(^Drnell Htttocraita Etbtatg 
 
 3)tl|ara. ■Nfui gnrk 
 
 CHARLES WILLIAM WASON 
 
 COLLECTION 
 
 CHINA AND THE CHINESE 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 CHARLES WFLLIAM WASON 
 
 CLASS OF 1876 
 
 1918 
 
Cornell University Library 
 DS 740.5.G7F94 
 
 England China and opium :three essays. 
 
 3 1924 023 149 986 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023149986 
 
ENGL AM), CHINA, AND OPIUM. 
 
 THREE ESSAYS, 
 
 Beprmied, with slight alterations, from the 
 OoktempoeAby 'Bbvikw. 
 
 HON. SIR EDWARD FRY," 
 
 OITE OE THE iUDflES OF THE HIGH OOUET OP J0STIOE. 
 
 ,v3tonBpn: 
 
 EDWAED BUMPUS,"" 
 5 AND .6, HOLBOBN BAES. 
 
 MDCCCLXXVirl. 
 
ENGLAM), CHINA, AND OPIUM. 
 
 THBEE ESSAYS, 
 
 Reprinted, with slight alterations, from the 
 
 CONTEMPOEAET REVIEW. 
 
 HON. SIR EDWARD FRY, 
 
 ONE OF THE JUDaES OF THE HIOH OOTJET OF JUSTICE. 
 
 Honllon : 
 
 EDWAKD BUMPUS, 
 5 AND 6, HOLBOBN BARS.' 
 
 MDCCCLXXVIli. 
 
lONDOIT : 
 
 OILBEBT AKD EITINGTON, PEIITTEES, 
 
 ST. johm's SQUABB. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The following pages are a reprint, with slight 
 alterations, of three papers which appeared in the 
 Contemporary Review of February, 1876, June, 
 1877, and January, 1878. The papers were the 
 result of an independent endeavour on my part to 
 ascertain the real right or wrong of our relations 
 with China and the Opium Trade. They were 
 written in entire independence of the Anti-Opium 
 Society : but they are now reprinted at the instance 
 of the Committee of that body (The Anglo- Oriental 
 Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, 
 8, Buckingham Street, Strand, W.C). 
 
 E. F. 
 
 August, 1878. 
 
CHINA, ENGLAND, AND OPIUM. 
 
 I. CHINA'S HATEBD OF ENGLAND. 
 
 (Reprinted from the Contemporary Review, February, 1876.) 
 
 Parliament is summoned to meet on tlie 8tli of 
 February, for tte despatch of business ; and amongst 
 the questions which must come under consideration 
 are our relations with China. Not only has Mr. 
 Margary been murdered in Yun-nan, but four persons 
 attached to the British Embassy were, in July, 
 maltreated in a village not forty miles from Pekin, 
 and other outrages of a more or less serious 
 character are reported from Pekin and Tientsin. 
 The hostihty of Chinese against Enghsh, so often 
 latent to us in this country, has again become 
 patent. Speaking on the subject of Mr. Margary's 
 murder, at Liverpool, in October last. Lord Derby 
 used language characterized by his usual sobriety 
 and wisdom. " For years past," he said, " it has 
 seemed probable to careful observers that some 
 collision of this kind would take place. It has 
 
come at last, and we must do our best to bring it to 
 good account, and make it the means of putting our 
 relations on a better footing in future." 
 
 It is impossible to think for a moment of our 
 relations with China, without recurring to the 
 opium question. In an interesting paper on those 
 relations, in the November number of the Fort- 
 nightly Review, Dr. Bridges concluded with an 
 almost despairing allusion to this question, as if it 
 were one about which there is no real controversy 
 as to the merits, and yet no hope of those merits 
 being attended to, or allowed really to govern our 
 counsels. There is too much ground for such a 
 feeling ; and yet I have such faith in the good 
 feeling of my countrymen, that I believe that if 
 they could once realize what it is that we have done 
 and are doing as regards opium, they would rise as 
 one man, and get rid of the accursed thing, which, 
 as sure as there is a moral government in the 
 world, will one day or the other find us out. 
 
 India is a long way off ; China is still further ; 
 the Opium War was a long time ago ; the opium 
 question is continually referred to, and as con- 
 tinually passed over, — so that most of us feel at once 
 ignorant and weary of it, and so pass on to the 
 things more ready to our hand. All these causes 
 are operative to dull the consciences of most 
 Englishmen as regards the opium question : and 
 even those who have been most stirred by a sense 
 of the evil of our doings have not always been wise 
 in their proposals for reform. 
 
The real evil of our dealings with China is this : 
 the Indian Government is interested in the sale of 
 opium in two ways — first, as the proprietors of a 
 certain quantity of opium raised in Bengal, and, 
 secondly, as the owners of a transit-tax paid on 
 other opium raised in native States and shipped at 
 Bombay. In these two capacities we have long 
 desired and still desire that China should buy opium. 
 The Chinese Government has long beheved and still 
 beheves opium to be prejudicial to its people; it 
 has long desired, and I believe still desires, to 
 prohibit its growth and import; but, from the 
 Opium War down to this hour, England has 
 forced opium on China, and thereby has produced 
 and is producing in the minds of the Chinese author- 
 ities and people a sense of wrong and a hostility 
 to England. It is true that this is not the only 
 source of hostile feehngs, and that on some, though 
 I fear not on aU the other points in controversy, we 
 are somewhat less in the wrong. But of all the 
 sources of this feehng, opium is the principal, and 
 therefore I aver that this feeling on the part of the 
 Chinese is just and reasonable, and that in any 
 quarrel which springs from that feeling, England's 
 mouth is stopped from complaining, for England is 
 the source and origin of that feeling. 
 
 Th e interes t of th e Indian Government in ..apuim 
 is very large. It retains, as I have said, in its own 
 hands a monopoly of the right to grow and manu- 
 facture opium in Bengal ; thegross_revenue_frqm 
 thi3jourca4n^-^1872 -3 am ounted to upwards of ^six 
 
^illionsjterliiigJ-- Beyond this, there is a quantity 
 of opium grown in Malwa, in the regions of Central 
 India, and within the territory o£ native States, which 
 is shipped at Bombay, and which is taxed on its 
 transit through our territories. The amount of these 
 pass fees received in 1872-3 was upwards of two and 
 a half millions sterling,^ and the produce of Malwa 
 is stated to have trebled within the last three years. 
 This being the state of things, it has by some 
 persons been suggested as a remedy, that England 
 should abandon the monopoly practically in favour of 
 private trade. This is a strangely erroneous issue 
 to raise; for surely it is absolutely unimportant 
 whether we raise revenue by a monopoly or by a tax. 
 To me it seems idle, or very nearly idle, to harp on 
 the difference between the Indian Government grow- 
 ing opium and permitting it to be grown ; for the 
 responsibihties of a despotic government are greater 
 than those of a free - State. To me it seems idle to 
 suggest that there is any wrong in a Government 
 deriving income from a poison ; for, for my part, I 
 would tax gin and whisky to the uttermost. Further- 
 more, it seems to me idle to complain of the tax and 
 the monopoly in themselves, for both might be the 
 means of lessening the growth and the production 
 of opium, just as in Bengal the tax on ganja (the 
 spirit derived from hemp) has been levied so as in 
 the course of fifteen years to double the income and 
 
 1 Blue Book— East India (Progress and Condition), 1872-3 
 p. 9. 
 ' Ibid. 
 
lessen the consmnption by a third.^ But what I do 
 object to is that, being interested, as I have pointed 
 out, in the sale of opium, the Government has 
 worked both tax and monopoly alike for one purpose, 
 and for one purpose only, viz., the acquisition of the 
 largest amount of gain, and that without regard 
 to the moral results on China, and in defiance of 
 the wishes of the Government and people of China. 
 
 Few Eng hshmen look back on t he Opium JWar^ of 
 1840-42 with any other feeling than shame ; and well 
 mary-they feel shame. The trade in opium was not 
 inerelyiIlicitj-bTlt"was opposed then, as it is now, to 
 the conscience at once of the governing classes and 
 of the mass of the Chinese people. T he op erations 
 of the smugglers were of the most audacious and 
 violent description. Driven from Macao, they took 
 up their position in the island of Lintin ; driven from 
 then ce, they spread their operat i"Ti« alnng tJie-aa-Hf, 
 coast and up the Canton Eiver as far as Whampoa— 
 Tfc^wxis, then, no wonder ff the Chinese Gov ernment 
 
 ^proceeded~mth_something of severity agaiiist- this 
 illicit and wicked trade : and the successful demand 
 of the Chinese- Government for the delivery up and 
 destruction of all the opium in British ships, whether 
 on the Canton River or on tbe coast of China, appears 
 to me not to have been unreasonable or beyond the 
 rights of a sovereign State in defence of its own 
 institutions, and for the protection of its people from 
 what it honestly beheved to be a curse. For the 
 
 ' Blue Book — East India (Progress and Condition), 18,72-3, 
 p. 10. 
 
10 
 
 destruction of this opium, as is well known, we^oom-- 
 penedTOhSaTto pay 6,000,000 ddlarsJncreasin£^o^^^ 
 ~^^^^J5j^S,660j600JgTt'hQ debts of certain insol- 
 vent merchants, and 12,000,000 for tlie expenses of 
 TiEe" war! ~~ 
 
 It is noteworthy that, having, in 1842, compelled 
 payment of these 6,000,000 dollars for the value of 
 the destroyed opium, we,, in the following year, by 
 the treaty signed at Hoomun Chae, recognized the 
 right of the Chinese authorities to seize and confiscate 
 all goods, whatsoever their nature and value, which 
 might have been smuggled, and to prohibit the ship 
 from which the smuggled goods were landed from 
 trading further, and to send her away so soon as her 
 accounts were adjusted and paid.* 
 
 The war in which England and China were, in the 
 year 1857, involved, and which had its origin in the 
 affair of the Arrow, was ended by the Treaty of 
 Tientsin. One of the most important results of that 
 Treaty was that by the agreement of 8th November, 
 1858^^madej5-|)U:rs«aiice^ this^reaty, the Chinese 
 Gi)JiBnimenirjiB\^ed^o_o^ -admtted 
 
 ' opium as an article of import,_subject- toa certain , 
 "^^^ty. The wholeTiistory of the trade and the pro- 
 visions with which the concession was surrounded,' 
 all show that in this concession the Chinese yielded 
 only to superior force. 
 
 Such a course of violence seems to me wicked in the 
 
 * Article 12 of the Treaty. 
 
 ° This agreement will be found in Herstlet's Treaties, vol. xi. 
 p. 97. See also infra, p. 49. 
 
