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where the ground originally marked off became overcrowded, or where other necessities presented themselves, to acquire sites within a moderate distance of the centre more precisely designated by the word port. At Shanghae, for instance, they were intended to include Woosung; at Canton, Whampoa. So elsewhere, and, practically, foreigners do reside, as of Treaty right, almost everywhere they please in the neigh- bourhood of the ports.
These areas, the so-called concessions, may be nominally distinguished as con- cessions of the nation by whose agents their appropriation to foreign use was originally secured, but they are in no case exclusively devoted to the use of any one particular nationality. Our own rule in these concessions, when leased to our Government, has been to allow lots of land within them to be held by any foreigner whose Represen- tative would guarantee his national's conformity to the regulations already binding upon British subjects holding lots in the concession concerned. Whether in concessions leased as above to foreign Governments, or in concessions recognized as such under other conditions, the conservancy of the settlements thereon formed is cared for by a Committee of the foreigners residing at the port. Its members, of course, possess no magisterial authority; this is the property of the Consuls only; but, from the nature of their functions in respect of taxation, maintenance of police, and the like, the Committee is not inappropriately styled a Municipal Council.
To give effect to the stipulation of Article I, that the ground so held by foreigners should be regarded as the area within which imports were to be exempt from li-kin, I was, of course, bound to recommend also a delimitation of that ground. It was the more necessary on account of the peculiar position of the opium trade, whether under the new rule of taxation recommended by me, or under the rale heretofore prevailing against action under which I had also received complaints.
The position of the opium trade is peculiar in this, that it is by Treaty liable to an inland taxation, to which other British imports are not liable. Interpreting the Treaty as I interpret it, I differ with the complainants to whom I refer. They claim, at least, the benefit of a port area for the drug. I contend that its liability to inland taxation commences from the moment that it passes out of the hands of the importer. The right claimed for it to a port arca, as might be expected, has besides brought us, in some instances, into collision with the executive of the hi-kin collectorates.
I should wish, before going further, to submit to your Lordship some observations regarding impressions, to my mind erroneous, on the subject of the opium trade, as likely to be affected by my Agreement. I have been complimented by some, whose objection to the trade is so strong that they would suppress it at any cost, upon the great step secured towards its suppression by Article III. Importers of opium have so far shared this estimate of my work as to express their apprehension that the trade in it will be hard hit by my stipulations. It has been argued that, as a natural consequence, they may seriously prejudice the opium revenue of the Indian Government.
As regards the first of these three propositions, I am obliged in candour to decline the praise awarded me. More; although I should be as well pleased to see the Chinese, for their own sakes, abandon the use of opium, or, at least, the excessive use of it, as I should be to see drunkenness reformed out of our own islands, I am bound to admit that in my late negotiations I did not propose to myself the part of a moral reformer. As to the allegation that for a habit which has undoubtedly been developed to a vicious excess the Chinese were originally indebted to the British importer of Indian opium, I have a suspicion that the contrary might be established. Even in 1839, when, if the Chinese Government had condescended to treat us as a Government, the exclusion of the drug from the ports of China might possibly have been negotiated; for the belief that the Empire was opposed to its admission on moral grounds could not have failed to have had its weight with our own Administration; even then, in 1839, I am persuaded that the Indian opium imported, though undoubtedly the opium most in request was but a snall proportion of the drug consumed in China. Opposed on moral grounds, the trade undoubtedly was; by the Emperor reigning and by some Ministers, perfectly in earnest; but the outflow of silver it was alleged to occasion was for no little in the opposition of others; and there was in both and all beside a feeling of contempt and hatred of the barbarian, of which their attitude in the opium discussion was not the only evidence.
But to return to our responsibility as purveyors. I doubt that at any time we have imported sufficient opium to supply 5 per cent. of the population of China. From inquiries which I prosecuted with some intenseness in the years 1846-19, less than ten years, that is to from the date of our first rupture, I found that the poppy was
say, cultivated in at least ten of the eighteen provinces of China.
