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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    supply tlieir own population. There is a superfluity of evidence, from independent witnesses, in every sense trustworthy, that no Indian opium competes, or has entered into consumption in all this vast region, but some considerable portion of the produce is sent into the eastern provinces, on the other side, chiefly for admixture with the Indian, and to cheapen it. This native produce, being sold at half the price of the Indian, is further favoured by a large differential duty upon the Indian drug. What the extent of the produce may be, no precise information can be obtained. Mr. Hart confessedly only makes a guess, and places it at 100,000 piculs—the same quantity as that imported into the Treaty Port provinces from abroad. But all his official informants admit they can place no reliance upon any native accounts on such a subject. The Chinese authorities themselves, probably, do not know, and are content to tax the fields, and whatever produce they find on sale, or in transit from one province or town to another. But that they do tax and raise a large revenue upon all the native opium they can trace, and under imperial sanction and legal licence, is quite certain. Thus, while we know with certainty the number of opium smokers that can be supplied by Indian opium—that is to say the maximum number it would furnish with an average daily quantity—we cannot know even approximately, the number of smokers of native-grown opium. But whatever the proportion or the number—how is the foreigner responsible ? The Indian drug is absolutely unknown in these provinces, we are assured by merchants and travellers alike. The poppy? there is reason to believe, is indigenous in China. It grows so exlensively over the breadth of Asia, that it is difficult to fix its original habitat. It is certain that no foreign agency first introduced opium to the knowledge of the Chinese. The seeds of the poppy are said to have been used from time immemorial in the preparation of cakes and confections. But, be this as it may, their own authors prove incontestably, that it was known and in common use, though to what extent cannot be ascer- tained, before any foreign trade began. In the Chinese Herbal, com- piled more than two centuries ago, both the plant and its inspissated juice are described, together with the mode of collecting it. Again, in the “General History of the Southern Province of Yunnan,” which was revised and republished in 1736, opium is noticed as a common produce. It is beyond all doubt that the use of opium has been general amongst Asiatics, as a stimulant and narcotic, from a time unknown, and consumed, in one form or another, much as wine, beer, and spirits are consumed all over Europe. Smoking would seem to be the least injurious mode of imbibing its narcotic properties. I stated in my recent article that Sir John Barrow mentions, in his account of Lord Macartney’s Mission in 1792, the prevalent use of the drug by officials and others within the upper ranks of society. In the fourth edition, of 1804, page 152, the following passage occurs:—“The upper ranks indulge at home in the use of opium. Great quantities of-this intoxi- cating drug are smuggled into the country, notwithstanding all the pre- cautions taken by the Government to prohibit the importation of it.” I am accused of having said in my article [that “ there was a large and unrestrained growth of the poppy in China before the Foreign trade existed;” but I never said anything of the kind. How much or how little was grown in the last century there is no means of knowing. And