British Opium Policy and Its Results to India and China

The political results of opium in China.

A VOICE of the highest authority, that of Mr. Gladstone, in speaking of "the Opium War" with China, once sorrowfully declared, that "justice was on the side of the Pagan, not the Christian." If that judgment should be verified by a review of the manner in which, during many years, this dubious drug was conveyed into the unfortunate land, every honest heart must console itself by believing that the clearer a wrong is proved, the more earnest England will be to discover a method of amendment and restitution.

History and method of its introduction.

The Chinese on the coast first became acquainted with opium, as far as can be made out, from the small quantities imported by the Portuguese from Turkey. The annual supply for many years did not exceed 200 chests, and this was chiefly used for medicinal purposes. As early, however, as 1773, the East India Company made some small commercial experiments with the article, but no very encouraging success attended the venture; and parcels which had been shipped to Chinese markets were actually returned to Calcutta for want of a purchaser. The taste, however, was sown, and grew, so that before long a real demand arose; and the Company began to encourage the cultivation of the poppy, and to ship larger and larger consignments to China. Opium was at this time inserted in the tariff-lists of Canton, and subjected to a regular but light impost.

But forty-three years before the Opium War (eighty odd years ago from the present time), the Chinese Government took cognizance of the evils being wrought, and forbade the importation. In the first year of the reign of Kea-king, the introduction of the drug was prohibited by special edict. Those found guilty of smoking it were to be beaten with bamboos, and pilloried; the vendors and smugglers of it were liable to confiscation and even death; and although these penalties were subsequently relaxed, the amended law was most severe, and provided for the condign punishment of mandarins guilty of corruptly favoring the traffic. The Peking Government never varied officially from this attitude down to the time of Lin. Dr. Bowring wrote from Hong-Kong to Earl Malmesbury, under date 5th February, 1853, in terms which show this. He said: --

"Reports have been for some time current, that the extreme necessity of the Imperial Treasury had led to a reconsideration of the proposal to make the legal importation of foreign opium a source of revenue. The subject was several times discussed during the reign of the late Emperor Taou-Kwang; and on one occasion a decree legalizing the import of opium was prepared by the Ministers for the Emperor's approval. When the Imperial pleasure was finally taken, Taou-Kwang prohibited any further reference to the proposal, and said he 'could not change face,' i.e., alter his course."

From the moment, therefore, of this public interdict the trade became illicit, and the great Company washed its hands of it publicly, forbidding its own captains to convey a single chest of opium to China. But the poppy cultivation was not the less encouraged, the difference being that the Government drug was disposed of in Calcutta to speculators. During all those years preceding the war every seer of opium grown was grown notoriously for the smuggler-merchants, whose vessels, the swiftest that could be chartered, lay in the Hooghly, ready to hoist every inch of canvas as soon as the mango-boxes stamped with the "E. I. C." brand could be put on board.^[20] That brand was invaluable to the dealers; it stamped the evil stuff as genuine, and the Chinese "fast crab-man" never wanted to know more than the weight of the chest when he saw upon it the mark that warranted it "Patna red" or "Malva black earth."

[20] The opium boats, too, came down the Ganges in a vast fleet, tom-toms beating as a signal to "clear the way for the Cumpani Bahadur's chests."