human temperament; and to measure all the phases of human capacity.

The physiognomists are not agreed upon the number of shapes in the human hand. D'Arpentigny adopts six, and Dr. Carus four; namely, the elemental, the motor, the sensitive, and the psychical; and he assigns the same number to the foot, viz., the elemental, the sensitive motor, the pure motor, and the athletic motor. The elemental foot is that of the Mass, the sensitive motor is that of the Venus de Medicis, caricatured in the Negro; but when accompanied with a good hand, it indicates elastic power and speed, as in the antique statue of Mercury. The pure motor is the medium foot, indicating nothing; and the athletic motor, symbolising vehemence of will, is that of the Farnese Hercules.

Such is a very brief sketch of the new science, which is to maintain the waning excitement of clairvoyance, table-turning, and spirit-rapping. The talents and eloquence of its German and English expositors may obtain for it an extensive popularity, and philosophers, male and female, will not fail to study and apply its symbols. The phrenologist had some difficulty in plying his vocation, even at the social board; but the open countenance cannot be hid, and he who dippeth his hand with us in the dish,' may be studying in the taper of our fingers, or in the configuration of our nails, the proofs of imbecility, or the indications of crime.

To desire more knowledge of our neighbour than is indicated in his daily life is to seek an unenviable privilege, and to gratify a dangerous curiosity. Society could hardly have existed had such a power been conferred on man; and if it is impertinently assumed, every exercise of it is either an offering to vanity, or a calumny against virtue. Nor is it less dangerous in its intellectual bearing. If the soul of man is inwrought into every part of his corporeal frame, modifying its outline, and moulding its forms, it cannot be otherwise than material. In the interest, then, of morality and truth we warn our readers against speculations thus fraught with danger. In the blue heavens above, on the smiling earth beneath, within its deepest caverns, teeming with the remains of primeval life,-in its ocean depths, instinct with wondrous creations;-and in the arrangements of the social world to which we belong, there is ample scope for the exercise of our noblest faculties. Science has never derived any truth, nor Art any invention, nor Humanity any boon, from those presumptuous mystics who riot amid Nature's subverted laws, burrowing in the caverns of the invisible world, and attempting to storm the impregnable sanctuary of the Future.

ART.

ART. III.-1. The Opium Trade. By D. Matheson, Esq. Edinburgh Constable and Co. 1857.

2. The Contraband Traffic in Opium the disturbing element in all our Intercourse with China. London: Seeleys.

3. Rise and Progress of British Opium Smuggling. By MajorGeneral Alexander. London. 1850.

4. A Word about Opium; and more Words about Opium. By the Same.

5. Opium Revenue of India. London: Allen and Co.

6. The Question Answered. A reply to last named. Seeleys. 7. The North British Review, February, 1857.

8. The Edinburgh Review, April, 1857.

9. The Reports of the House of Commons, from 1781 to 1783. Vols. V. and VI.

"

10. Insults in China.' Parliamentary Blue Book, 1857.

11. And other Parliamentary Papers relating to China.

6

FELIX qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,' sounds but commonplace. Turn the words into plain English, and we lose the point of an aphorism in our familiarity with the language and everyday ideas to which we are accustomed; while, quoted as they stand, they seem rather to enrich the graces of eloquence, or supplement its deficiencies, than successful in drawing attention to the philosophy that is embodied in one of those proverbial expressions, which have been happily described as the wisdom of many, and the wit of one.' 'The knowledge and power of man,' writes Lord Bacon, are coincident; for, whilst ignorant of causes, he can produce no effects.' True as this is in interpreting nature, and extending the empire of man over the creation, we fear that with regard to the subject upon which we are about to enter, our readers will be led to a conclusion that in the extension of political empire by man over his fellows, the most calamitous effects are produced by power, while we remain wilfully ignorant, or careless, of the causes that lie open to research.

We have put the foregoing as a preface to what we shall bring under consideration regarding the present position of affairs in China, of which we believe the cause to be as infelicitous as it is generally unknown or misunderstood. England is in death-dealing antagonism with the most populous, and yet the weakest and most unaggressive empire upon earth; and we are carrying bloodshed and devastation to the homes of millions of the human race, against whom neither has war been formally proclaimed, nor the constitutional sanction of our Parliament given for the expense and loss which it involves. For such a state of things there ought to be some reason as readily assignable as having to deal with

the

First Traces of the Opium Monopoly.

29

the consequences of an earthquake, or to meet the sudden exigencies of a political convulsion, which the very existence of society requires to be suppressed with the stern promptitude of avenging justice. It is because we can find no such reason that we are induced to bring before our countrymen a simple narrative of events that have occurred in our intercourse with the Chinese ; and in doing so, we must remind them that the limitation of our space obliges us to be, not only concise, but to condense the subject as much as is compatible with the clearness of the information we are desirous to impart.

It may seem strange that we should seek for the cause of the present war in the dusty records of the Parliaments of last century. In them, however, is to be discovered the germ of that mighty evil, which, bedewed with blood and tears, has expanded with frightful rapidity, cast its upas influence over the fairest portions of the East, poisoned with the deadly exhalations of the opium traffic the pure breezes which should have wafted the blessings of beneficial commerce from shore to shore, and made the name of Britain a byword and a reproach among all the nations of the earth.

