opium to smoke, or a pound's worth to remit home by the passage boat to leave in the evening.
A
This is not of course a large trade but it is considerable for a young place like this, and will doubtless grow with our increasing general trade.
Say the whole thing, wholesale and retail, turns over no more than $100,000 per month — still the traffic of it passes through some half dozen different hands in the Colony, and must necessarily leave a profit with each.
I look upon this as one of the best effects of the modification of the opium monopoly that by extending the licenses to several hands instead of one, it raises up a wholesome competition and keeps the article at a fair value.
The best evidence of its beneficial working is this — That the refining of Opium here, with its infinitesimal retail, and its having grown into the favored medium of petty remittances, has entirely sprung up since the sole monopoly was modified into the license system.
There appears to me a way of improving this revenue of the colony — we may afford it to abolish that revenue altogether and to let every struggling Chinese who can afford it, buy his ball of Opium and smoke it down for himself without its being taxed a single farthing.
The local traffic in this luxury has not hitherto grown up here. First — the retail branch, as explained above, must have been hitherto greatly shocked, if not almost barred, by the old monopoly.
It was the interest of the Sole-farmer, or, rather the Chinaman he employed, to sell a comparatively small quantity at his own price, than a much larger, at prices laid down for him in an open and fairly disputed trade.
This hitherto kept down the boiling and refining of the drug here — The farmer was his own refiner, and