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[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majestys Government,]
CHINA TRADE.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[40837]
No. 1.
2 DEC 09
[November 6.]
SECTION 1.
Sir,
Dr. Maxwell to Sir Edward Grey.-(Received November 6.)
31, Hammelton Road, Bromley, Kent, November 5, 1909. AS chairman of the representative board of the various anti-opium societies in this country, I have the honour to place before you a resolution passed unanimously by the board at its meeting on the 28th October, 1909, and to express the hope that you will give it your sympathetic consideration.
In the presence of so wide-spread and sincere and so successful an anti-opium movement as is now manifest in the Chinese Empire, we feel that it would be an immense encouragement alike to the central and to the local governments of China if the distinction which now, of necessity, has to rule in dealing with Chinese and Indian opium respectively could be done away.
The preferential treatment now accorded to Indian opium as the result of treaties which did not contemplate such a movement as that of to-day, a preferential treatment, moreover, which becomes increasingly apparent as the months go on and the stocks of Chinese opium become less and less, must of course be rather galling to Chinese reformers, who see in it the one hindrance to complete removal of the evil. It is hardly possible not to sympathise with men who have succeeded in cleansing their portion of the country from the poppy growth, who have secured the closing of the opium dens, and so far as Chinese opium is concerned the shutting of the opium shops, but who are brought to a stand by the fact that Indian opium still holds its own, and that no embargo can be put on its sale anywhere in China.
We sincerely taust that it may be possible for you to exercise your great influence in the direction of removing this difficulty out of the way of the Chinese.
I have, &c.
Inclosure in No. 1.
JAMES L. MAXWELL, M.D.
Minute adopted by the Representative Board of British Anti-Opium Societies at a Meeting held on October 28, 1909.
THIS board welcomes Sir Edward Grey's renewed statement of the sympathy of the British Government with the Government of China as set forth in his letter to Mr. C. E. Price, M.P., dated the 9th August, 1909, and makes no question that under his direction it is this sympathy that is now guiding British policy. But the board is very anxions as to two fundamental matters which should guide the exercise of this sympathy. The first is that it should be understood that the term of ten years is not what China now desires. Her official assurances of gratitude are courteous expressions of appreciation of the changed attitude of the British Government, but her real desire, as expressed by her representatives at the recent Shanghae Commission, and stated by Sir Alexander Hosie in his general report on the opium question, is for a much speedier closing of the legalised import of Indian opium. There is much evidence to show that the Government of China, backed up by public opinion, find that it would be both easier and better to shorten the term of ten years assigned for the termination of the trade and habit. The board trusts that the British Government will, on its part, be ready to act up to the standard of the Chinese opinion and action in this
matter.
Secondly, the board hears with profound regret that the old treaties between the two Empires, made and enforced in support of a policy the very opposite to that which is now happily animating His Majesty's Government, are frequently used to defeat the anti-opium efforts of enlightened reformers in China, and so make the self-sacrificing
* It is well understood that the Government are anxious to shorten the ten years' limit." ("China No. 1, 1909," p. 4.)
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