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In Kuang Si this cultivation and the preparation of the drug, even in 1847, were not a new-grown business. The rice crop, I was assured, in some parts of the province, was sacrificed to the poppy. In the south of Fuh Kien a white poppy was grown, the In the far opium manufactured from which was cheap, but exceedingly deleterious. north-west, at Lan-chon Fu, an opium was manufactured which was credited with the nearest approach in excellence to our own. The Provinces of Ssu Ch'uan, Hu Pei, and Hu Nan produced their own opium; and when, in 1858, I accompanied Lord Elgin to Hankow, in Hu Pei, I remarked that although the native drug from these and from the Provinces of Kuang Tung and Kuang Si was advertised outside the smoking divans as openly as our public-houses advertise the liquors we drink, there was not to be seen in At this any street that I traversed a single notice that foreign opium was for sale. moment I doubt extremely whether even in the inland districts of the coast provinces the opium consumed is foreign. From the Reports recently printed of those members of the Consular Service who have been sent into the interior to ascertain whether the Pro- clamation on the Yün Nan outrage has been duly posted, I incline to think that it is not. In the far west provinces, in Yün Nau, for instance, it certainly is not. Yün Nan, it has been supposed, drew opium from British Barmah. It appears, on the contrary, that Burmah proper, at all events, is supplied from Yün Nan.
The evil of opium smoking in China I do not contest. I do not abate it by a parallel between it and the abuse of spirits even amongst hard-drinking nations. The smoker to whom his pipe has become a periodical requirement is more or less on a par with the dram-drinker; but the Chinese constitution, moral or physical, appears to me to be more insidiously invaded in the case of the first. The confirmed smoker is not, or is seldom, at all events, outwardly committed, like the drunkard, to indecorum. The indulgence appears, at the same time, to present a special attraction to the. Chinese as compared with other peoples. The use of it, in my experience, has become more general in the class above that in earlier times addicted to it.
Much, however, as I deplore this state of things, I say again that when I proposed at Chefoo to recommend a change in the method of taxing it, I had, I confess, no thought whatever of assisting the Chinese Government to extinguish the trade in Indian opium. I was dealing only with the rights of China in respect of the revenue derivable from opium, that question being part of the larger revenue question which I was seeking to regulate in a manner practical and equitable.
The extinction of our trade in opium, or at least its diminution, may come to pass from the fact that the poppy is being increasingly cultivated all over China. In some districts, as I have said, the drug to a certain extent rivals that we import. It is as likely that, with improved tillage and preparation, the native product will one day compete with ours, as that certain of our Indian teas, under like conditions, will exclude certain teas of China from the market. And it is from this direction that the Govern- ment of India should look for danger. It has possibly no more than a limited lease of its present monopoly. But its total withdrawal from the trade at this moment, while it would involve the sacrifice of a considerable revenue, would not, I am confident, one whit advance the object which advocates of that measure have at heart, the emancipation of the Chinese from a habit which they too often fatally abuse. Were our Indian quota to be withheld to-morrow, the Chinese would still persist in smoking opium, and their own supply, though inferior in quality, would be none the less equal to the demand.
On the side of the Chinese Government there is no little contradiction between what is said and what is done in relation to this question. Chinese statesmen will tell one that opium is undoubtedly the greatest curse of the country, and that we, the English, are responsible for it. This is a convenient weapon of attack, not only in the hands of the Chinese. Some of them will more than hint at the danger to which our Indian revenue is exposed by Chinese competition. Some will suggest, speculatively, that this competition should be encouraged until imported opium can find no market. This point attained, they would then put down the use of opium in China with the strong hand, and remoralize the country.
It is consistent with the views professed by these latter, that where they are in office they should make no effort to restrain cultivation. But it is rare to find any effort made anywhere.
At Nanking, the present Governor-General did recently shut up the opium divans, thus compelling those who smoked to smoke in private; but the poppy is grown in every part of the Empire, and the native drug is as regularly subjected to li-kin and other taxation as any other article of trade.
In the negotiations of 1868-69, it was suggested that if the Tariff duty on Indian opium were raised, the cultivation of the poppy in China might be restricted. This,
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