11 
 
 last degree. I believe, but I wiU not now urge, that 
 opium is a poison, and that it ruins the bodies and 
 souls of thousands of men. For my hne of thought, 
 no such proposition is needful ; it is enough that the 
 Chinese Government honestly objected to it. But I 
 win carry my argument a step further, and without 
 discussing whether some men can eat opium without 
 harm, or whether it acts first on the mind or the 
 body, or whether it is worse than gin or not so bad, 
 this I will say, almost without fear of contradiction, 
 that opium is a drug of such a character that the 
 Chinese Government were at liberty, if they so deter- 
 mined, to hold it to be a poison, and that the Indian 
 Government and BngHsh diplomacy had no right to 
 say, " Ton shall not hold it a poison." Just consider 
 these four points : (1) that we English people have 
 rl etpT Tnin ed jthat^ in J Bngla nd opium is a poison, and 
 have regulated its sale as^^55ch ; ^ (2) that in the 
 Treaties" with Japan entered into by Lord Elgin we 
 have agreed to a prohibition of opium as an article 
 of commerce, the American treaty with Japan doing 
 the same ; (3) that our Indian Government has dis- 
 couraged the consumption of opium in India, and 
 that (to refer only to two eminent authorities) Sir 
 George Campbell and Sir William Muir have both 
 recently referred to a taste for this drug amongst 
 our Indian fellow-subjects as a source of regret ; and 
 (4) lastly, that Sir T. Wade, her Majesty's ambas- 
 sador at Pekin, thus recorded his opinion on the 
 
 ' Statute 31 and 32 Vic. c. 121. 
 
12 
 
 subject in his memorandum respecting the revision 
 of the Treaty of Tientsin : — 
 
 " It is to me vain," he wrote,' " to think otherwise of the use 
 of the drug in China than as of a habit many times more per- 
 nicious, nationally speaking, than the gin and whisky drinking 
 which we deplore at home. It takes possession more insidiously, 
 and keeps its hold to the full as tenaciously. I know no case of 
 radical cure. It has insured in every case within my knowledge 
 the steady descent, moral and physical, of the smoker, and it is so 
 far a greater mischief than drink that it does not, by external 
 evidence of its effect, expose its victim to the loss of repute which 
 is the penalty of habitual drunkenness. There is reason to fear 
 that a higher class than used to smoke in Commissioner Lin's day 
 are now taking to the practice." 
 
 I confine myself to these few facts, but every one 
 knows that there is an enormous mass of corrobo- 
 rating testimony. 
 
 Many people will be convinced by such facts as 
 these that the desire of the Chinese Government to 
 exclude opium was and is a sound and wise one ; 
 but whether this be so or not, no one who afiiects to 
 be a reasonable creature can say that their objection 
 to opium was frivolous ; no man can say that their 
 fixed opinion on the point was or is unreasonable. 
 Even if it were frivolous and unreasonable, it is at 
 least doubtful to my mind whether any foreign 
 country had a right by force to overrule such a 
 decision of a government, and thereby to cripple the 
 authority of the State, and to help on anarchy ; but 
 being neither frivolous nor unreasonable, I say that 
 such a decision ought to have been respected, and 
 
 ' Blue Book — China (No. 5, 1871), Correspondence respecting 
 the revision of the Treaty of Tientsin, p. 454. 
 
13 
 
 that its being overborne by force was an act of 
 high-handed injustice for -which we can feel nothing 
 but shame. 
 
 " But what." it wUl be said, " is the use of going 
 back to the history of bur relations with China long 
 years ago, and to the doings of a generation that 
 has nearly passed away ? — why trouble about the 
 irrevocable past? — ^the thing is done and ended, 
 and the sin, if sin there were, is accomplished, but 
 it was the sin not of us but of our fathers." 
 
 The answer is a very plain one. The thing is not 
 done and ended — the policy which our fathers 
 pursued we are pursuing still. The resistance to 
 the introduction of opium, which led to the Opium 
 War, is stiU made with a noble persistency by the 
 Chinese authorities and the Chinese people, and we 
 are, with a yet greater but most ignoble persistency, 
 forcing the accursed thing into the ports and up the 
 rivers of China. The wicked poHcy of thus violating 
 the national conscience of China, rests on our 
 shoulders as a burden not of past but of present 
 sin; our fathers slew the prophets, and we build 
 their sepidchres. 
 
 From the end of the Opium "War down to the 
 present time, our diplomatic relations with China 
 bear witness to our anxiety to force opium on China, 
 and the desire of the Chinese to resist it. 
 
 The treaty of Tientsin, stipulated for the revision 
 of its tariff provisions every ten years, and on the 
 completion of the first decennial period in 1869, Sir 
 Eutherford Alcock consented to the increase of the 
 
14 
 
 import duty on opium. His so doing created great 
 alarm in the Indian Government authorities. The 
 ratification of this revision was finally refused by 
 the Home Grovernment principally on the repre- 
 sentations of the China merchants in England. 
 
 I have before me " Papers relating to the Opium 
 Question," printed at Calcutta by the Indian 
 Government in 1870. The volume contains, amongst 
 other things, correspondence extending over from 
 eight to ten years, between the various officials 
 employed, with regard both to the Bengal and the 
 Malwa opium ; and the correspondence is as simply 
 devoted to the question of how best to maintain 
 and increase our revenue from opium, and is as free 
 from any taint of moral considerations, as would be 
 the correspondence between the members of a firm 
 of whisky and gin merchants carrying on trade in 
 Dublin, and Edinburgh, and London, and having to 
 exchange their views on the prospects and state of 
 their trade. The officials are not to be blamed for 
 this ; they are set to raise and sell opium, with a 
 very single eye to revenue, and they do it. No one 
 can read this correspondence and doubt that the 
 Indian Government pursues the production of 
 revenue, whether from the monopoly in Bengal, or 
 the transit dues on Malwa opium with this simple 
 end and aim. 
 
 But the matter does not need an appeal to this 
 correspondence. The motives of our Indian Govern- 
 ment and its policy with regard to opium are patent 
 and unmistakable. For the purpose of maintaining 
 
15 
 
 and increasing our opium revenue, tlie Government 
 has carefully studied the Chinese market ; it has 
 sent messengers to China to find out how the trade 
 might best be advanced. With this view it has 
 been proposed to direct a special inquiry as to the 
 possibiHty of extending the cultivation of opium in 
 the districts of the north-western provinces ; for 
 this purpose our consuls in the Chinese ports 
 regularly report on the condition and prospects of 
 the opium trade, and for this purpose the Times, in 
 February of last year, called attention to the pro- 
 priety of appointing a commission of inquiry to 
 ascertain the probable results of Chinese competition 
 with our opium trade. For this purpose^ it _can- 
 hardly be doubted, th^^fediaS— Governm^ent' are 
 anxious to open up the trade route through B^urmah, 
 and Wto pour a fresh streasQ-xif^poiscm direction 
 the western j)rpyinces,_Q£ China. It stands con- 
 fessed that, like prudent people, we take care of our 
 eight miUions a year; but whilst we do so, and 
 maintain pressure upon China, we cannot deny that 
 we are the lineal successors of those who waged the 
 Opium War. 
 
 But then it is said, " Oh, that would be all very 
 well, if the resistance of China to opium were an 
 honest one ; but it is not an honest one, it is only a 
 sham, and we have proof positive that it is only a 
 sham, for China herself permits, nay encourages, the 
 growth of opium." Now, it is perfectly true that 
 China, which used to punish the growth of the poppy 
 with death, has within the last few years connived 
 
16 
 
 at, or, if you will, permitted or encouraged its growth: 
 but it is equally clear to my mind tliat tHs policy 
 has been dictated, not by any willingness to allow 
 the use of opium, but simply by the feeling that, as 
 its consumption is inevitable through the pressure of 
 England, it is better that the opium to be consumed 
 should be raised in China than in India. " If we 
 must see our people use the accursed drug, let us, 
 and not England, gain the profit, and let us defeat 
 England's selfish policy, and at least taste the sweets 
 of revenge." 
 
 I believe, therefore, not only that the sentiment of 
 China remains true in its hatred of opium, but that 
 we English, by the policy which we have pursued, 
 are morally responsible for every acre of land in 
 China which is withdrawn from the cultivation of 
 grain, and devoted to that of the poppy ; so that the 
 fact of the growth of the drug in China, instead 
 of lessening, ought only to increase our sense of 
 responsibility. 
 
 It is, then, a most vital point to inquire into, 
 whether the Chinese Government and people do 
 really still entertain that strong hostility to opium 
 which unquestionably they did in former times. The 
 evidence will, I think, be found clear and unmistakable 
 in favour of an affirmative answer to this inquiry. 
 
 In 1869, as I have already said, the right of re- 
 vising the treaty of Tientsin accrued, and the British 
 Government decided that a revision was necessary. 
 This led to negotiations between Sir Rutherford 
 Alcock and the Foreign Board, described by Sir 
 
17 
 
 Rutherford* as "in fact the Imperial Government 
 in its most influential shape," presided over by Wan 
 Cheeang, by far the most important man in the 
 Government. The opium question came on the car- 
 pet at a conference between these authorities, and 
 the Chinese Board asserted " that real friendship was 
 impossible while England continued responsible for 
 the supply of the drug to the Chinese people." After 
 some weeks, a note was transmitted to Sir Euther- 
 ford Alcock by the Prince of Kung, in which these 
 views of the Chinese Government were presented ia 
 a most pointed form. The document is so remarkable, 
 it is so touchiug an appeal to all the best qualities 
 which ought to actuate a great and powerful nation 
 like England, — it is so clear an explanation of the 
 motives which have since induced the Chinese 
 Government to connive at the growth of the poppy, — 
 that I cannot forbear presenting it to my readers in 
 fall, as it appears in Sir Rutherford Alcock' s evidence, 
 in the Blue Book on East India Finance for 1871 :° — 
 
 "From TsungK Tamen to Sir R. Alcock, July, 1869. The 
 writers Lave, on several occasions, wten conversing with his 
 Excellency the British Minister, referred to the opium trade as 
 being prejudicial to the general interests of commerce. The 
 object of the treaties between our respective countries was to 
 secure perpetual peace, but if effective steps cannot be taken to 
 remove an accumulating sense of injury from the minds of men, it 
 is to be feared that no policy can obviate sources of future trouble. 
 Day and night the writers are considering the question with a 
 view to its solution, and the more they reflect upon it the greater 
 
 ' Papers on the Opium Question. Addendum to Appendix 4. 
 ' Eeport of Select Committee on East India Finance, 187], 
 p. 268, question 5694. ^ 
 
