CO129-362 - Public Offices - 1909 — Page 329

[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]

327

CHINA TRADE.

CONFIDENTIAL.

[25894]

No. 1.

C.O 19352

[July 9.]

SECTION 1.

Mr. C. E. Price, M.P., to Sir Edward Grey.—(Received July 9.)

Dear Sir Edward Grey,

House of Commons, July 9, 1909. ON behalf of the Edinburgh Committee for the Suppression of the Indo-Chinese Opium Traffic, I send you a memorial signed by representatives of divinity, medicine, law, trade, and women's work, and which contains about 3,000 signatures. Whilst the petition comes from the Edinburgh Committee, it contains names from all parts of Scotland, so that it is wholly of a representative character. I trust you will give the memorial your earnest consideration, as the subject is one which is keenly felt by all classes in Scotland.

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Inclosure in No. 1.

I am, &c.

CHAS. E. PRICE.

Sir,

Memorial from the Edinburgh Committee for the Suppression of the Indo-Chinese Opium Traffic to Sir Edward Grey.

[Undated.] WE, the undersigned Ministers, office-bearers, and members of the various churches in Scotland, resident in Edinburgh, gathered there at the annual ecclesiastical meetings, or resident in other parts of the country, desire respectfully to draw your attention to the urgency of bringing to a more speedy end than has yet been arranged for the Indo-Chinese opium traffic.

We are grateful for what has been done by our Government and chiefly by Lord Morley, Lord Crewe, and yourself during the last three years in response to the heroic efforts of China. We are glad to see that the late Shanghae International Commission has characterised these efforts as being carried on with "unswerving sincerity." But we feel that as a Christian nation, professing a high moral standard, we have not, in comparison with non-Christian China, done all we should and as quickly as we should in this fateful business. We specially regret to note that the British authorities in China have thwarted some of the most enlightened provincial governors in their projects to establish an official monopoly of the drug at the open ports in order to control the consumption. This they bave done because of certain clauses in the Nanking and Tien-tsin treaties, thus depriving the great Empire which is grappling with this vice of a right enjoyed and exercised by every other nation which has to deal with it, and the lack of which our Ambassador at Peking regards as a serious hindrance to the success of her efforts.

If this practical outcome of these articles is legal, which seems open to question, seeing they are applied to an import which at the time was contraband, we would urge that, in the interests of fair trade and fair play, orders should at once be given for their non-enforcement. We are aware that the effect of this would probably be to decrease the sale of British grown and manufactured opium, and bring about a consequent reduction of the Indian revenue, but we are persuaded that by thus hastening the end of what our country has pronounced an "immoral" traffic, the moral uplist would be of the highest significance and influence both to ourselves and the nations of the east.

(Signatures follow.)

[2363 --1]

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