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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    wearying the House by giving a great many things as facts, and giving us an enormous number of figures. Mr. Canning got up and com- menced his reply by saying, “ Mr. Speaker, in my long experience, I have found that there is nothing so fallacious as figures except facts.” That may he applied in this present case. I do not think that figures ought to be allowed to interpose. The fact is that we know that it is a mighty evil, physically, morally, financially, and religiously, and it is for us to repress it by every means in our power. But, after all, this is really a religious question, one particularly affecting this kingdom of England. It is remarkable that we are doing more than any nation for the advancement of the Gospel over the habitable globe ,* and remark- able it is that we are doing more than all the other nations put together for the purpose of preventing and repressing the effects of that Gospel. Here we are by our system affecting the 300,000,000 of China. See our commercial system in the South Seas, and the character and conduct of our traders. We are utterly annihilating all hope of pro- moting Christianity there by the conduct of our people in regard to what they call their commercial interests. The people of China, and, I believe, all heathen people, hold the conduct of England and of other nations to be one and the same thing as Christianity. Whatever England does they think is done by Christianity. Whatever England omits to do they think is omitted by Christianity. We are in this way retarding the progress of Christianity to a frightful and almost unspeakable extent. Why, is it not vain for the missionary to preach to them the gospel of peace, of happiness, of purity, and of joy, when they find that all that the good man has delivered to them is contra- dicted by the actions either of our traders, or our Government. It is a deeply religious question. It is one that affects the consciences of the nation. It is one, too, that affects our national stability and happiness. We must look to it, because not only may we be, by our present course, jeopardising the subordinate considerations of revenue, of public honour, and of public peace, but at no great distance of time we may bring into jeopardy the very existence of the British Empire. Rev. E. E. Jenkins in supporting the resolution said,—My Lord Mayor, those of us who have considered this question for years past— the subject of the connexion of the Government with the traffic in opium between India and China—have always felt a sort of despair when we have exhausted the declamation of sentiment and have approached the difficulties which beset the treatment of the evil which we all of us deplore. But if anything can relieve the long-standing depression, it is such a meeting as this, where the platform of unity and representation is so wide that nothing that is patriotic and humane and Christian seems to be excluded from it. What is it that brings together men so widely sundered in judgment and in word ? We have heard what it is. It has been referred to in the speeches to which we have listened. It is the jealousy for the honour of the country whose children we are and whose fame all over the earth is the inheritance of Englishmen, and when that has been assailed, when that has been threatened, there has been no additional motive wanted to bring the sons and daughters of England together. The fact is, my Lord Mayor, there is a common house danger, if I may so speak, and we jump over the boundaries of our little plots of separation