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[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government 1 360
[February
12290
SECTION FG 12 APP131
OPIUM.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[8598]
Sir,
No. 1.
Messrs. E. D. and Messrs. D. Sassoon and Co. to Foreign Office.-(Received February 22.)
17, St. Helen's Place, February 22, 1913. WE desire to call the attention of Sir Edward Grey to certain passages in the speech of Mr. Acland, His Majesty's Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, last Thursday on the motion for the adjournment of the House.
Mr. Acland, speaking in Sir Edward Grey's place and apparently on his authority, is reported by "Hansard" to have said, with reference to those engaged in the opium trade, "That they were engaged in a highly speculative business of that kind, and that they could not expect that this or any other Government should secure for them good and comfortable bargains for their goods."
Representing not only ourselves, but also a large body of loyal native subjects of His Majesty, we feel entitled to express strongly our resentment that the Under- Secretary should apparently have deemed it fair to refer thus slightingly to the opium traders as speculators while omitting all reference to the Secretary of State for India in Council.
What are the facts which must be always borne in mind by any speaker on this subject who desires to deal with it fairly?
The great outstanding fact is-not that there are traders like ourselves and native merchants who are willing to deal with opium in the ordinary way of trade but-that His Majesty's Secretary of State for India in Council (acting through the Government of India) is the monopolist producer and vendor of opium, and is, and always has shown himself as being, directly interested in rendering such production and sale as profitable to himself as possible.
So long as opium (although a monopoly) was produced and sold under normal conditions speculation in it by the traders who bought and exported it was no greater than the speculation attendant upon purchases and export of jute, cotton, or other produce. All commerce is in a sense speculation, but it is unfair for the Under- Secretary to refer to traders in opium as though they were undeserving of con- sideration. Such a suggestion may possibly be based upon, but cannot be either justified or excused by, the disfavour with which popular opinion in this country regards opium.
Neither was it right or fair that the Under-Secretary in his speech, while belittling the traders as speculators, should not even have attempted any excuse or palliation of the conduct of the monopolist producer of opium (the Secretary of State for India in Council), who, by the inevitable economic effect of restriction of output and an enormous increase of export duties and Government demands, gradually raised during the past two years the price of opium to the enormous height which it attained immediately before China by her repudiation of her treaty obligations deprived it of all market value.
The Government of India, with the approbation of the Home Government, having made treaties with China invited the traders to purchase the opium which was the subject of such treaties. The traders had no voice whatever in making the treaties, but had to accept in purchasing opium from Government as monopolist producer of the opium any arrangement which the Government as a sovereign Power chose to impose. It was not in our view fair that the Under-Secretary in his speech should have ignored this aspect of the question, or the circumstance that the traders bought the opium produced by Government as monopolist, in the justifiable belief that the same Government as sovereign could and would see that the treaties made by themselves were duly observed.
The Government of India by their course of dealing increased their own revenue by from 100 per cent. to 200 per cent. at the expense of the trader, for practically the whole of this increase passed directly from his pocket into the revenue of India. If anyone is open to reproach it is surely the monopolist producer of the opium, the
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