All about opium / edited by Hartmann Henry Sultzberger.

Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: All about opium / edited by Hartmann Henry Sultzberger. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    206/230 (page 186)
    I say that the Anti-Opium Society, in the course of its agitation for the abolition ol this Indo-China opium trade, is vilifying its country- men and blackening this country in the eyes of the whole world, so that the foreigner can convict us out of our own mouths, and gibe at us for hypocrisy and turpitude we are wholly innocent of, and for crimes we. have never committed. I say that the history of this society presents nothing but a dreary record of energies wasted, talents mis- applied, wealth uselessly squandered, charity perverted, and philan- thropy run mad. The members of this society never think, perhaps, of the mischief they have done and arc doing. Here has our govern- ment been trying for the past seven or eight years to agree upon a revised commercial treaty with the Government of China, and here also, side by side, is an irresponsible political body doing its utmost to cripple, paralyse, and defeat our Government in its efforts, taking up in fact a downright hostile attitude to the action of Imperial and Indian Governments, by carrying on an unauthorised, unofficial correspondence with Li Hung Chang, the Prime Minister, and the most influential public man in China, who is a master of the arts of diplomacy, and who is doing his utmost to get the better of us if he can in the matter of the Chefoo Convention. Here, I say, is this society putting forward Li’s audacious and misleading letter to its secretary, Mr. Storrs Turner, as an embodiment of truth and justice. Is this patriotic or proper on the part of this Anti-Opium Society ? Should that body, instead of setting itself up as a junto, with a quasi-official standing, having a monopoly of all the virtues, be allowed by the Government to carry on its mischievous organization any longer ? I think not. I believe there is no other country in the world—not even America, where liberty has run to seed—where such an intermeddling anti-national and mischievous confederacy would be permitted to exist. Instead of trying to thwart Her Majesty’s Government, as it is doing, it should be the duty of its members, of every Englishman interested in China, and, indeed, of the whole country, to strengthen as far as possible the hands of the Government in its endeavour to bring the pending negotiations for a commercial treaty with China to a successful close. Yet what are the present plans of this pragmatical body ? In its latest publication, a compilation of the most fallacious and misleading matter, bearing a title meanly plagiarized from this book, it is announced that the following motion stands upon the Order Book of the House of Commons, and is intended to be moved in the Session for 1883, viz. :— That an humble address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that in the event of negotiations taking place between the Governments of Her Majesty and China, having reference to the duties levied on opium under the Treaty of Tientsin, the Government of Her Majesty will be pleased to intimate to the Government of China that in any such revision of that treaty the Government of China ivill he met as that of an independent State, having the full right to arrange its own import duties as may be deemed expedient. What a modest proposition! The Queen’s Ministers, it appears, cannot be trusted in their negotiations with the Government of China, and Her Majesty in consequence is to be asked to ignore her constitu- tional advisers, and personally inform the Chinese Minister that his Government shall be treated as an independent State, and so forth.