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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    sessions in the East. Wo cannot forget the famines of India. Wo cannot forget what wo suffered in the Indian Mutiny. We cannot forget the destructive wars we have had, and we should endeavour, as far as we possibly can, as far as the influence of England is concerned, to carry out the principles of liberty and of religion, and of morality, as a nation, in all the countries in which we have influence and power. We must not forget that there is a great Being by whom kings rei<m and princes decree justice ; and if we, as a nation, go contrary to those principles, we are sure to suffer for it in the end. I do trust that this meeting, which I rejoice to see is so large and influential, will produce an influence that will be felt, not only throughout the country, but upon the Government. I feel that we have a right to call upon the Government to interfere in a matter of this sort as to which China itself has pronounced its dissatisfaction and its dis- pleasure. I need not now refer more to the subject, but I have great pleasure in asking his Grace, the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom we rejoice to see here to-day, to move the first resolution. The Archbishop of Canterbury.—My Lord Mayor, the beginning of the resolution placed in my hands is to this effect : “That in the opinion of this meeting the opium trade as now carried on between India and China is opposed alike to Christian and international morality and to the commercial interests of this country.” Then follow two other clauses bearing on the mode in which this traffic is to be got rid of. With your leave, my Lord Mayor, 1 will confine myself to the part of the resolution which I have read to you. With regard to the commercial questions involved or the financial difficulties which must arise in India, I have no knowledge, and my opinion would be of very little value, but I have come, after very serious con- sideration, to this conclusion, that the time has arrived when we ought most distinctly to state our opinion that the present course pursued by us in this matter is one that ought to be abandoned, at whatever cost. It is of no use going back to the past except as a warning for the future. The history of the opium war may even now excite some echoes of party feeling which it is better to bury in obliviou. It is a remarkable thing in the history of public opinion on great moral ques- tions, that it takes a long time before the conscience of a nation is distinctly awakened to any evil that exists, and in which it takes part. It is not so very long since one of my predecessors in the see of London, Bishop Porteus, got into very great difficulties because he preached a sermon before the Propagation of the Gospel Society, in which he advocated what then appeared to be an astounding notion, not that the Propagation of the Gospel Society should get rid of its slaves, but that it should run the risk of teaching them a little about Christianity. It was at that time so little according to the conscience of the English nation to take up the cause of slavery, and abolish it in the way in which, thank God, we have seen it abolished, that a man was not allowed, even in the high Christian position occupied by the then Bishop of London, to express his opinion even that slaves ought to be educated as Christians. Now, a time comes in the history of nations when the conscience which has hitherto slumbered awakes, and it is so, I think, with regard to this opium question, that now we have come to that point in which the general feeling of the country is con-