climax when Warren Hastings gave a contract for supplying opium to Mr. Sullivan, the son of the Chairman of the Court of Directors, on terms and under circumstances that were considered to be too bad even in those days of extreme badness.

In the same year (1773) that the Court of Directors ordered the opium monopoly to be assumed by the Indian government, they wrote,

We wish we could refute the observation, that almost every attempt made by us and our administrators at your presidency for the reforming of abuses, has rather increased them and added to the miseries of the people we are anxious to protect and cherish. Instituted as chiefs and supervisors have been to give relief to tenants, to improve and enlarge our investments, to destroy monopolies, and retrench expenses, the end has been by no means answerable to the institution. Are not the tenants more than ever oppressed and wretched? Has not the raw silk and cocoons been raised upon us 50 per cent. in price? We can hardly say what has not been made a monopoly.'

There seems to be an apparent inconsistency here between acts and words, and the records according to which we are writing, show that there was wide difference of opinion among the members of the Calcutta Council. Warren Hastings, though opposed to private monopolies, argued warmly for keeping that of opium; and Sir Philip Francis, the reputed author of the letters of Junius, recorded an opposing view of the subject in the following words, extracted from an elaborate State paper written by him on the Revenue of Bengal:

With respect to the revenues which the Government should derive from the manufacture of salt and opium, I declare my opinion that it ought to be by way of duties only. The ancient Government was content with such a duty. The object of the institutions of the present Government, and of all the Company's instructions to us is, to destroy all monopolies. All these orders show that salt was to be left as free and unburthened as possible. Their object was the ease and convenience of the natives. On the subject of opium we have received yet no instructions. The monopoly of this article is highly prejudicial to the foreign trade of Bengal, nor have we a right to consider the whole revenue arising from it as a clear gain to the Company, since it is beyond all doubt that the landed revenue suffers by Government engrossing the produce of the lands.'

In 1775 this monopoly was the subject of much discussion in the Calcutta Council. As our object is to expose the conduct of Great Britain towards China with regard to it, and the deep injury that has been inflicted on ourselves, we will merely observe that every false and fallacious sophistry brought forward delusively in the present day, was argued upon, refuted, replied to, readduced, and met with rejoinders and surrejoinders, as vigorously in the last century as in this. The questions of the flow of specie to the East, of balances of trade, of exports and imports, were reasoned upon then as they are now. The result was the same as in our day; the unscrupulous energy of the few who are deeply interested in opium-smuggling, was exerted to deceive the many who were more honest and credulous. Every principle of political economy was violated to extract a precarious

Commencement of Contraband Traffic.

33

precarious revenue in India by means which must eventually destroy a nation's wealth; the manufacturers and merchants of this country seem determined not to perceive that the opium traffic flourishes at their expense, and that Patnah, Malwah, and Benares, beat Manchester, Sheffield, Glasgow, and Belfast out of the Chinese markets, while we make war with, and destroy our Chinese customers, simply because they are wiser, and, in this respect, better than ourselves. Leaving the sad history of injury and oppression inflicted upon opium-growing ryuts in India, we learn, from the previously quoted Report of a Committee of the House of Commons, that the Council in Bengal commenced the contraband traffic with China, in violation of international law, under the protection of an armed ship, and carried it on without the advice or suggestion of the British factory at Canton, and without the approbation of the Board of Trade at Calcutta. The Report shows, moreover, that in order to embark in this trade, the Company borrowed 200,000l. at a high rate of interest, and allotted portions of the debt to some of their servants. To quote the exact words, it appears, a mere trading speculation of the Council, invading the department of others, without lights of its own, without authority or information from any other quarter. In a commercial view, it straitened the Company's investments. As a measure of finance, it is a contrivance, by which a monopoly, formed for the increase of revenue, instead of becoming one of its resources, involves the treasury, in the first instance, in a debt of two hundred thousand pounds.'

From the same authentic source, we learn that at the time the Government engrossed the monopoly, the produce of opium did not exceed 2,500 chests. The only trade carried on with China in the drug was principally conducted by Portuguese merchants on the Bombay side, who imported it from Turkey, and landed. it in Canton, where it was received at the custom-house as a medicine liable to a duty of about 13s. on 100 lbs. The quantity thus honestly imported annually into Canton was 200 chests,, each weighing about 133 lbs.

No sooner had the Government of India resolved to carry on the contraband aggression against Canton, than there was a rush of competition for vessels to be engaged in the service. Colonel Watson, the chief engineer, and closely connected with the Council, urged successfully the offer of his ship, the Nonsuch,' to carry thirty-two guns, and be well armed and manned for the purpose. A Mr. Thornhill obtained the engagement of the 'Betsy,' on similar terms, and thus the buccaneering began. But with the importation, it was necessary to create among the Chinese a market to make it profitable; and we find the singular fact in the history of the world, that a nation professing the Vol. 1.-No. 1.

