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.

    65/230 (page 45)
    Yun-nan from Bliamo, in 1880-1, to the Yang-tze. M. Soltan says that in Yun-nan, “ three-fourths of all the land under cultivation is occupied by the Emerald Poppy plant. It is largely cultivated in the valleys, but chiefly in the hills. The poppy pays better than any other crop, for not only does Yun-nan produce all the opium consumed in the pro- vince, but opium forms the principal export, and is carried all over the empire of Burmah. No Indian opium reaches Upper Burmah, the large amount consumed in that kingdom being entirely supplied from Yun- nan, and, it need not be added, no Indian opium enters Yun-nan.” So ranch for Li Ilung-Chang’s solemn assurance, in July last, that his “ Government will take effective measures to enforce the laws against the cultivation 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.” I do not know how far the Society may “support the efforts China is now making ”—but I think I can answer for a great many right-minded men of my country, after the information now given, declining altogether to be associated with either Li Hung-Chang or his Government in such efforts, either on moral or fiscal grounds. As to the latter, and the same great Minister’s declaration, “once for all, that the single aim of his Government in taxing opium will be in the future, as it has always been in the past, to repress the traffic, never to gain revenue from such a source,” I leave it to this ingenious coiner of specious phrases to reconcile this “ single aim ” with his last negotiations with the British Minister to increase the import duties on opium, and better secure the Likin taxes ; and his still later proposal to purchase of the Indian Government the monopoly of the present foreign trade in the drug for the avowed purpose of securing an increased revenue. To any ordinary under- standing it would seem a very difficult undertaking to reconcile the two objects. I leave these facts for the consideration of the Society for the Sup- pression of the Opium Trade, and believe any further evidence on this part of the subject entirely superfluous. But, after all, this argument of force—were it better founded than it is—for the condemnation of our relations with China, in regard more especially to opium, must not be pushed too far. It is especially un- desirable in the interest of missionaries. Force, no doubt, has been em- ployed to bring about all existing conditions of intercourse, political and commercial. By no other means could the state of misrule and arbi- trary exactions, under menace of injury to persons or property, already described as the only system of intercourse recognised by the Chinese, have been put an end to. Prevailing throughout the preceding 200 years, the outbreak in 1840 was the natural and inevitable outcome of the cumulative misdeeds of the Chinese Government and authorities. No doubt it is true, and maybe freely acknowledged, that we “forced” ourselves—our trade (our opium as a part of it, if you will)—but also our missionaries, upon the Chinese Government and people. .And of all these unwelcome intrusions, opposed as they were to the exclusive character and the national policy of this Eastern race, the most objec- tionable element in the whole was the missionary —the most productive of alarm and hostility, and the most persistently and bitterly opposed.