 B 
 
18 
 
 does their anxiety beconie ; and hereon they cannot avoid ad- 
 dressing his Excellency very earnestly on the subject. That 
 opium is like a deadly poison, that it is most injurious to mankind, 
 and a most serious provocative of ill-feeling, is, the writers think, 
 perfectly well-known to his Excellency, and it is therefore needless 
 for them to enlarge further on these points. The prince [the 
 Prince of Kung is the President of the Board] and his colleagues 
 are quite aware that the opium trade has long been condemned by 
 England as a nation, and that the right-minded merchant scorns 
 to have to do with it. But the officials and people of this empire, 
 who cannot be so completely informed on the subject, aU say that 
 England trades in opium because she desires to work China's ruin, 
 for (say they) if the friendly feelings of England are genuine, 
 since it is open to her to produce and trade in everything else, 
 would she stiU insist on spreading the poison of this hurtful thing 
 through the empire ? There are those who say, Stop the trade by 
 enforcing a vigorous prohibition against the use of the drug. 
 China has the right to do so, doubtless, and might be able to effect 
 it, but a strict enforcement of the prohibition would necessitate 
 the taking of many lives. Now, although the criminals' punish- 
 ment would be of their own seeking, bystanders would not fail to 
 say that it was the foreign merchants who seduced them to their 
 ruin by bringing the drug, and it would be hard to prevent 
 general and deep-seated indignation ; such a course indeed would 
 tend to arouse popular anger against the foreigner. There are 
 others, again, who suggest the removal of the prohibitions against 
 the cultivation of the poppy. They argue that as there is no means 
 of stopping the foreign (opium) trade there can be no harm, as a 
 temporary measure, in withdrawing the prohibition on its growth. 
 Weshould thus not only deprive the foreign merchant of the main 
 source of his profits, but should increase our revenue to boot. 
 The sovereign rights of China are indeed competent to this. Such 
 a course would be practicable, and indeed the writers cannot say 
 that as a last resource it will not come to this ; but they are most 
 unwilling that such prohibition should be removed, holding as 
 they do that a right system of government should appreciate the 
 beneficence of heaven, and (seek to) remove any grievance which 
 afflicts its people, while to allow them to go on to destruction 
 though an increase of revenue may result, will provoke the judg- 
 ment of heaven and the condemnation of men. Neither of the 
 above plans, indeed, is satisfactory. If it be desired to remove 
 the very root, and to stop the evil at its source, nothing will be 
 
19 
 
 effective but a prohibition to be enforced alike by both parties. 
 Again, the Chinese merchant supplies your country with his goodly 
 tea and silt, conferring thereby a benefit upon her, but the English 
 merchant empoisons China with pestilent opium. Such conduct is 
 unrighteous. Who can justify it ? What wonder if officials and 
 people say that England is wilfully working out China's ruin, and 
 has no real friendly feeling for her ? The wealth and generosity 
 of England is spoken of by aU. She is anxious to prevent and 
 anticipate all injury to her commercial interest. How is it then 
 she can hesitate to remove an acknowledged evil ? Indeed it 
 cannot be that England still holds to this evil business, earning 
 the hatred of the officials and people of China, and making herself 
 a reproach among the nations, because she would lose a little 
 revenue were she to forfeit the cultivation of the poppy ! The 
 writers hope that his Excellency wUl memorialize his Government 
 to give orders in India, and elsewhere, to substitute the cultivation 
 of cereals or cotton. Were both nations to rigorously prohibit 
 the growth of the poppy, both the traffic in and the consumption 
 of opium might alike be put an end to. To do away with so 
 great an evil would be a great virtue on England's part ; she 
 would strengthen friendly relations, and make herself illustrious. 
 How delightful to have so great an act transmitted to after ages ! 
 This matter is injurious to commercial interests in no ordinary 
 degree. If his Excellency the British Minister cannot, before it is 
 too late, arrange a plan for a joint prohibition (of the traffic), then 
 no matter with what devotedness the writers may plead, they may 
 be unable to cause the people to put aside all ill-feeling and so 
 strengthen friendly relations as to place them for ever beyond fear 
 of distm-bance. Day and night, therefore, the writers give to this 
 matter most earnest thought, and overpowering is the distress 
 which it occasions them. Having thus presumed to unbosom 
 themselves, they would be honoured by his Excellency's reply." 
 
 To that appeal no answer was sent ! "WTiat answer 
 could have been sent ? 
 
 But was the note an honest, genuine expression 
 of real sentiments, or was it a piece of diplomacy 
 or of Eastern finesse ? Sir Rutherford Alcock shall 
 decide. On the 4th February, 1870, that minister, 
 
 B 2 
 
20 
 
 on his return from China, met the Viceroy of India 
 in Council upon the prospects of the Indian opium 
 revenue, and, after reading the note of the Prince of 
 Kung, said in answer to questions, that' — 
 
 " He bad no doubt tbat tbe abhorrence expressed by the 
 Government and people of China for opium, as destructive to the 
 Chinese nation, was genuine and deep-seated ; and that he was 
 also quite cpnvinced that the Chinese Government could, if it 
 pleased, carry out its threat of developing cultivation to any 
 extent. On the other hand, he beUeved that so strong was the 
 popular feeling on the subject, that if Britain would give up the 
 opium revenn.e and suppress the qul^ivation in India, tbe Chinese 
 Government would have no difigculty in suppressing it in China, 
 except in tbe Province pf Tun-nan, where its authority is in 
 
 Yet more emphatic is Sir Rutherford Alcock's ex- 
 pression of his belief in the sincerity of the Chinese 
 Government after his return to England. China 
 herself derives a large revenue from the importation 
 of Indian opium, the amount of which Sir R. Alcock 
 estimated at one million and a half sterling. Such 
 a sum forms a fair test of a Grovernment's sincerity. 
 
 " My own conviction is firm," said her Majesty's late minister 
 at Pekin,'' " that whatever degree of honesty may be attributed to 
 the officials and to the Central Government, there is that at work in 
 their minds that they would not hesitate one moment — ^to-morrow 
 if they could — to enter into any arrangement with tbe British 
 Government and say, ' Let our revenue go ; we care nothing about 
 it ! What we want is tp stop the consumption of opium, which 
 we conceive is impoverishing the country and demoralizing and 
 brutalizing our people.' " 
 
 ' Papers relating to the Opium Question. Addendum to 
 Appendix 4. 
 
 " lleport of Select Committee on East India Finance, 1871 
 p. 273, question 5725. 
 
21 
 
 With such convictions as these, what answer could 
 a minister make to such a note as that from the 
 Prince of Kung ? No wonder that he made no 
 answer at all, and felt as he says " inclined to drop 
 the negotiation." 
 
 I will cite but one more witness, who brings the 
 evidence down to a much more recent date than Sir 
 Eutherford Alcock. Dr. J. Dudgeon had been 
 physician to the British Legation in Pekia, Pro- 
 fessor of Medicine in the Tung- wen-k wan, or Pekin 
 CoUege of Foreign Sciences and Literature, and 
 medical adviser to several of the high ofl&cials of 
 the Chinese Court ; he has recently returned to this 
 country, and, in speaking on the subject of China 
 at a meeting in Glasgow, has used this language^ — 
 
 " When the time comes for battling effectively with the Indian 
 ■ a,rticle, and if the conscience of the country is not then completely 
 ruined, the native growth will most assuredly be put down ; I 
 believe the Government has the wiU and the power." 
 
 Now, if we are to follow Lord Derby's advice, and 
 take stock of our real position in China, and honestly 
 strive to put our relations on a better footing for the 
 future, I say that we must show a willingness to sup- 
 press the opium trade. We may ask that our pro- 
 ceedings shall be met by hke proceedings on the part 
 of China, but unless we are ready and wilhng to do 
 our part in this matter we never can have true friend- 
 ship with China. Whilst we daily violate the moral 
 feehngs of the nation, we are the authors of that 
 
 ' Friend of GMna (a periodical published by the Anti-Opium 
 Society), p. 279. 
 
22 
 
 hostility towards ourselves wMch has resulted and 
 will result in outrages and murders, and we cannot 
 with clean hands demand for our subjects in China 
 fair treatment either from the ofl&cials or from the 
 common people. 
 
 The national conscience is not yet entirely de- 
 stroyed; the gi'owth of the poppy, though it has 
 spread in China, is yet within limits, narrow in 
 comparison with what it may hereafter reach ; the 
 Imperial Government are yet ready to co-operate 
 with us in the extinction of the opium traffic, and 
 yet have the power as well as the will. We know 
 not how long these conditions may continue to co- 
 exist. Our repentance would yet be in time. We 
 know not how soon it may be too late. Our relations 
 with China must be considered in the ensuing session. 
 I call on all who love the honour of England to urge 
 on Parliament the necessity of reconsidering our 
 policy as regards this accursed drug.. 
 
 Are we of those who find in the enthusiasm of 
 humanity our highest motive force, and our most 
 inspiring sense of duty ? To us, then, no picture 
 can be more shocking than that of one nation forcing 
 on another a drug which the weaker one believes, 
 and believes with a dreadful truth, to be a most 
 horrible curse. 
 
 Are we of those who find in the life and teaching 
 of Christ what they (and I) believe to be a yet nobler 
 and better inspiration ? Let us then listen to the 
 result of this traffic on the prospects of Christianity 
 in China. Sixteen missionaries working in Canton, 
 
23 
 
 and belonging to different nations and denominations, 
 concurred in tlie spring of last year (1875) in stating 
 that, — 
 
 " The fact that people of Christian nations engage in the traffic, 
 and especially that Great Britain to a large extent supplies the 
 China market with opium is constantly urged as a plausible and 
 patent objection to Christianity."* 
 
 Even more emphatic was the language used by the 
 Bishop of Victoria (Hong Kong), — 
 
 " I have been again and again stopped while preaching, with the 
 question, ' Are you an Englishman ? Is not that the country that 
 opium comes from ? Go back and stop it, and then we will talk 
 about Christianity." ° 
 
 I must revert once more to the opinion of Sir 
 Rutherford Alcock, confirmed and brought down to 
 the latest date by Dr. Dudgeon ; and I do so in order 
 to point out, that, great as the evil is, a remedy ap- 
 pears to be ready to our hand. The Chinese Govern- 
 ment are, in the belief of these authorities, ready and 
 able to give up their revenue from the Indian opium 
 trade, and to suppress the home growth, if we on 
 our part will limit or extinguish the Indian opium 
 trade. If they be correct (and it is difficult to doubt 
 this), such a treaty is all that is wanted. To enter 
 into such a treaty, and to observe it, we have abun- 
 dant power. The wiU, and the will only, is wanting. 
 
 An argument against interfering with the opium 
 revenue, somewhat to the following effect, is often 
 urged or suggested : "It is very well," it is said. 
 
 * Friend of Cfhma, p. 122. 
 
 Ibid. p. 58. 
 
