and afterwards at Macao, and ever since at Lin-tin, at the mouth of the Canton river. Thus has the name of England become dishonourably associated with the most powerful systematized smuggling that has ever appeared in any age. The Chinese continually appealed against this practice to the recognized laws of nations; and having justice on their side, their remonstrances became more and more embarrassing to the East India government. A new policy was adopted, by which the Company ceased to carry opium to China in its own ships, merely manufacturing the drug, of the required quality, and packing it in chests suited to the increasing difficulty of landing it in China; and then selling it by auction at Calcutta and Bombay, to merchants who took the whole risk of the contraband traffic upon themselves; but were, at the same time, bound by the Company not to trade in any opium but theirs. The English authorities were thus enabled, under the thin veil of diplomatic dishonesty, to ignore any direct connection with a trade by which the Chinese have, ever since, been annoyed and injured.

The character of the traffic became increasingly violent and reckless heavily armed opium clippers brought the drug from India; the receiving ships were strongly manned; and frequently, when the revenue junks of China attacked them, bloodshed was the consequence. Never have British merchants appeared less noble; never have more corruption and violence been mixed up with British trade! It was extended all along the coast; and though its introduction to new districts was invariably attended at first with loss. still the demand was soon created; the vice rapidly extended, and now, instead of 4,000 chests, as in 1820, the enormous number of 80,000 chests have lately been sent into China in one year! The weight of the opium balls so imported to China, in one year, exceeds 10,000,000 lbs., for which £7,000,000 sterling were received from China, in tea, silk, &c., £2,000,000 of which are appropriated by the merchants, the rest by the Company. It is expected that the annual import will soon exceed 100,000 chests.

The mode of using this drug among the Chinese enables them to become intoxicated by a very small quantity. It is not eaten, nor is it smoked, but the fume, produced by the heat of a lamp, is inhaled by the lungs, where it is retained as long as possible, and thus directly affects every delicate nerve in those organs, and enters into the blood which is passing through them. In an instant the blood conveys the poison to the brain, and the whole body and mind is affected. All the fatal effects we have described in speaking of the people of India, are seen in China, only the victims are far more numerous. Though it is impossible to arrive at any exact calculation of their numbers, it is supposed that there are quite four millions of opium drunkards in China. Though they are said to die at the rate of half-a-million each year, their numbers increase. All the sea coast teems with them; the open ports are full of them; and they are fast extending inland. In spite of the cautious policy of the Chinese Government, which has generally avoided conflict

with foreigners, after continued and ineffectual remonstrance, the opium of the English merchants was seized in 1839, by order of the Emperor, and destroyed, to the value of nearly two millions. It is true that the English Government, through Lord Palmerston, had declared that "no protection could be afforded to enable British merchants to violate the laws of the country to which they trade;" it is true that the language of the British people generally was, that "the opium merchants deserved punishment, instead of redress, and would receive reprobation, instead of sympathy;"-the powerful influence of the East India Company, and of the merchants, forced a war with China, in which thirty thousand of the people were slain, chiefly by the Sepoys of the Company. China was prostrated. She paid the compensation demanded. She has not since dared to interfere with the opium traffic; and after twenty years of diplo macy, and two wars, she has been forced, at last, to legalize it.

III. We shall rapidly glance at the influence exercised by the opium trade on the commerce and character of England.

What a magnificent market for every article of British manufacture might have been expected in China! But hitherto little more than two millions' worth a year of British goods have been taken from England by China. The amount does not increase, though every year we receive from China more tea and more silk. The only sufficient reason assigned for this unsatisfactory state of trade is the increasing export of opium from India to China, which excludes British manufactures, and interrupts the proper exchange which would otherwise be established, to the mutual advantage of England and China.

