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804
EAST ASIA.
Rice is brought chiefly from Siam, French Cochin-China, and Annam. Next to
rice, the most important imports are opium and cotton, which were received in
1879 to the value of no less than 11,000,000 and 6,200,000 respectively. Under
the present Indian administration, which has inherited this traffic from the East
India Company, the sale of opium has increased tenfold in about twenty years. In
return for advances made to the Bengal poppy- growers, the Government takes the
chest at a fixed price, and sells it at an average profit of about 90, which yields
from 6,000,000 to 8,000,000 yearly
to the Indian revenue. Hence there is
some ground for the charge brought against the British Government of speculating
in the vices of the Chinese. At the same time there is scarcely a Government
in the world against which a similar charge may not be brought. Which
of them is free from the imputation of having encouraged the traffic in tobacco,
alcoholic spirits, or other poisons, for financial purposes ? The Chinese Govern-
ment itself raises large sums from the import duty on opium, and tacitly con-
nives at its cultivation in most of the provinces, where the traders and mandarins
share between them the profits on the yearly crops of the officially prohibited
drug.
At the same time the baneful effects of the use of this narcotic have been
strangely exaggerated. Most of the lettered classes use it in moderation without
any apparent weakening of their intellect. Those who indulge
to excess no doubt
yield at last, like drunkards, to convulsive attacks and paralytic strokes. But they
are few in number, and seldonj found amongst the peasant and labouring classes,
who form the heart of the nation.* Most opium smokers are satisfied with a few
harmless whiffs in the intervals between their work, and it is noteworthy that the
people of Sechuen, who are most addicted to the practice, are specially distinguished
by their energy and intelligence. On the whole, opium is probably not a whit
more injurious than tobacco, which is far more prevalent in the seaboard and
northern provinces. On the other hand, the European vice of drunkenness is
almost unknown in China, where you may travel for years without meeting a single
intoxicated person.
In "The Truth about Opium" (1882), Mr. W. II. Brereton of Hong Kong,
who has made a special study of this question, considers that tobacco is on the
whole more injurious than opium smoking. He describes the Chinese as, generally
that he has known
speaking, a strong, healthy, and intelligent people, and says
among them young men, middle-aged men, and men of advanced years who have
been opium smokers all their lives, some of them probably excessive smokers. Yet
he never observed any symptoms of premature decay in any of them. One
old man whom he knew for fifteen years, he describes as a keen man of business,
strong in body and mind, who betrayed the practice only in the discoloration of
his teeth. That few in. any case smoke to excess seems probable from the generally
white state of their teeth, of which they are very proud, and which they brush
*
According to an official note issued early in 1882 by Mr. Hart, Inspector-General of Chinese
Customs, considerably less than one per cent, of the population is addicted to opium smoking, while those
who smoke to excess are extremely rare.