24 
 
 " for you to assume tMs high moral tone about the 
 opium revenue; tlie revenue is not yours, but 
 belongs to India, and with it England has nothing 
 to do. To abohsh the traffic is to throw some nine 
 millions more of annual taxation on the already 
 over-taxed population of India, and that for a 
 scruple of some weak-minded philanthropists in 
 England. Pray pay for your own philanthropy, 
 and do not make another country pay for it." Let 
 us consider this objection a little ; and let us note, 
 in the first place, that it may be taken to concede 
 the justness of the objection to the revenue ; it only 
 objects to the person of the objector. Let us note, 
 in the next place, that the assumption of facts is 
 entirely erroneous. The Indian budget is as much 
 cognizable by the Imperial Parliament as the home 
 budget, subject, of course, to this difference — that 
 in one case the representatives of a nation settle its 
 own taxation, and that, in the other, the repre- 
 sentatives of one nation deliberate on the taxation 
 of another. India is, as it were, a minor, under 
 the guardianship of England, and England is a 
 trustee for India in the administration of Indian 
 affairs. But, in taking upon ourselves that burden 
 and that duty, we have incurred no obligation 
 to do for India what we might not lawfully do 
 for ourselves. If, ia the course of our trusteeship 
 we have sold a poison wickedly, for the gain of a 
 minor, are we bound to continue so to do ? Have 
 we lost the right of repentance, because our sin 
 inures to some one else's benefit? India cannot 
 
25 
 
 change the policy, for she is in ;fcutelage; England 
 cannot change the policy, for she is a trustee ; 
 therefore the sin must go on for ever. Is that 
 sound reasoning? The objection is, no doubt, 
 sometimes put in a form which seems to assume 
 that the question should be left to the Viceroy in 
 Council, or to the Secretary of State in Council of 
 India. But when we bear in mind the extent and 
 character of the interference of the Imperial 
 Legislature in Indian affairs, such a proposition 
 hardly bears stating. 
 
 But there is yet another reason why the question 
 is an Imperial one. Our policy towards China is the 
 policy, not of the Indian Government but of the 
 Imperial Government ; and India, which rehes for its 
 opium revenue on the pressure of England on China, 
 can never assert that the question is not one of 
 Imperial cognizance, and of direct interest to the 
 Enghsh tax-payer. 
 
 But the argument may be carried yet one step 
 further, and has been so carried by Dr. Dudgeon, in 
 the address from which I have already quoted. He 
 avers that the transaction is most unfair towards 
 England : — 
 
 " The commerce and manufactures," he said, " of our own 
 country are seriously affected by the trade, so much so, that, in 
 one sense, we might say Great Britain pays over eight millions 
 annually to India. We and the Chinese are the sufferers by 
 
 the trade "Were this traffic abolished, there is almost 
 
 nothing in the way of progress in the opening up of the country 
 and the facilitating of trade, that they are not, I believe, prepared 
 to do." 
 
26 
 
 But how is India to meet sucli a deficit as would 
 be caused by the aboHtion of the opium revenue ? 
 I admit that I am not prepared to say in what way 
 such a deficit could be best met, nor does it appear 
 to me essential to discuss the question till we have 
 made up our minds on the duty to create the deficit. 
 But in a letter addressed by Sir Arthur Cotton to 
 the Secretary of the Anti-Opium Society,* he has 
 dwelt on several considerations which go to show 
 that the question is not one of such vast proportions 
 as is sometimes supposed. He has pointed out that 
 not the present net revenue from opium, but that 
 revenue less the amount which would be paid by the 
 same population when employed in other cultivation, 
 represents the deficit which would arise from the 
 cessation of the cultivation ; that the cost of keeping 
 the people alive in famine is, on an average, probably 
 a million a year, exclusive of the loss of taxes, and 
 that this amount wotdd be lessened by the culture 
 of grain in the place of opium; that the present 
 revenue of India is above the proper current ex- 
 penses, and that this revenue is rapidly increasing, 
 probably at the average of a million a year. It may 
 be added, that if and when the change shall come, 
 it will probably not be a sudden, but a gradual 
 extinction of the opium trade ; and, further, that it 
 may well be that England, which has been more 
 than the accomplice of India in this nefarious 
 business, may feel it incumbent upon her to bear 
 
 " The Opium Eevenue, p. 29. 
 
27 
 
 part of the costs of lier too tardy repentance. I 
 throw out these considerations, but I feel that they 
 are premature. We have not yet conceived a desire 
 to do our duty. "When we have, we may find that 
 duty diflB.cult and costly, but we shall not find it 
 impossible. 
 
28 
 
 II. GOD AND MAMMON" RECONCILED. 
 
 (Eeprinted from the Oontemporam/ Meview, June, 1877.) 
 
 In February, 1876, I asked the attention of the 
 readers of this Review to some points in the rela- 
 tions of this Country and China, which appeared to 
 me to call for serious thought. Since then, Parha- 
 ment has twice met ; a debate on China has taken 
 place ; the Margary difficulty has been surmounted ; 
 and still, through all, most of the pubHc instructors 
 preach pleasant things to us Enghsh people as to 
 our dealings with China. They still tell us that we 
 have always behaved and arc behaving weU; and 
 that whenever anything goes wrong, the blame 
 should rest, not on us at aU, but solely on the 
 perfidious Chinese. There is no need, as one of 
 our daily papers expressed it, that we should " put 
 on sackcloth and do penance for the policy we have 
 pursued." 
 
 Nevertheless, there are not wanting signs that 
 our conscience is not quite at ease as regards our 
 dealings with China. 
 
 Sir Charles Dilke's paper in the October (1876) 
 Macmillan is a severe indictment of the conduct of 
 
29 
 
 our mercliants in China, and of our Government in 
 its dealings with that of Pekin. The Spectator, 
 which has not been over sensitive on the sin of our 
 opium trade, is somewhat startled by Sir Charles's 
 conclusion, that our high-handed dealings with 
 China are destroying our influence and driving her 
 into the arms of Russia (Spectator, 7th October, 
 1876). Still more significant are the admissions 
 made by the responsible Ministers of the Crown, as 
 regards the opium trade. Lord Salisbury, ever 
 abounding as much in courage as in talent, did not 
 attempt, in his interview with the deputation on the 
 subject (21st February, 1876), to vindicate the 
 opium monopoly on principle. " I feel," he said, 
 " that there are inconveniences of principle con- 
 nected with it which would have prevented any 
 Government in the present day from introducing 
 ib." " Inconveniences of principle " is a rather 
 cuxious expression. Principle is an inconvenient 
 thing, when, and only when, we do wrong, " It is 
 much more easy," he subsequently said, " to defend 
 the Bengal system on the ground that you cannot 
 abandon an existing system so wrapped up with the 
 finances of the coimtry, than to defend it on 
 principle." That is the ground on which clerks 
 often go in robbing their masters. They cannot 
 defend it on principle, but it is an existing system 
 wrapped up with their finances. 
 
 Later in the Session of last year (27th June), 
 during the debate raised by Mr. Eichard's motion, 
 Mr. Bourke, speaking for the Goyernment, made a 
 
30 
 
 like admission. "The opium question," he said, 
 " had often been debated ia the House, and he never 
 heard any one say aught in favour of the opium 
 traffic from a moral point of view." 
 
 This looks very much as if the front line of the 
 defenders was wavering, and as if a defence of the 
 opium traffic on any grounds of morality would not 
 be heard of much more. But of this one must not 
 feel very sure. The system still finds an able cham- 
 pion in Sir George Campbell. The view which he 
 expressed in Parliament in 1875, he repeated in 1876 
 at the British Association ; and coming from a man 
 of his eminence, who has been personally concerned 
 in the opium trade, it is well worthy of considera- 
 tion. 
 
 "Opium," said Sir George Campbell, in the. debate in June, 
 1875, " was one of those things upon which the imposition of a 
 heavy duty enabled us to serve God and Mammon at the same 
 time — doing good to our neighbour by checking its consumption, 
 and raising a large revenue for ourselves The Gothen- 
 burg system, under which the public authorities regulated the 
 liquor traffic, so that as little harm as possible should be done to 
 the community, was precisely analogous to the system followed in 
 Bengal with regard to the opium traffic." 
 
 "The existing system," wrote the Spectator, 
 adopting Sir George Campbell's line of argument, 
 " is official intervention for the sake of reducing the 
 evil to a minimum." If these statements be true, a 
 system invented " for the sake " of a most righteous 
 end has been vilified over and over again, its official 
 defenders are utterly wrong in admitting its " in- 
 conveniences of principle," and the old difficulty 
 
31 
 
 about serving God and Mammon is, for once, got 
 over. If only Sir George Campbell would teach us 
 bow to get over it in all tbe otber cases wbere it 
 creates " inconveniences ! " But I am afraid tbat, 
 if we look at it a little more closely, it will be found 
 tbat we bave been serving Mammon only, and not 
 God as weU; it wiU be found tbat so far from tbe 
 existing system being worked " for tbe sake of re- 
 ducing tbe evil to a minimum," it bas been worked 
 from year to year for tbe sake of increasing tbe 
 revenue to a maximum, witbout one tbougbt or one 
 regret as to tbe amount of evil done. 
 
 Now wbat are tbe facts ? Sir Cecil Beadon, in bis 
 evidence before tbe Select Committee on Bast India 
 Finance in 1871, very distinctly stated tbe facts and 
 tbe motives on wbicb tbe Government bas acted.' 
 Tbe number of cbests produced increased from 7565 
 cbests in 1829-30, to 53,321 cbests in 1863-4. Was 
 tbat reducing tbe evil to a minimum ? But it was 
 found tbat as the production increased tbe price 
 went down — from £165 a cbest in 1829 to £73 a 
 cbest in 1853. 
 
 " It was thought in those days," said Sir Cecil, speaking of the 
 period from 1829 to 1853, " that the more opium you made, the 
 more revenue you would get, hut the result of the year 1853 
 showed the Government that there was a point beyond which it 
 was not profitable to go, and that if you exceeded a certain 
 quantity of opium, the price in China would fall so low that it 
 would affect your net revenue." 
 
 Accordingly, in 1853 tbe Government altered its 
 
 policy : tbey made a diminution in tbe price paid to 
 
 ' Report on East India Finance, 1871, p. 156, et seq. 
 
32 
 
 the cultivators, and they gave up certain outlying 
 sub-agencies, the result being that from 1853 down- 
 wards to 1858-9 there was a rapid decrease in the 
 cultivation, the production in the last year having 
 fallen to the miniiuum of 21,357 chests. 
 
 " When the Government discovered that in 1858 the production 
 had gone down to 21,000 chests and was threatening to go down 
 still farther, it became alarmed, and saw the necessity of doing 
 something. It then saw that although the price in 1859-60 
 increased to 2000 rupees a chest, still the larger amount of profit 
 got upon the smaller number of chests was not sufficient to com- 
 pensate them for the more moderate profit which they lost upon 
 the larger number of chests ; they therefore resolved to push the 
 cultivation by every possible means, and restore it to what it was 
 before the fall took place." 
 