To understand all the bearings of this difficult question, we must keep in view the fact that the English have really two empires,their Indian dominion being carried on entirely on different principles to those that prevail at home. Frequently the policy and interests of the two Governments have been as completely opposite as if they had represented different nations. Almost at the same time that the Home Government agreed by treaty to discountenance the opium traffic to China, the East Indian authorities had ordered an enlarged growth of the poppy, and were preparing for a greater sale of opium in China. This double policy has given rise to wars with China, which, though carried on in the name of England, were mainly intended to support the East Indian traffic in opium, which has been upheld in preference to the claims of honour and honesty, and the interests of the merchants and people of England. The good name of England has been dishonoured in the eyes of other nations; continual misunderstandings have occurred between the Chinese and ourselves, which could hardly have arisen out of legitimate commerce; instead of obtaining an abundant supply of cotton and sugar from India, we are driven to the slave systems of America and Cuba; the progress of religion is obstructed, both in India and China; and, at home and abroad, every principle of duty and interest requires the suppression of the Indian opium trade.

A.

NEGATIVE ARTICLE.-I.

A GLANCE at the flaming pamphlets and newspaper correspon. dence upon this most intricate question at once shows the extent to which the advocates of the suppression of the opium trade are either ill-informed, or misinformed. The thrilling declamation against the iniquity of the trade, and the solemn appeals made to the conscience of the Christian, and the sense of honour in the Briton, do more credit to the heart than to the judgment of the pamphleteer. Their moral sense has been excited by the recital of the miseries of the opium smoker, and shocked that the East India Company should be the monopolists of the traffic in a drug so pernicious in its abuse as opium; and the shock has affected the intellect. Hence, in the ardour of their zeal, they have advocated a course partly impossible, and partly conducive of the indefinite multiplication, not only of the evils deprecated, but of evils not foreseen. Some of them propose the absolute suppression of the traffic; others would tolerate the production of the drug, but forbid the trade in opium; others again would allow the production and the sale, but wish to deprive the government of India of their monopoly in both the cultivation of the poppy and the commerce in the inspissated juice. Each party has been led to the agitation of the question by the desire to accomplish a twofold object, without perceiving that success in one direction was inevitable disappointment in the other. To protect the miserable smoker in China, and to remove the stain from the British Government, through its monopoly, form their double object. If British national connection be the scandal-and of this there can be but one opinion-then to attempt to abolish the monopoly is laudable. If to deprive the Chinese of the means of indulgence in their favourite narcotic be the end proposed, then the object, however impracticable, is sufficiently philanthropic to command the attention of many in this age and country. The agitators have, however, combined the two, without seeing that success in one of them is inevitable defeat in the other. To abolish the monopoly is to remove a national stigma; but, on the well-established principle of free trade, you give the very facility which you wish to destroy. The removal of restrictions upon any article of commerce is the extension of its production, the diminution of its cost, the improvement of its quality, and, consequently, an indefinite increase of its consumption. You save British honour, but, if opium be an evil, you do not benefit China.

If our amiable declaimers can pursue two necessarily antagonistic objects without seeing their incompatibility, we cannot be surprised that they should laugh at the difficulties which beset each of the objects proposed. For years past the Directors of the Company were embarrassed by serious deficits in their revenue. Their only consolation was the rapid increase in the opium traffic. Some five millions of pounds annually flowed into their exchequer from their profits on opium. Twenty millions had been laid down at once to liberate the slaves in our West India islands, and it was proposed

to the Directors that they should sacrifice the five millions from a sense of honour and humanity. Like the West Indian planters, the Company asked for a compensation, and there appeared no Wilberforce to raise the sum required. Statesmen and able financiers saw no mode of extrication, and shrank from the difficulty. The philanthropists were not to be silenced. Uncharitably imputing the obstacle to the heart rather than the head of our ablest legislators, the agitators renewed the agitation from time to time. To compel them to exercise their inventive faculties, the attempt was made to show that the trade was illegal. No Company could establish a monopoly without an act of parliament, and no such act, they said, could be produced. The act of 1833, which was passed in the first reformed parliament, and which destroyed the Company's monopoly of trade with China, declared that the East India Company should henceforth cease to be a trading and commercial corporation. This enactment in their renewed charter precluded, it was affirmed, their trade in opium. The law officers of the Crown would not endorse the opinion. In innumerable cases, extending over 150 years, the judges of the land had invariably decided that dealing in the produce of one's own lands was not trading in the eye of the law. Without violating the provisions of their charter, the Company held salt pits, and monopolized the sale of salt. They might, therefore, deal in opium grown upon their own territories, without infringing the law. There was, moreover, a loop-hole in this, as in any other act of parliament. It contained a clause which virtually settled the question in their favour. They were to cease to be trading and commercial, except so far as it related to what was "for Government purposes.' The five millions derived from the opium traffic was for Government purposes, and there was an end to all efforts to suppress the traffic on the ground of its illegality. To the difficulties of the financier were added the technicalities of law, and the quibbles of the lawyer. Because the Company dealt in the produce of their own lands, they were not traders; and if they were, it was in their capacity as governors, and not merchants. The trade was not a trade, and as a trade, it was not illegal.

