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balance of relevant evidence. is adverse to the contentions
of the Anti-opium League. And careful examination
of the conditions of the problem in Hongkong
has led me to entertain some doubt
whether those who favour measures
of extreme restriction in regard to the use of opium would be justified
in their views, so far at least as this Colony is concerned, even
if their premises were correct; while it further has convinced me that those premises
are in many particulars, and especially as regards the moral and physical effects
of the use of opium generally practised by the Hong Kong Chinese,
in irreconcilable with the facts and based on erroneous information
on a too hasty generalization from insufficient data. But I imagine that