 This pious resolution was most successful, and the 
 produce was — not checked, as Sir George Campbell 
 tells us, — ^but pushed up from 21,357 chests in 1858 
 to 64,000 chests in 1863-4. " This enormous increase 
 of produce was followed by a corresponding re- 
 duction in the price and a loss in the revenue," and 
 thereupon the Government of India determined to 
 remove one of the uncertainties of the trade, and to 
 oflFer for sale a fixed quantity every year. The quan- 
 tity was fixed at 48,000 chests. One almost begins 
 to hope that this is the minimum evil of the Spectator, 
 and that the figure was fixed to unite for once the 
 service of the two usually incompatible masters. 
 But Sir Cecil Beadon, who was at the time Lieutenant- 
 Governor of Bengal, dashes all our hopes in his 
 exposure of the motives which actuated the Govern- 
 ment. The 48,000 chests,— 
 " After inquiry, was considered to be about the quantity which the 
 
33 
 
 China market would take off, without on the one hand reducing 
 the price so far as to affect the revenue derived by the Govern- 
 ment upon the export duty upon the Bombay opium ; and on the 
 other hand, it was considered that the price would not be so high 
 as to encourage the importation into China of opium from other 
 countries, or the manufacture of home-grown opium in China 
 itself. And it was also pretty clearly shown that according to the 
 data then existing, 1200 rupees a chest in Calcutta, which was 
 about the price that might be expected on a provision of 48,000 
 chests, was really that point at which the net revenue would stand 
 the highest." 
 
 That arrangement continued down to the year 1871, 
 ■when the Government ordered the sale of 62,000 
 chests — though, owing to the blight which aflFected 
 the crop, only 49,695 chests were actually sold.^ In 
 1872-8 the number of chests sold fell, apparently in 
 consequence of the blight, to 42,675 chests.^ Lastly, 
 it must be added that when Sir Eutherford Alcock 
 had negotiated in 1860 for the revision of the com- 
 mercial clauses of the Treaty of Tientsin on the 
 footing of a slight increase (two or three per cent, in 
 the value) iu the import tax, the Indian Government 
 objected to it as weighting them in the race of com- 
 petition with Chinese opium.* 
 
 Such is the real history of the principles on which 
 the Indian Government proceeded. "Was the system 
 pursued invented for the sake of lessening an evil, or 
 of increasing gain ? Can you find any trace in the 
 various turns of Government policy of the worship 
 of God ? Is not Mammon in the ascendant ? If you 
 
 ' India: Moral and Material Progress, 1871-2, p. 10. 
 ' Ibid. 1872-3, p. 9. 
 
 * Report on East India Finance, 1871 : Evidence of Sir K. 
 Alcock, p. 284. 
 
 
 
34 
 
 have any doubt left, listen to this honest passage 
 from a despatch from the Government of Bengal to 
 the Government of India, 1st July, 1860, — 
 
 " It is not professed that under the present system, the quantity 
 of opium is checked and limited by Government on any considera- 
 tions of the injurious and demoralizing effects of the use of opium : 
 and to claim for that system any superiority on this ground would 
 be to set up, and set up unnecessarily, an unreal and unfair 
 pretext." * 
 
 Let Sir George Campbell and the Spectator listen 
 to their own chents' opinion of the character of their 
 advocacy. 
 
 Sir William Muir has recently joined the Council 
 of India ; and he speaks of Indian affairs with the 
 weight of long and varied experience. Let us hear 
 him. He does not think the British Government 
 wholly guiltless of " the odious imputation of pan- 
 dering to the vice of China by over-stimulating pro- 
 duction, overstocking the market, and flooding China 
 with a drug in order to raise a wider and more secure 
 revenue to itself." ^ 
 
 In the same Minute, Sir "William Muir gives us a 
 picture of the results on India of one of the determi- 
 . nations of the Government to increase the opium 
 produce. 
 
 " A few years ago," he says, " when the Government of Bengal 
 was straining every nerve to extend the cultivation of the poppy, 
 I was witness to the discontent of the agricultural population in 
 
 " Report on East India Tinance, 1871 : Appendix No. 2, 
 p. 520. 
 ' Paper relating to the Opium Question: Calcutta, 1870, p. 6. 
 
35 
 
 certain districts west of the Jumna, from which the crop was for 
 the first time being raised. . . . The ease to which I allude 
 was that of new districts where the poppy had not hitherto been 
 grown, and into which the Bengal Board were endeavouring to 
 extend the cultivation, by the bait of large advances among an 
 unwilling peasantry, and at the risk of inoculating them with a 
 taste for a deleterious drug, and aU this, with the sole view of 
 securing a wider area of poppy cultivation, and thus a firmer grasp 
 of the China market." 
 
 So not only the morality of China, but that of India, 
 weigh for little in the balance against the greed of 
 gold. 
 
 This is not, I think, Government intervention for 
 the sake of reducing any evil to a minimum. This 
 is, I agree with Sir George Campbell, serving Mam- 
 mon ; but to call this the service of God might seem 
 (did not the language come from one of the speaker's 
 eminence), not merely "an unreal and unfair pretext," 
 but a piece of grotesque profanity. 
 
 But Sir George Campbell, followed again by the 
 Spectator, has another argument in defence of the 
 Indian Government. It takes the form of a dilemma, 
 and runs on this wise : There are two possible 
 courses, and two only, by which we may shake our- 
 selves free from the opium traffic — either by leaAdng 
 the cultivation free, or by prohibiting it altogether. 
 The former is to sacrifice our revenue, with the result 
 of increasing the consumption of opium. The latter 
 is impossible until the manufacture and use of alcohol 
 are entirely prohibited. This argument was put 
 forward by Sir George Campbell in the House of 
 Commons, in June 1875, and repeated by him from 
 the chair of the Economic Section of the British 
 
 c 2 
 
86 
 
 Association at its meeting in Glasgow in September 
 last year. 
 
 The analogy of the sale of spirits in England with 
 our opium trade with China is, under the circum- 
 stances, as misleading as it is possible to be. All 
 analogies, it has been well said, either are idem per 
 idem or conceal a fallacy. Before we draw analogies, 
 let us look at the facts of the two cases. In the 
 case of the opium, the Government is the principal 
 maker, has an absolute monopoly in its own terri- 
 tories, and has the power of stopping the transport 
 of any opium through its territories ; for every ounce 
 of opium that leaves India, we are morally respon- 
 sible. In order to sell this opium at a profit we, at 
 the point of the sword, compelled China to abolish 
 the prohibition of it and to admit it as a legitimate 
 article ; and that compulsion we maintain after ap- 
 peals to our conscience which are, as I showed in 
 my last paper, unquestionably genuine and expres- 
 sive of the deep feeling of the people. In the case 
 of spirituous liquors in England all that can be said 
 is, that the Government does not prohibit the making, 
 selling, and importing of ardent spirits, but derives 
 a profit by way of taxation from their sale. Can 
 any one say that the two cases are parallel ? The 
 cases would be parallel, if the Eepublic of France 
 were the makers of ardent spirits, and if they, at the 
 point of the sword, compelled England to admit them 
 for the profit of France and to the destruction of the 
 physical and social well-being of our people. Put 
 France for England, England for China, and brandy 
 
37 
 
 for opium, and suppose a far stronger hatred of 
 drunkenness than exists amongst us ; and we shall 
 form some notion of what we are doing in China. 
 
 Prohibition is a word perfectly intelligible as ap- 
 pHed to a trade which is free, but which some third 
 person or power wishes to limit or destroy ; but to 
 talk of a Government prohibiting the growth of opium, 
 when the only grower is the Government itself, seems 
 beside the mark. The prohibition already exists 
 against every one except the Government : and to 
 call the abandonment of a monopolized trade a 
 total prohibition seems a bizarre expression, useful 
 only because it misleads. The difference of the 
 two cases will at once appear if we descend from 
 general expressions to an instance. Suppose that 
 1 am the owner of a whole town, and carry on in 
 one of my houses the trade of a spirit distiller and 
 retailer to the great injury of the inhabitants, and 
 suppose, too, that in order to produce the greater 
 profit, I prohibit the opening of any other house for 
 the sale of spirits on my whole estate. That is what 
 we do in India. Furthermore, I have neighbours 
 over whom and whose tenants I have a powerful in- 
 fluence. These I compel, much against their will, 
 to buy my poisonous spirits. That is what we do in 
 China. In another town, some way off, I am a 
 licensing magistrate, and there the sale of spirits is 
 not prohibited, but it is more or less subject to my 
 influence and control. That is England. My neigh- 
 bours, who hate to see their tenants and servants 
 made into beasts by my spirits, come to me and beg 
 
38 
 
 me not to press my spirits on their people. I reply, 
 " I am most willing to serve Grod in the matter ; but 
 really I cannot close my own store in my own town 
 till I can shut up every one else's store in the town 
 where I am a magistrate. To ask me to do so would 
 be most illogical." Do you think my neighbours 
 would go away convinced ? Perhaps they might even 
 say something about hypocrisy. 
 
 As to the other alternative suggested, that of 
 throwing the trade open and so increasing the sale of 
 opium, I am still at a loss to understand how any 
 one can suppose that we should thereby shake our- 
 selves free from the opium trafiSc. Surely to destroy 
 a prohibition which exists, for the sake and with the 
 result of increasing the evil, would increase our sin 
 and our responsibility sevenfold. So that of the two 
 alternatives suggested as the only ones possible, one 
 would increase our responsibihty, and the other has, 
 under the circumstances, no meaning. 
 
 But is it true that these are the only courses open 
 to us and that we are helpless in this difficulty ? I 
 think that it is not, and that there are certain things 
 which we can and ought at once to do. 
 
 In the first place, I have shown that the Govern- 
 ment of India, being in the position of absolute 
 monopolists, have regulated the amount of opium 
 sent to China from year to year. Lord Salisbury 
 is understood to have pledged himself that the 
 amount shall not be increased, and in so doing has 
 earned, in my humble opinion, a great debt of 
 gratitude from the English nation. "Whether he has 
 
39 
 
 really given ttis pledge or no, it is plain tliat tlie 
 Indian Government can, at their mere will and 
 pleasure, though no doubt with a loss to their 
 income, diminish from year to year the amount of 
 the drug supphed to China ; and if this were done 
 in conjunction with the Government of China, its 
 beneficial effects can hardly be doubted. 
 
 The second thing that we can do to shake our- 
 selves free from comphcity in the opium trade, is to 
 abandon those provisions of the Treaty of Tientsin, 
 and the supplemental Agreement of the 8th 
 November, 1858, by which the Chinese Government 
 removed opium from the class of prohibited goods, 
 and agreed to admit it subject to a moderate duty. 
 To a treaty which embodies a hond fide agreement 
 between nations free to contract, great regard is due, 
 and neither contracting party can with reason object 
 to abide by its conditions, though they may prove 
 unexpectedly onerous. But a treaty which has been 
 obtained at the sword's point, under duress, is 
 entitled to no such consideration. It is as binding 
 as the compulsion used was lawful, but not more so. 
 It acquires no moral sanction from being in the 
 form of a treaty ; it has nothing of the nature of a 
 voluntary agreement. 
 