In that period of our Indian history which the genius of Macaulay has so vividly brought before us in his remarkable Essays on the lives of Warren Hastings and Lord Clive, we can perceive the growing consolidation of the power we have hitherto wielded in the East, and the first transition from unprincipled, desultory aggression of rapacious traders, to the final assumption of all governing authority by the Ministers of the Crown. Step by step we have arrived at this consummation, until in A.D. 1858 the traditional prophecy of the native Indians has been fulfilled with at least oracular accuracy, and though not in the way that they imagined or desired, the Koompānee kā Rāj has passed away exactly at the period of its predicted century of duration after the battle of Plassey. A new rule is now to be inaugurated, for better or for worse, as the unrolling of the solemn future only can develop.

The first traces of the baneful opium monopoly are to be discovered in the annals of the year 1761, when the servants of the East India Company were not paid by adequate salaries, but obtained remuneration for the duties they performed, from the profits each derived by trading on his own account. When the Company obtained a grant of the Dewanee of Bengal from the sovereign of Delhi, the oppression which had been carried on under some faint possibility that natives might obtain redress from their own authorities, to whom appeal might legally, if not effectually be made, was hopelessly aggravated by the relentless rigidity of monopolies, established wherever there were European

agents.

agents. In the Ninth Report from a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1783 are to be found references to the system which had previously prevailed; when,' in the words of the Report,

'The servants, for themselves or their employers, monopolised every article of trade, foreign and domestic; not only the raw merchantable materials, but the manufactures; and not only these, but the necessaries of life; or what, in those countries, habit has confounded with them; not only silk, cotton, piece goods, opium, saltpetre, but not unfrequently, salt, tobacco, betel-nut, and the grain of most ordinary consumption.'

The acquisition of the Dewanee in 1765, having brought the East India Company into the immediate government of the country, extended and confirmed all the former means of monopoly; and we learn what were the consequences, from a letter addressed by the Court of Directors to the Council in Bengal, admonishing them that,—It is with concern we see in every page of your consultations, restrictions, limitations, prohibitions, affecting various articles of trade;' while, on their part, the authorities in the Indian Presidency confess, that these monopolies of trade were the foundation of all the bloodshed, massacres, and confusions which have happened of late in Bengal.'

Our narrative will be given, as nearly as may be convenient, in the already written language of history: should our readers require more recondite evidence of the facts we adduce, we must refer them to the records of Parliament from the year 1757 onwards, which they will find to be a mine from which we can but present some extracts of its ore. During the time of the Moghul Emperors, the princes of that race, who omitted nothing for the encouragement of commerce in their dominions, bestowed large immunities and privileges on the East India Company, exempting them from several duties to which their natural-born subjects were liable. The Company's dustuk, or passport, secured to them this exemption at all the custom-houses in the country. The Company not being able, or not choosing to avail themselves of their privilege to its full extent, indulged their servants with a qualified use of the passport, under which, by themselves or in association with natives, the servants carried on a trade which afforded full compensation for the scanty means of living allowed by their masters in England. In the novel position in which the Company found itself by the grant of the Dewanee, and of which it understood neither the relations nor legitimate power, not only did the local government consider itself a privileged trader in other States, but its subordinates intruded their private adventures upon the territories of potentates, in the prosperity of whose countries or commerce they had neither interest nor duty. The first measures were simple evasions of the ancient subjection that was due to the authority of the Moghul Empire. In a short time the passport,

or

Rapacity of the Company.

31

or dustuk, was used by the Company's servants without restraint, and their immunity covered all the merchandise they monopolised. A neighbouring nabob, named Cossim Ali Khan, bore the yoke of this imperious commerce with even greater impatience than the other native rulers. He saw his own subjects excluded as aliens from the profits of their own trade, and the revenues of the prince overwhelmed in the commercial ruin of his subjects. Finding remonstrance vain, he had recourse to a bold expedient; and, to place his own people on a footing with the foreigners who arrogantly usurped their rights, he abolished all duties and imposts throughout his territory. The government at Calcutta promptly denied the power of the prince thus to protect his subjects, and his fall was hastened by the just policy he had adopted.

While the servants of the Company were so arrogantly aggressive upon the rights of the people of India, they were equally unfaithful to the interests of their employers. Instead of providing investments required for the corporation of proprietors in England, all, from the members of council down to the lowest ranks of the service, were bent upon realising the largest profits from their iniquitous monopolies. The goods purchased by the servants were sent home in ships belonging to their masters, whose remonstrances were met by the not less bold than fallacious argument, that it was more for their advantage to dispose of the merchandise and be remunerated by a commission for doing so, than to incur the risks of a commerce which so rapidly enriched every one who engaged in it.

It was impossible for matters to continue in this course, and one of the wisest and best measures of Clive's chequered administration, was to put an end to the system of private trade, and initiate the better policy of paying public servants by salaries proportionate to the duties and responsibilities of their offices.

In the general suppression of monopolies, however, there was still a clinging to three which were particularly lucrative-those of opium, salt, and saltpetre. We will confine ourselves to the history of the first, which was not then retained for the purposes of the government in the way in which it is at present carried on. The authorities in India were prompt to yield a partial obedience to the orders sent from England, and at once proceeded to deprive all inferior officers and servants of their privileges of trade, while they appropriated to themselves the monopoly of opium, and divided the profits accruing therefrom as a compensation for losses alleged to have been sustained by members of council and others of the highest officials in the assignment of salaries. The pecuniary advantages derivable from the monopoly, whether by contracts or agencies, were made over to different parties, according to the prevailing influences in the Calcutta Council, until corruption reached its