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change.
In abolition of the tax on opium altogether would be a yet farther improvement.
Hitherto the monopoly checked the retail trade. The farmer cannot refine and, looking for his profit as a monopolist drug, raw and prepared, at a higher price here than sold at Cursingmeen.
The large houses make sacrifices to discourage larger sale of opium here. Whenever native smugglers bring a large quantity, the great houses glut the Colonial Market at a reduced rate. The opium so sold follows the smuggler to his port, and he finds he has lost by his trip to the Colony. This manoeuvre not only discourages him but upsets operations here. It is practised to prevent an open traffic; prices would otherwise be laid down for the said Houses, and they could only look out for competitors.
They keep a moderate proportion of the traffic to the coast, where they have no competitors. Were it not for this, the coasters would bring away not opium alone, but other goods. Opium is sold at Namoa for dollars, and the whole vicinity thence supplied; districts are discouraged from seeking the drug.
Sugar-growing, as shown above, has greatly decreased since the fleets last year. Piracy and the destruction of the fleets are a grand local obstruction to the opium trade of the Colony; still the large houses who inflate this coil on it do no more than make a legitimate use of their capital. Other causes have considerably broken up the monopoly enjoyed by them till a few years ago.
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