 What kind of treaty was the Treaty of Tientsin ? 
 About that there is no dispute. " Everything," said 
 Mr. Bourke, in last year's debate in the House of 
 Commons,' — " everything we had obtained by treaty 
 from the Chinese, we had obtained by force." " The 
 ' Timeg, June 28, 1876. 
 
40 
 
 concessions made to us," said Sir Thomas "Wade, in 
 a memorandum on the revision of the Treaty of 
 Tientsin, " have from first to last been extorted 
 against the conscience of the nation, in defiance — 
 that is to say — of the moral convictions of its edu- 
 cated men .... of the millions who are saturated 
 with a knowledge of the history and philosophy of 
 their country." * Sir Thomas Wade's predecessor 
 at Pekin expressed precisely the same view of the 
 position of the Chinese Government under the 
 Treaty of Tientsin. The following questions and 
 answers are part of the Minutes of Evidence of Sir 
 Eutherford Alcock, before the Committee of 1871, 
 on East Indian Finance : — 
 
 " Q. Then notwithstanding that the Chinese Government are so 
 sensible of the demoralization of their people caused by the import 
 of opium, they cannot prevent our sending it there ? We force 
 them by treaty to take it from us ? 
 
 " A, That is so in effect. 
 
 " Q. We have forced the Gov^nment to enter into a treaty 
 to allow their subjects to take it ? 
 
 " A. Yes, precisely. 
 
 " Q. The only way that they can escape it [the Treaty of 
 Tientsin] is by a'war ? 
 
 " A. A war, or a declaration that they are ready to go to war 
 rather than submit any longer." ' 
 
 Was, then, the forcing the Chinese Government to 
 admit opium a legitimate and justifiable act ? I 
 will not repeat the argument which I used in the 
 first of these papers, but wUl for the present only 
 refer to what I then said, and ask my reader to 
 
 ' Blue Book : China, No. 5, 1871. 
 
 ' Report : East India Finance, 1871, pp. 279—284. 
 
41 
 
 conclude with me that the Chinese Government were 
 at hberty to maintain, as against us, that opium was 
 a drug which they were at Hberty to exclude from 
 their territories. As a bare and simple question of 
 ethics, I can hardly imagine that any one would 
 argue for the moral right to use force for the 
 purpose of opening China to such an article. 
 
 If I am right in what I have said, it follows that 
 we are morally bound to abandon the stipulation of 
 the Treaty of Tientsin, as to the admission of opium, 
 and, at least, to leave the Chinese free to exclude it 
 if they choose so to do. At this moment when, as 
 I believe, negotiations are still pending for the 
 revision of the Treaty, this point would easily 
 assume a practical form, if only we had the will to 
 make it do so. 
 
 I know it wiU be said that we are only one of the 
 five Powers, and that the Treaty of Tientsin can be 
 altered only by the common consent of all. But 
 this presents no real difi&culty. England is the only 
 one of the five Powers which has any interest in the 
 clause to which I object ; and if England wished to 
 do her duty in that respect, she would find, I verily 
 beheve, no impediment from other Powers. 
 
 But then it is said, " Oh, if you did give up 
 pressing opium on China, no good will result. The 
 appetite exists : opium exists not in India only, 
 but in China itself, and in Persia, and elsewhere; 
 there is a great seaboard and an inefficient and 
 corrupt set of fiscal officers; there is a fringe of 
 islands which runs along this seaboard and furnishes 
 
42 
 
 slielter for smugglers and pirates ; and tte net result 
 will be that China will consume as much opium, 
 and India will lose £7,000,000 a year." 
 
 On this several observations arise. 
 
 In the first place, is the statement true ? Sir 
 Eutherford Alcock, as I showed in my former paper, 
 totally discredits it.' 
 
 In the second place, the argument, if based on 
 fact, misses the real point of the case, which is, What 
 ought England to do to free herself from complicity 
 in the trade ? We are considering, for once, a moral 
 question ; and to say that some one else would do a 
 wrong if I did not, is no excuse for me. Brown 
 murders Smith for £1000 of blood- money ; he alleges 
 as a sufl&cient excuse that if he had not done so 
 Robinson would have murdered the unfortunate man; 
 or even that Smith would have murdered himself, 
 and that in either of these events he. Brown, would 
 have lost his £1000. From a financial point of view 
 Brown's reasoning is admirable. But can any man 
 suppose such a defence good in any forum whatsoever, 
 whether of law or of conscience ? It is precisely the 
 old argument that was used with regard to the slave 
 trade, and was exposed with so much humour by 
 Cowper, — 
 
 " Besides, if we do, the French, Dutch, and Danes 
 Will heartily thank us, no doubt, for our pains : 
 If we do not buy the poor creatures, they will : 
 And tortures and groans will be multiplied still." 
 
 But furthermore it can never be certain, until it is 
 ' Ante, p. 20. 
 
43 
 
 tried, whether the Chinese Government would suc- 
 ceed or fail in their suppression of opium. One thing 
 is, I think, certain; that the Chinese Government 
 and people still honestly desire to try the experiment 
 and that they believe that it would succeed. Are we 
 as a nation morally justified in refusing to aid China 
 in an effort to reform a great wrong in which we 
 have had a chief part, because we have doubts 
 whether the effort will succeed ? 
 
 I have pointed out some things which in my 
 opinion we ought to do ; I will now refer to one 
 which I think we ought not to do. The Treaty 
 of Tientsin, coupled with the supplementary agree- 
 ment, as I have repeated, forced China for ever to 
 admit opium at a fixed duty; subject to revision 
 by consent of both parties at decennial periods. As 
 regards goods, other than opium, the Chinese Govern- 
 ment were restricted as to the amount of inland 
 duties which they should levy ; but with regard to 
 opium, the Chinese Government were left free to levy 
 what taxes they pleased on it after it left the hands 
 of the foreign owner, — a distinction due to Lord 
 Elgin, who accepted the opium trade as an inevitable 
 evil, and thought a regulated and licit trade better 
 than an ilhcit one, and at the same time held that we 
 were bound to do nothing to quicken this trade or 
 enable us to scatter the drug broadcast through 
 China.^ If my general position be worth anything, 
 
 ' Keport on East India Finance : Mr. Winchester's Evidence, 
 1871, p. 287. Sir Thomas "Wade's Memo. (China), No. 5, 1871, 
 p. 455. 
 
44 
 
 it requires no argument to show that we ought to 
 use no influence to remove or loosen this fetter on 
 our trade. If the views of Lord Elgin are to prevail 
 and we are to attend to the line of policy on which 
 he proceeded, we toiust ever seek to maintain the 
 duty, not at the low point which may give the 
 greatest stimulus to the opium trade, but at the 
 highest point at which it may be maintained without 
 giving a stimulus to smuggling.' 
 
 I have discussed at this length the practical steps 
 which appear to me open to us. I feel that so to do 
 is in one sense premature, because the wiU to do our 
 best is not present. In another point of view I 
 think the discussion material, because I desire to 
 show that so far from England being shut down to 
 the two alternatives which Sir George Campbell sets 
 before us as equally impossible and absurd, there lie 
 within our power things which we may and ought to 
 do ; and that therefore we of this present generation 
 cannot shelter ourselves from responsibility on the 
 plea that the sin is the sin of our fathers, and that 
 there is nothing in our power to do which would 
 lessen the evil of which they were the first origin and 
 ' cause. 
 
 I rejoice at the generous indignation which the 
 cruelty and lust of a foreign nation have excited 
 throughout the length and breadth of our land ; I 
 should rejoice to see pur activities result in the im- 
 provement of the condition of distant provinces. If 
 only a share of this indignation at the sins of others 
 
 ' Letters and Journal of Lord Elgin, 1872, p. 279. 
 
45 
 
 were directed against the great sin which we year 
 by year perpetrate against the wide empire of China; 
 if only we realized the misery which we day by day 
 produce throughout her crowded cities with some- 
 thing of the intensity with which we have pictured 
 to ourselves the horrors of Bulgaria; if only we 
 strove to remove the beam from our own eye with 
 something of the enthusiasm which we apply to that 
 in our brother's eye, I should not despair of seeing 
 a national repentance for the great sin that we have 
 committed and are committing. 
 
46 
 
 III. THE CHBFOO CONVENTION. 
 
 (Eeprinted from the Contemporary Beview, for January, 1878.) 
 
 The convention agreed upon by Sir Thomas F. "Wade 
 on behalf of her Majesty, and the Minister of the 
 Empire of China, on the 13th September, 1876, is 
 understood to be at the present time a subject of 
 consideration with her Majesty's Government and 
 with the Government of India. It has been the sub- 
 ject of representations to the Foreign Ofl&ce, made on 
 behalf of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce, and 
 of a memorial which has been described as emanating 
 from " the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Duke of 
 Westminster, Cardinal Manning, Mr. Spurgeon, the 
 two Messrs. Morley, a group of ' Professors,' 
 Eitualists, and Quakers, Missionaries and Comtists, 
 with some waifs and strays of the mercantile com- 
 munity," a combination of usually divergent atoms, 
 which must suggest some potent and perhaps valid 
 force of attraction to the one common point. 
 
 Amongst other subjects, this convention deals 
 with the question of opium, and it is chiefly in that 
 regard that I propose to discuss its conditions. 
 
 The Convention itself is not easy reading ; and it 
 
47 
 
 is impossible to understand its meaning, or what it 
 will do, without going a little way back into the his- 
 tory of our diplomatic relations with China. 
 
 The so-called opium war of 1840-2 was ended by 
 the Treaty of Nankin, by whichjGxeatJBritain_recfiived 
 six millions of dollars for the value of opium seized 
 by theXhinese GToverhment in British ^ships, and un- 
 mfstakably threw the whole weight of her victorious 
 arms in support of the contraband trade, which was 
 carried on by British merchants and Chinese 
 smugglers for the ^ain of India^ and the loss^f China. 
 The smugglers were not isolated^and ..sneakJagindi- 
 v jdua ls ; th^ constit uted organized bands capable 
 of contending on no unequal terms with the Govern- 
 ment authorities. " Every one," says Sir Brooke 
 Robertson, writing as our Consul at Canton, under 
 date of 16th May, 1877 :— 
 
 " Every one who knows {sic) Canton previous to the signing of 
 the Treaty of Tientsin, can recall the constant fights on the river 
 between boats manned with from eighty to a hundred men, and 
 pulling as many oars, armed and ready to engage whoever inter- 
 fered with them, and Chinese Imperial cruisers. Scarcely a day 
 passed without loss of life, and, the penalty for smugglers of opium 
 when caught being death, the execution ground was in constant '■ 
 requisition." ' 
 
 In 1857 occurred what is generally known as the 
 affair of the Lorcha Arrow. I do not care to go into 
 the historical details connected with that affair. It 
 is only necessary for me to say_thatjLas a consequence 
 ofitTVe entered_upon a war,„wtichj^in the opinion 
 of many persons, was entirely unjustifiable on our 
 
 1 Blue Book, China, No. 5, 1877, p. 5. 
 
48 
 
 part, and in the course and consequence of^wMchjpre 
 ibrought a great deal of pressure to bear jipon 
 China. 
 
