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.

    226/230 (page 206)
    the way—because, while the Government monopoly does tend to restrict the area of growth, this is not the object in view, but the increase of revenue. I must conclude, although I could have wished to make this article more complete, and that space would have allowed me to go fully into the moral aspect of the question, which is deeply interesting. But 1 may at some future date bo enabled to take up this part of the subject. All I can say now is to repeat in substance my evidence before the Special Committee of 1871, which will be found, in extenso, at page 283 of the printed evidence, to the effect that I distrusted the power of any restraining laws and degrees, and believed they must fail, be- cause a craving for something of a stimulating, intoxicating, or narcotic character was universal; and that there had been no country yet dis- covered, and no age of the world, in which stimulants and narcotics of some kind or form had not been in use. They amount to more than fifty in number. They are in every possible form, and yet no race, savage or civilised, has ever failed to discover them, though sometimes by very recondite processes, by distillation and fermentation, but always with the same object and result. I also stated, as I do now, that, after a long residence among the Chinese, and with the evidence before me of whole nations and races like the Chinese, preserving great vigour and exceptional power of labour under the most trying conditions of climate, food and soil, I cannot adopt the conclusion that opium exer- cises no salutary influence, and is simply noxious and destructive. I believe this is only true of those who take it to excess ; that these are not the many, but the few, forming only a small percentage of the whole; and that as a cause of crime it is infinitely less dangerous than intoxicating liquors largely consumed in our own land. If any restricted or prohibitory system could avail in preventing the frightful evils brought on by the abuse of spirituous and other liquors at home, 1 think it should have a fair trial here, before we attempt by forcible means to derange the whole administrative economy and habits of life of the populations of two great Asiatic Empires, respectively containing some 400,000,000 and 250,000,000 of the most industrious and easily governed people in the world. If we cannot succeed at home, we shall certainly not have better fortune in China. I should be glad, in common with many others, if it were possible, without aggravating the evil and bringing new and worse agencies of mischief into play—that the Indian Government should be relieved of all participation in the growing, manufacturing, and selling of the drug, which is not the proper function of a Government. By licenses, passes, and export duties, some distinguished Indian officials have held that a gradual process of transfer might be effected and this desirable end attained. It was on the supposition that such a power was in their hands that I urged that some arrangement based upon successive limitation might be entered into with China with great advantage. How far the allegations or convictions of the missionaries are well founded, or otherwise, as to the obstruction and prejudice created by the opium trade, and our active participation in it, I will not attempt to decide. I am bound to say, however, that if time and space per- mitted, it would not be difficult to show that many other, if not more obvious and influential, causes are in operation, to account for the