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.

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    portion of the Chinese opium-smokers belong to these western pro- vinces, and by all accounts their population is to this day practically unacquainted with foreign opium. Further evidence on this head can hardly be necessary. I will only quote one more testimony, furnished by Mr. Baber, the Chinese Secretary of H.M.’s Legation, and a most intelligent observer, who was sent with Mr. Grosvenor’s mission to Moulmein after Mr. Mar- gary’s murder. . The following is his report on the opium cultivation coming under his observation in his journey to the southern limits of China, through a great tract of country very little known to Europeans :— “We were astounded at the extent of the poppy cultivation both in Ssii-ch’uan and Yunnan ; we first heard of it on the boundary line be- tween Hu-pei and Ssii-ch’uan, in a cottage which appears in an illus- tration given in the work of Captain Blackiston, the highest cottage, on the right of the sketch. A few miles south of this spot the most valuable variety of native opium is produced. In ascending the river, wherever cultivation existed we fouud numerous fields of poppy. Even the sandy banks were often planted with it down to the water’s edge ; but it was not until we began our land journey in Yunnan that we fairly realised the enormous extent of its production. With some fear of being discredited, but at the same time with a consciousness that I am underestimating the proportion, I estimate that the poppy-fields constitute a third of the whole cultivation of Yunnan. We saw the gradual process of its growth from the appearance of the young spike- lets above ground in January or earlier, to the full luxuriance of the red, white, and purple flowers, which were already falling in May. In that month the farmers were trying the juice, but we did not see the harvest gathered. We walked some hundreds of miles through poppies ; we breakfasted among poppies ; we shot wild ducks in the poppies. Even wretched little hovels in the mountains were generally attended by a poppy patch.” These are facts, the important bearing of which on the whole ques- tion can neither be mistaken nor denied. It must now have been made evident beyond dispute that neither before Lin’s high-handed proceedings at Canton in 1839, the one solitary instance of decided action before or since that period, nor sub- sequent to the Treaty of Nanking, has any Chinese authority attempted to give effect to the successive edicts prohibiting the import of opium by foreigners and the culture of the poppy by the natives on Chinese soil. Why have they not ? Up to 1839 they acknowledged no rights of foreigners, and recognised no foreign State except as humble tribu- taries. In the depth of their ignorance and immeasurable conceit, they looked upon all other nations as outside barbarians—without appeal to any law but the will of the Emperor. They knew nothing of inter- national law, if they had ever heard of it, and treated everything foreign with the most profound contempt. If the Emperor, the Chinese authorities, and people, as has been so often represented, were honestly and intently bent on putting an end to all opium trade and smoking, why did they not act up to their asseve- rations ? It has been shown that up to 1820 the foreign import was so insignificant and of so little importance to England or India, that.