 That war produced the mission to China of Lord 
 Elgin, a man of the very highest character, and the 
 Treaty of Tientsin, which bore date the 26th of June, 
 
 less: ■ ' ~~ 
 
 ^The Treaty of Kankin had provided, that British 
 imports having paid the tariff duties should be con- 
 veyed into the interior free of all further charges 
 except a transit duty, the amount of which was not 
 to exceed a certain percentage on tariff value. 
 Under this clause difficulties had arisen ; no accurate 
 information was furnished of the amount of such 
 duty, and the British merchants constantly com- 
 plained that charges were suddenly and arbitrarily 
 imposed by provincial authorities as transit duties 
 upon produce on its way to the foreign market, and on 
 imports on their way into the interior, to the detri- 
 ment of trade. With these difficulties the twenty- 
 eighth Article of the Treaty of Tientsin dealt by 
 providing that within a specified and short time, the 
 authorities appointed to superintend the collection 
 of duties at the respective ports should be obUged, 
 upon application of the Consul, to declare the amount 
 of duties leviable upon produce between the place of 
 production and the port of shipment, and upon im- 
 ports between the consular port in question and the 
 inland markets named by the Consul ; and that a 
 notification of this should be published in English 
 and Chinese for general information. 
 
49 
 
 This provision had no special reference to opium ; 
 and, indeed, the word does not, I believe, occur in 
 the Treaty of Tientsin. That treaty was followed by 
 a supplementary agreement concluded at Shanghai 
 on the 8th of November, 1858, to which I must call 
 my reader's attention, as it introduced a considerable 
 modification into this matter. 
 
 The seventh rule is in part in these terms :— 
 
 " It is agreed that Article 28 of the Treaty of Tientsin shall he 
 interpreted to declare the amounts of transit dues legally leviable 
 upon merchandise imported or exported by British subjects to be 
 one-half of the tariff duties, except in the case of duty-free goods 
 liable to a transit duty of 2^^ per cent, ad valorem, as provided in 
 Article 2 of these rules." 
 
 It will be observed that the rule which I have just 
 quoted was couched in very general language, but it 
 was preceded by another clause in the Supplemen- 
 tary Treaty, headed " Regarding certain Commodi- 
 ties heretofore Contraband," which was in the follow- 
 ing terms : — 
 
 " The restrictions affecting trade in o pium, cash, grain, pulse, 
 su^hur, brimstone, saltpetre, and spelter^ are relaxed under 3he 
 following conditions : — Opium will henceforth pay 30 taels per picul 
 import duty. The importer will sell it only at the port. It will 
 be carried into the intenor by Chinese only, and only as Chinese 
 property ; the foreign trader will not be allowed to accompany it. 
 The provision of Article 9 of the Treaty of Tientsin, by which 
 British subjects are authorized to proceed into the interior with 
 passports to trade will not extend to it, nor will those of Article 28 
 of the same treaty by which the transit dues are regulated ; the 
 transit dues on it will be arranged as the Chinese Government see 
 fit ; nor in future revisions of the tariff is tHe same rule of revision 
 to be applied to opium as to other goods." 
 
 In the history of our relations with China ia 
 
 D 
 
50 
 
 regard to opium, this clause is of the highest im- 
 portance. It was the first occasion on which the 
 Chinese Government legalized the importation of 
 opium : it followed shortly on the conclusion of the 
 war raised about the Lorcha Arrow. It is true that 
 Lord Elgin postponed the consideration of the subject 
 till the Supplementary Treaty, because he could not 
 reconcile it to his sense of right to urge the Chinese 
 Government to abandon its traditional policy under 
 the kind of pressure which he brought to bear upon 
 it at Tientsin.^ But no one can doubt that the 
 pressure which operated on the Imperial Govern- 
 ment at Tientsin in June, 1858, was also operating 
 on them at Shanghai on the 8th of November in the 
 same year/ 
 
 In the next place it is to be observed that the clause 
 with regard to opium places it, by the most emphatic 
 language, in a position, both present and prospective, 
 entirely different from that of any other commodity. 
 The Treaty of Tientsin provided for a decennial 
 revision of the duties ; but tHs was not to apply 
 to opium. None of the provisions with regard 
 to the regulation of transit duties were to apply to 
 opium. The amount of taxation upon opium was to 
 be arranged as the Chinese Government saw fit — in 
 other words, they were to be the sole judges as to the 
 amount of taxation which opium should bear after it 
 reached their shores. All the provisions which the 
 
 " Lord Elgin to Mr. iReed : Blue Book, Correspondence relative 
 to Lord Elgin's Mission 1857-9, p. 399. 
 ' See ante, pp. 39, 40. 
 
51 
 
 Treaty of Tientsin contains to facilitate British trade 
 into tte interior were inoperative as regards opium, 
 Whj was tliis done ? It was done by Lord Elgin, 
 because he would have said, " I have no desire to 
 give the slightest encouragement to the opium trade; 
 I have no desire that British merchants should be 
 enabled to sow opium broadcast over China. The 
 state of things," he would have continued, "is 
 shocking; the British merchants are carrying on, 
 and have for a long series of years been carrying on, 
 a trade which the Chinese Government do not recog- 
 nize. But that Government have put upon the com- 
 modity what is called a ' squeeze ;' and by so doing 
 they get out of it a certain amount of revenue in the 
 shape of taxation. Therefore the Chinese Govern- 
 ment must be said to be accomplices to a certain 
 extent in the evils which have resulted from the 
 trade. Let us transfer the question from the 
 region of fiction to that of fact ; let us put upon 
 paper the real truth; as a Government, let us rather 
 legalize the trade than shut our eyes to it, and let 
 us enable the Chinese Government also to legalize it 
 if they be so minded." That this was in the mind 
 of Lord Elgin when he introduced the provisions 
 into the Supplementary Treaty is sufficiently apparent 
 from his correspondence and utterances, and not 
 least so from a speech which he made in answer to 
 an address presented to him by a body of Shanghai 
 merchants. In the course of his reply to that 
 address. Lord Elgin said, — 
 
 " It must be distinctly understood that the modifications intro- 
 
 D 2 
 
5-2 
 
 duced into the new Chinese tariff in reference to opium do not in 
 any degree fetter or restrict the discretion of Great Britain as 
 regards the traffic in that article. If the British people and the 
 British Government see fit to do so, they may still make it penal 
 for a British subject to engage in it ; and by so doing, although 
 they will not probably in any material degree diminish the con- 
 sumption of opium in China, they will no doubt do something 
 more or less effectual towards preventing British subjects from 
 being the importers. Short, however, of this extreme measure, 
 of the likelihood of the adoption of which each man may form 
 his own opinion, I am satisfied that the barren announcement 
 by a foreign Government of its assent to the principle that the 
 trade in opium is illegal is productive of nothing but mischief; 
 that it is a delusion and a snare, both to the Chinese and those 
 who have commercial dealings with them. It is notorious that, 
 notwithstanding the clause in the Treaty of Wanghia which pro- 
 nounces opium to be contraband, and the strong declarations of 
 American statesmen on this head, the American flag has been in 
 some instances used habitually, even by British subjects, to cover 
 the traffic. In my recent discussions with the Chinese Imperial 
 Commissioners, I have merely sought to induce them to bring 
 the trade in opium from the region of fiction into that of fact, 
 and to place within the pale of law, and therefore under its con- 
 trol, an article which is now openly bought, sold, and taxed by 
 them beyond the pale. The effect of the change on the interests 
 of the trade itself will be, I believe, either trifling or null." * 
 
 The transit dues wMcli have caused so much 
 trouble in our trade with China are levies in the 
 nature of octrois, leviable at certain fixed points or 
 barriers. The provincial Governments have no 
 right to add to these levies or increase the places of 
 collection without the a,uthority of the Imperial 
 Government. But the central authority in China is 
 weak, the provincial Governments often strong in 
 comparison ; even in peace, and still more in war, a 
 
 * Correspondence relative to Lord Elgin's Mission, 1857-9, p. 
 45a 
 
53 
 
 slight necessity has furnished a reason or an excuse 
 for increasing these dues. They have been levied 
 with great differences of amount in different places 
 and times. Moreover the Chinese Government have 
 kept scant faith with regard to these dues and the 
 information promised to the British authorities, so 
 that they have without doubt been harassing to the 
 souls of our merchants, and a thorn in the sides of 
 those who think that the great oflBce of a great 
 nation is to push its grey shirtings and its opium. 
 
 But more distressing still has been the li-hin, 
 which was either not existing or was not an impost 
 of a serious character at the time of the Treaty of 
 Tientsin. About 1860 it first attracted notice. It 
 is not properly an import duty, a transit duty, or an 
 excise duty, but is something in the nature of 
 a benevolence in the old English sense of that term. 
 It was first imposed heavily with a view to the pay- 
 ment of the indemnity to England after the Arrow 
 war, and subsequently to defray other extraordinary 
 expenses. 
 
 For a long series of years the Chinese Govern- 
 ment had to grapple with various troubles. There 
 was the great Taeping rebelhon, and there were also 
 rebellions simultaneously in various provinces of the 
 Chinese Empire, which caused a considerable drain 
 upon the Imperial finances, as well as lessened the 
 returns from the provinces in which the rebelhons 
 occurred. The li-hin tax therefore became necessary 
 for the maintenance of Chinese officials. The impo- 
 sition or the increase of this tax naturally attracted 
 
64 
 
 notice and invited remonstrance, and the serious 
 question arose as to whetlier its imposition came 
 within the stipulations referring to the transit dues. 
 That is a question on which much might be said on 
 both sides. Sir Thomas "Wade thought that it did 
 not come within these stipulations. The British 
 merchants in China contended that it did. I have 
 already mentioned that in the Treaty of Tientsin 
 provision was made for a decennial revision of the 
 tariff. In 1869 the time arrived for this revision of 
 the tariff. Sir Eutherford Alcock arranged for such 
 revision, and in so doing dealt with this question of 
 li-lcin. To put it very shortly, it was agreed that 
 certain commodities, which included cottons, linens, 
 woollens, and other textile fabrics, should pay transit 
 dues simultaneously with the import dues, and China 
 agreed that when these commodities were imported 
 by British merchants they should be exempted from 
 all further taxes and charges whatsoever. The 
 Convention further provided that opium should pay 
 an import duty at an increased rate. This Con- 
 vention excited the most lively apprehensions on the 
 part of the merchants in China and of the Indian 
 Government, and in the end, on the representations 
 of the mercantile bodies in China and of England, 
 Lord Granville, the then Foreign Secretary, deter- 
 mined, though with great regret, to refuse the rati- 
 fication of that Convention, and it thus, in conse- 
 quence, fell through. 
 
