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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    Treaty. As regards the levy of duties on the Indian opium, the moment it passes into the interior, neither the Treaty of Nanking, nor that of Tientsin in 1858, laid the slightest restraint upon the Chinese Government in this respect. While guarding other goods from extor- tions, or prohibitive taxes in the interior, opium was expressly left to the uncontrolled will of the Chinese authority. The legalisation of the opium trade by the latter treaty did not touch this unrestricted power of taxation. It only fixed the amount to be paid as an import duty to the Customs at the port of entry. The sole difference it made was by removing it from the list of prohibited articles, and therefore taking away the right of the Chinese Customs to seize and confiscate both ships and goods engaged in the traffic—a right which they had never exercised, though always at their option. Li-Hung Chang concludes with a peroration worthy of the con- text : — “My Government (he says) is impressed with the necessity of making strenuous efforts to control this flood of opium before it over- whelms the whole country. The new treaty with the United States containing the prohibitory clause against opium encourages the belief that the broad principles of justice and feelings of humanity will prevail in future relations between China and Western nations. My Govern- ment will take effective measures to enforce the laws against the culti- vation of the poppy in China, and otherwise check the use of opium, and I earnestly hope that your society, and all right-minded men of your country, will support the efforts China is now making to escape from the thraldom of opium.” What “ efforts China is now making ” I cannot say ; but of this we may feel sure, that, if they in any degree resemble those hitherto taken by Li-Hung Chang himself and his Government in the past, all right- minded men, of this and every other country, will decline to accept the general increase in the unchecked growth of the native plant over the larger half of China, and away from all foreign influence or competi- tion, as an evidence of the adoption of “effective measures to enforce the laws against the cultivation of the poppy in China, and otherwise check the use of opium.” But enough of this last and futile attempt of the Chinese Govern- ment, and of their apologists, to appear in open court with clean hands as an injured and oppressed party. It is too hopeless a case for further argument, and in no court of equity could such a plaintiff escape being non-suited by a judge, or jury of honest men. The Chinese Govern- ment must be content to stand on common ground with the British in this matter of opium traffic. For any evils that may attach to its con- sumption in China they must take more than an equal share of respon- sibility. The Chinese Government any time during fifty years before the war might, with ease and certainty, have stopped the trade. While treating all foreign powers as tributaries and outer barbarians, and their trade and subjects alike as only tolerated within the Chinese limits by the indulgence of a Suzerain, it regarded them as suppliants with no rights of any kind and never scrupled to stop their trade, murder judicially or otherwise innocent foreigners on various pretexts, and harass the traders with arbitrary orders, and extortionate demands. What prevented them ? And any time since, they had the right ex-