But again, as a trade, and as an illegal trade, it could not be suppressed without injuring vested rights of long standing, without violating compacts with various native princes, without deranging the Indian finances. Our statesmen saw, in the confident air and the tone of the agitators, that difficulties were no more difficulties with the philanthropists than trade was trade with lawyers. They could see no means of reorganizing the Indian revenue, minus the five millions paid by the Chinese smoker; but, said they to the agitators, you do, and we hand over the difficulty to you. Their representatives in parliament came forward with certain resolutions, which Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington affirmed to be the assertion of mere abstract principles, and legislators wanted practical suggestions. A Commission of Inquiry was proposed, and fell to the ground, because such commissions were expensive in both

money and time, and would, after all, elicit nothing new. Nothing daunted, the advocates of China analyzed the question, to make it practical. It has a territorial and a commercial aspect. Viewed commercially, the Company were producers and venders of the drug, and it was thought their end would, in part, be secured, if the Company's monopoly in opium were abolished. Viewed territorially, the Company might, to compensate the loss to their exchequer, tax the growth of the poppy, and levy an impost upon its exportation. That this would remove the stigma upon Britain was clear; but how it would benefit China was never explained. The taxed opium, if still produced, would still find its way to the smoker. Supposing that Bengal was the only opium-growing country, the tax would amount to a prohibition, but a prohibition only to the very poor, who already cannot afford the indulgence. The richer and luxurious classes would, in the case supposed for argument, continue the consumption. That the impost would limit its use to these classes, is not true. Among the evils of the practice, we are told, the greatest is the strength of the passion for its indulgence when once the habit has been formed. The opium eater, or the smoker, will, in the last extremity, sell even his wife and children to obtain opium. To make the article dearer by an impost would, therefore, simply hasten on the last extremity to which the sot is conducted by the habit. A prohibitory impost would not stop the abuse among the rich, for they can afford the dearer article; nor among the habitual smoker, for he would sell his wife and children to buy opium; nor among the very poor, for they already cannot afford it. The effect of restrictive legislation would, after all, fail to benefit the Chinese, even on the supposition that Bengal was the only country where opium was produced.

Before we glance at the other bearings of the question, it will be well to consider more fully the fact, that a fiscal restriction upon the trade would not prevent the extension of the Chinese habit of smoking or eating opium. The mass of the population of the "Celestial empire are on the verge of pauperism, The lower classes cannot indulge in an infusion which is drunk by old women in our almshouses and workhouses. If they cannot afford to purchase the leaf grown at their very doors, it is absurd to suppose that the mass of the "Celestials can indulge in a drug grown in India and Turkey, to such an extent as to call for British interference. From all our consideration of the question, we must exclude the masses of China. If prohibitory duties have any effect, it will be among the classes above the labourer in that country. Now the hankering after stimulants, of one kind or another, is universal among mankind. Forbid man the indulgence of this desire in one direction, and he will gratify himself in another. The Mohammedans are by the Koran forbidden the use of intoxicating liquor, and they have, in consequence, everywhere taken to the use of narcotics, either tobacco or opium, as the substitute. The Chinese are generally dram drinkers, for Confucius did not interdiet spirits.