well-wishers of mankind, there can be, I think, but one opinion as to the attitude which should be assumed toward this evil, which, once existent, does so much to destroy not only the lives of individuals, but the manhood of a nation. ”

“ That the national use of opium has not dulled the national intellect must be the testimony of every truthful European who has ever tried to get the better, in a bargain, of a Chinese man, woman, or child. That the national use of opium has undermined the national health surely will be said by no one who has gone through China with eyes half open. ”

“ Hart, Inspector-General of Chinese Customs, considerably less than one per cent. of the population is addicted to opium-smoking, while those who smoke it to excess are few. More to be feared [pg 208] is the use of opium as a poison, especially among Chinese women. The government raises large sums from the import duty on opium, and tacitly connives at its cultivation in most of the provinces, where the traders and mandarins share between them the profits of this officially prohibited drug. ”

“ Yet in these very regions poor peasants have been put in cages and left to starve because they dared to let the poppy beautify their fields, and perhaps the very next year some neighbor was prodded into chronic invalidism by soldiers’ bayonets because he had not planted poppies. Thus things go on throughout a large part of China, and opium is probably produced in fully as large quantities as ever, all the noisy demonstrations of burning, in a few of the larger cities, piles of opium-pipes and confiscated opium to the contrary notwithstanding. ”

“ It is more deadly than arsenic, because by arsenic the suicide dies at once, while the opium victim suffers untold agonies and horrors and dies by inches. It is all very well for the men who know nothing about the effect of opium to do all the talking about the harmlessness of this pernicious drug; but they should come through this once fair land of Yün-nan and see everywhere—not in isolated districts, but everywhere—the ravaging effects in the poverty and dwarfed constitutions of the people before they advocate the continuance of the opium trade. ”

“ No civilized country now openly permits the sale of opium, although there is still a good deal of it used in practically all parts of the world. The effects of lassitude, subsequent ecstasy, and stupefaction are due to an alkaloid, the continued use of which forms a drug habit of serious consequences. Parts of China, Turkey, Persia, and Siam are said to be still large users of opium which is chewed, or more often smoked. Until comparatively recently fifteen out of every twenty men in some of these countries were regular users of the drug. ”

“ The use of opium, it must be confessed and lamented, has struck deep into the habits, and extended its malignant influence to the morals of the people, and is likely to perpetuate its power in degrading their character and enervating their energies, as long as the European government, overlooking every consideration of policy and humanity, shall allow a paltry addition to their finances to outweigh all regard to the ultimate happiness and prosperity of the country. ”

“ Or, if the Straits scale of consumption prevails in China, then the quantity of opium imported is only enough to reach one-fiftieth part of the Chinese population, leaving the remaining forty-nine fiftieths to consume the home-grown article. The correspondent goes on to say: “According to the descriptions circulated by the Anti-Opium Society of decimation, emaciation, &c., the Straits Chinamen ought to be all dead men. But they live to disprove the anti-opium theory. Nay more, they are robust, energetic, and hearty beyond all other Eastern races.” ”

“ She has resolved to rid herself at once and forever of the curse of opium. The home production of the drug, and all the ramifications of the vice stand condemned by a decree from the throne, followed by a code of regulations designed not to limit, but to extirpate the monster evil.
In this bold stroke for social reform there can be no doubt that the Government is supported by the best sentiment of the whole country. Most Chinese look upon opium as the beginning of their national sorrows. ”

“ Chinese opium, however, never supplanted Indian opium, being inferior to that raised in the rich valley of the Ganges. The country merely had double quantities of the drug, used straight or blended, to suit the purse or taste of the consumer.
Then, in 1906, the incredible happened. After over a hundred years of steady demoralization, with half her population opium addicts, or worse still, making enormous profits out of the trade, China determined to give up opium. In all history, no nation has ever set itself such a gigantic task, with such a gigantic handicap. ”

“ I have good reason to believe that, even at this day, the number of persons addicted to the habitual use of opium is far beyond the imagination of people generally:—even of persons who have looked into the matter somewhat, but who have never used the drug, or made its use a matter of special observation for years. I have good reason to believe that even now the use of opium is carried on to such an extent, that a census of the victims would strike the country with terror and alarm. ”

“ But England saw a great source of revenue threatened by this reform, as most of the opium comes from the poppy grown in India. So up she comes with her gunboats, this Christian nation, and fairly forces the reluctant rulers to let in the opium under threat of bombardment if they refused. To-day the habit has grown to enormous proportions. It is the curse of China, and the blame for the debauchery of a whole nation lies directly at the door of England and no one else. ”

“ A reduction of the military establishments, besides being a danger in the face of Russia’s advance towards India, would necessitate a corresponding diminution of the independent native armies, a step which would [Pg 123] be unpopular if demanded by our Government. However, this will be necessary if the opium revenue be cut off. ”

“ Some philanthropists have feared that the revenue of over 5,000,000l. a year, derived by the Indian Government from the licensed and carefully-restricted cultivation of the raw material of the valuable drug, is in major degree responsible for the reported influence upon the Chinese of opium smoking. They may be somewhat reassured by the result of a careful European inquiry, officially instituted throughout the Empire. It shows that imported opium is only smoked by the affluent, the luxurious, and well-to-do, or, at most, by one-third of one per cent. of the population ”

“ The opium traffic, forced upon China by the military power of Britain, and maintained by her merchants in India, is murder done for money on a mighty scale. Opium spreads immorality, imbecility, and death through the teeming ranks of the Chinese populations. ”

“ In regard to the opium-import in China, it must be said that the Chinese Government never slackened in its efforts to fight the consumption of the poison. Everywhere anti-opium societies were founded, the members of which vowed to abstain entirely from its use and to work for the conversion of the habitual smokers. The Christian missionaries were called upon for help and to petition, simultaneously with the Foreign Office, the English Government to forbid the opium-trade. ”

“ 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 8,000 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, and the government is determined to keep the opium habit strictly confined to what it deems to be its legitimate use, which use, even, it seems to think, is dangerous enough to require special safeguarding. ”

“ She has no control over the extra-territorial holdings of European powers, for in each treaty port are the foreign concessions already mentioned—German, Austrian, British, French, Russian. And in these concessions, opium may be procured. Simply by crossing an imaginary line, in such cities as Shanghai and Hongkong, can the Chinese buy as much opium as they choose. China will never be rid of this menace till she is rid of these extraterritorial holdings. Opium shops, licensed by foreign governments, are always ready to supply her people with the forbidden drug. ”

“ In the first place, the Chinese government could set up a pretty effective government opium business, if it wanted to, without bothering about the [Pg 82] Indian-grown drug. Opium is produced everywhere in China. The demand has grown to a point where the Indian article alone could not begin to supply it. But, on the other hand, the stopping of the importation is necessarily the first step in combating the evil; for, if the Chinese should begin by successfully decreasing their own production of opium, the importation would automatically increase, and consumption remain the same. ”