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holiest

holiest religion and purest morality upon earth, absolutely introduced a vice before unknown, in order that an otherwise unsaleable drug should find a price in Canton. We have the authority of Sir George Staunton and of opium agents, that the drug, as used by the Chinese smokers, is, after its peculiar process of manufacture, different from that which is so valuable in our pharmacopoeia, and entirely deleterious. It is no longer a medicine, but more intensely a poison.

The next step taken by the East India Company was to diminish the difficulty attendant upon the sale of the contraband drug in small quantities and by dangerous opportunities. Orders were given to establish a large ship at Whampoa, the anchorage for the port of Canton, as a depôt for opium, from whence the native smugglers, who undertook all the risk of landing and running the article, could obtain it in such ways and at such times as suited their desperate hazards. The natural effects of this unparalleled conduct by a professedly friendly power, were soon apparent to the Chinese authorities. Vice produced crime, and crime misery. The beneficial course of commerce was disturbed by the introduction of what was only destructive of the industrial habits and morality of the people. Instead of exports being exchanged for useful manufactures, or paid for in dollars, the means of purchasing British goods were absorbed by indulgence in a vice that was ruinous to its victims, and the country was drained of its circulating specie, which the smuggler carried away instead of the more cumbrous teas, silks, and merchandise that could not be embarked without discovery by the mandarins. Thus trade was injuriously affected by the introduction of a non-reciprocating element. The importation of hardware, woollens, calicoes, &c., tended to the social and moral good of the largest population upon earth; and in proportion as the Chinese benefited by them, they were enabled to produce more abundantly and cheaply tea, sugar, rice, and silk, for our consumption. Every lawful import and export was profitable to both nations. Opium, however, was not only entirely unreproductive, but as its inevitable effect was to destroy life ultimately, and to impoverish and debase it during the shortened period of its existence, every chest that was landed represented, not only an incalculable amount of evil, but the value of British goods which it prevented the people from buying. It was first to be smuggled, then smoked. It was gone with the death-hastening delirium of its victim, who staggered forth impoverished to have again recourse to a fascination from which few, very very few, have been able to emancipate themselves. Delightful as is the shortly-enjoyed intoxication of opium-smoking, the most reckless drunkards, the most licentious sensualists of our own countrymen, have been appalled by its consequences. They have dreaded to indulge

their vessels; while private traders were bound, under as stringent obligations, not to carry any other opium than that manufactured by the Company for the Chinese market, and prepared expressly and avowedly, in quality and packages of quantity, for the purpose of being smuggled. When the Chinese remonstrated with the British representatives, the dishonest answer, always ready, was that the Government did not carry on the trade, and that our laws did not authorise the punishment of our people for a breach of the regulations of a foreign custom-house; the unwarlike Chinese must guard their own coasts against our heavy-armed and powerfully-manned contrabandists.

The course adopted by the Chinese was simple and honest, as became a friendly people. They made laws and issued edicts forbidding their own subjects to trade in opium or to smoke the drug. They remonstrated with our authorities; and, pointing to the desperate acts of both Chinese and English smugglers, to the bloodshed and murders that were of continual occurrence, to the piracy that was growing out of the habits of men who exchanged the peaceful duties of life for the reckless licence of daring contrabandism, they entreated us over and over again to put a stop to opium smuggling, to trade with them on fair and honourable terms, and as they made laws against the traffic, and punished their subjects for engaging in it, appealed to us to do the same, and to establish tribunals at Canton for the adjudication of our own people. It will scarcely be credited, but it was not till after the opium war of 1841-2, that there was any tribunal for the English community in China before which a British criminal could be arraigned. The Chinese were told, and our people were told, that they were amenable, and must submit to Chinese law. Lord Palmerston, in later days, reiterated the same language in the plainest terms, and warned our countrymen that they were not to expect the protection of our Government if they were detected in opium smuggling. The Chinese were informed that they might seize the vessels and punish the culprits. But the cautious authorities of the empire declined the proffered authority over our bad characters. They replied, with the utmost sincerity, that they were ignorant of our laws and customs, and did not consider it just to hold our subjects liable to judgment by Chinese rules, with which the English were unacquainted. They quoted our own professions of good faith, and were so willing to abide by them, that they proposed that if the English would but establish a court, they would make every Chinese subject who had transactions with us amenable to it; and when sums of money were in dispute, Chinese respondents should lodge the amount claimed in the British court to await the British decision upon their cases. But nothing would do: the sheep might argue wisely;

the