 It was during the course of these negotiations 
 that the representations were made by the Chinese 
 
65 
 
 Government to Sir Rutherford Alcock with regard 
 to the whole subject of this opium traffic, to which 
 I have referred in my previous papers, and which I 
 deeply feel ought to have had, and ought still to 
 have, great influence with her Majesty's Govern- 
 ment/ 
 
 This abrupt failure of Sir Rutherford Alcock's 
 Convention left the U-Mn question unsolved then. 
 Over and above the question of the right of the 
 Chinese Government to levy this li-ldn, arose a 
 further question as to the places where it could be 
 levied. Could it be levied in the concessions or 
 grounds occupied by the foreign merchants ? Could 
 it be levied at the ports which by treaty were 
 opened to our commerce ? What were the limits 
 of these ports ? 
 
 Meanwhile, other questions arose or remained still 
 pressing for settlement. There was the old question 
 of the etiquette which, in some form or other, has 
 been a difficulty from the very first time when we 
 barbarians forced ourselves upon the Chinese Empire 
 down to the present hour. There was the new 
 question which arose from that most lamentable 
 event, the murder of a fine young Englishman, Mr. 
 Margary, in Yun-nan. 
 
 "With all these questions the Convention of Chefoo 
 deals. 
 
 The terms on which the Yun-nan affair was con- 
 cluded, included a pecuniary indemnity for the out- 
 rage in Yun-nan, and the presentation of a letter 
 5 Ante, p. 17—20. 
 
56 
 
 of apology to lier Majesty's Government by a mission 
 to be despatched on purpose. Every one knows that 
 this condition has been fulfilled, and that the 
 Chinese Embassy is located in Portland Place. 
 
 The provisions with regard to official intercourse 
 are not of general interest, so I will not detain the 
 reader with any observations upon them. 
 
 The third section of the Convention deals with 
 
 trade. It opens in these terms : — 
 
 " With reference to the area within which, according to the 
 treaties in force, li-hin ought not to he collected on foreign, goods 
 at the open ports, Sir Thomas Wade agrees to move his Govern- 
 ment to allow the ground rented by foreigners (the so-called Con- 
 cessions) at the different ports to be regarded as the area of exemp- 
 tion from li-hin;, a.Tii the Government of China will thereupon 
 allow I-ch'ang in th? proviijce of Hu-Pei, Wu-hu in An-Hui, Wen- 
 Chow in Che-Kiang, and Pei-hai (Pak-hoi) in Kwang-Tung to be 
 added to the numbe? of ports open to trade, and to become Con- 
 sular stations." 
 
 These words are somewhat singular no doubt. 
 They express, not a stipulation of the treaty, but an 
 agreement by the Ambassador to move his Govern- 
 ment to a particular effect ; and if this section be 
 accepted, the principal questions which have hitherto 
 been agitated as regards U-hin will be dealt with, 
 not by any exphcit declaration, but by implication, 
 for the motion of Sir Thomas Wade implies, first, 
 that li-ldn may lawfully be levied, and secondly, that 
 there are areas entitled to exemption from it. 
 
 The second article provides for the ascertainment 
 by arrangement of the foreign settlement area in all 
 ports opened to trade at which no such area has 
 been previously defined. 
 
The third article deals with opium, and is in these 
 "words : — 
 
 " On opium, Sir Thomas Wade will move his Government to 
 sanction an arrangement different from that affecting other imports. 
 British merchants, when opium is brought into port, will be obliged 
 to have it taken cognizance of by the Customs, and deposited in 
 bond, either in a warehouse or a receiving-hulk, until such time as 
 there is a sale for it. The importer will then pay the Tariff duty 
 upon it, and the purchasers the li-Mn ; in order to the prevention 
 of the evasion of the duty, the amount of li-kin to be collected will 
 be decided by the different provincial Grovernments according to 
 the circumstances of each." 
 
 Ought her Majesty's Government to adopt and 
 act upon the suggestion which Sir Thomas Wade 
 has, of course, made to them in pursuance of this 
 pledge ? 
 
 In order to answer this, an earlier question must 
 be asked — What is the exact meaning of ■ this 
 stipulation ? what will it do ? what change will it 
 effect ? 
 
 Already the Chinese Government have the right 
 under the Supplementary Convention of November, 
 1858, to place any duty they choose upon opium. 
 But their power to lay very heavy charges upon it 
 is in effect and reality limited by the danger of 
 smuggling between the place of import and the place 
 of taxation. The higher the tax the greater is of 
 course the temptation to smuggling ; and the limit 
 which this imposes on the Government is, I believe, 
 considerable, for China is a country where the 
 central authority is far from strong, and where 
 smuggling is known as a science and a profession. 
 But if the place of import and the place of taxation 
 
58 
 
 be one and the same, the possibility of smuggling is 
 extinguished, and the practical power of taxation 
 proportionately increased, and this is what the clause 
 in question does. 
 
 " If this clause be agreed to," write the Shanghai General 
 Chamber to their London Committee, under date of the 15th June, 
 1877, " the Chinese Government will have it in their power by the 
 imposition of heavy duties to extinguish the India trade, and it is 
 for her Majesty's Government to decide whether they will permit 
 the Tientsin Treaty to be modified in order to promote such a 
 result." 
 
 To those who, like myself, earnestly long to see 
 such a result, the adoption of Sir Thomas "Wade's 
 recommendation will seem highly desirable. The 
 Chinese Government may, no doubt, use the power 
 which will be conferred on them in very difEerent 
 ways. They may perhaps use it for little more than 
 to raise a slightly increased income : it is possible 
 that they may use it as a means for depressing the 
 import of opium, in order to encourage its growth in 
 China ; and, lastly, they may use it for the sake of 
 gradually discouraging alike the import and the 
 growth of opium. The portions of Sir Thomas 
 Wade's despatch bearing on this section of the 
 treaty have not been published, and I have failed 
 to trace anything like trustworthy information as 
 to the present views on this question of the Chinese 
 Government. I know no sufficient reason, however, 
 for supposing that they are different from what they 
 were, or that the strong opinions expressed by Sir 
 Rutherford Alcock and Dr. Dudgeon as tp the 
 sincerity and reality of their desire and power to 
 
59 
 
 check its consumption is not as true now as it was 
 •wlien they spoke.® But be this as it may, and be 
 the use of the power by the Chinese Government 
 what it may, the adoption of Sir Thomas Wade's 
 motion would lessen our complicity in the trade, 
 and for that reason I answer that her Majesty's 
 Government ought to second and act upon it. 
 
 There are yet other and more detailed con- 
 siderations which lead me to the same conclusion. 
 
 The proposed arrangement follows the lines of 
 Lord Elgin's policy in the Convention of November, 
 1858. By that he left the amount of taxation to 
 the absolute discretion of the Chinese Government ; 
 by this we should only corroborate that power and 
 give effect to that discretion. And to me it does 
 seem undignified and little to our credit that we 
 should seek to avail ourselves of the aid of the 
 smugglers as a check on China's power to do that 
 which Lord Elgin emphatically maintained that 
 China ought to have the liberty and the power 
 to do. 
 
 I concede that the British Government are under 
 no legal obligations to accede to the suggestions 
 which their Minister undertook to make to them. 
 The very fact that all the Convention contains as 
 regards the U-Mn is made to rest in a promise of a 
 suggestion, and not in an operative stipulation, 
 shows of itself that the British Government were 
 to be at liberty to accede or not to the motions of 
 their Minister; and the sixth paragraph of the 
 « Ante, pp. 20, 21. 
 
60 
 
 section on trade makes this yet more clear; for it 
 
 provides, that whilst the stipulations as to the new 
 
 ports, and certain others as to new places of 
 
 landing and shipment, should have effect given to 
 
 them within six months after receipt of an imperial 
 
 decree approving of a memorial with regard to the 
 
 Yun-nan affair,-^ 
 
 " the date for giving effect to the stipulations affecting exemption 
 of imports from li-hin taxation within the foreign settlements, and 
 the collection of li-hin upon opium by the Customs Inspectorate at 
 the same time as the tariff duty upon it, would he fixed as soon as 
 the British Government had arrived at an understanding on the 
 subject with other foreign (jovernments." 
 
 It is within the power, then, of her Majesty's 
 Government to repel Sir Thomas "Wade's motions to 
 them. But would it be honourable or politic to do 
 so ? This is the second effort to settle this question 
 of li-lcin — the second convention upon the point 
 that has been concluded. To the first the Govern- 
 ment, with undisguised regret, refused their 
 ratification, at the instance of the mercantile bodies. 
 Is this second convention to meet with a like fate ? 
 Is the work of Sir Thomas Wade to fare no better 
 than that of Sir Rutherford Alcock ? The Chinese 
 Government will soon think it a waste of time to 
 bargain with our envoys. 
 
 The irritation left by the rejection of that con- 
 vention has not yet died out in the minds of Chinese 
 statesmen, and Sir Thomas Wade found it one of 
 the antagonistic influences against which he had to 
 contend.' Sir Charles Dilke has called attention to 
 ' Blue Book, China, No. 3, 1877, p. 119. 
 
61 
 
 the extent to whicli our line of conduct has been 
 lessening our influence in China, and throwing her 
 GrOTernment into the arms of Eussia. Will not a 
 refusal to act on the Chefoo Convention accelerate 
 this tendency ? 
 
 Furthermore, the indemnity has been paid: the 
 apology has been presented at St, James's by the 
 special envoy, and the netv treaty ports have been 
 opened. Is it honourable and expedient, though 
 lawful, to disappoint the Chinese Government of 
 those concessions to them on which they might 
 reasonably have counted in the compromise which 
 finds its expression in the Chefoo Convention? 
 Sir Thomas Wade drove them into that convention 
 by threats of war — of "the extremest measure of 
 coercion ; " * and shall we refuse to abide by the 
 recommendations which even then our Minister 
 promised to make ? 
 
 No doubt the co-operation, or at least the consent 
 of the other Treaty Powers is contemplated as 
 preceding the operation of the clauses as to li-7cin 
 and opium. But as regards the latter the British 
 Government is practically the only foreign Power 
 that has any serious interest; and if that Govern- 
 ment should show a real willingness to give effect 
 to this provision as to opium, there can, I believe, 
 be httle diflficulty in obtaining the assent to it 
 of the other Powers. 
 
 « Blue Book, China, No. 3, 1877, p. 133.