2
At the very beginning of the revolution General Li made it a capital offence in his army for a soldier to be found smoking opium. This is one of the first great evils to be met by the people of a free republic.
China is oppressed by awful famine, she has been fighting for the liberty of her people against misrule, she is greatly troubled by pillage and robbery, but more than this she realises that the curse of opium has brought ruin and sorrow to her land. are planning a new and mighty effort to put down speedily this great evil.
Her people
People and Government united.
Last
The people and the Government are working together in this great effort. year the National Assembly at Peking, voicing the purpose of the nation, voted a memorial against opium, looking to a speedy end of the trade. They were ready to give up all revenue from this drug, that is only a poison to the people. But the Manchu Government shelved the memorial, and, while making efforts against the cultivation, allowed the trade to go on, and increased the revenue on foreign opium to 350 taels per chest. This, with the higher prices prevailing, made a retail cost to China of over 100,000,000 Mexican dollars of foreign opium sold in the Empire during last year.
This was one result of the new opium agreement arranged by the Manchu dynasty, which, as the last report of the British Anti-Opium Society in London remarked, was more favourable to the opium traders than to the people of China. condition continue under the Republic of China?
Can such a officials and the people alike. How, then, to free China from the opium evil? First, No is the reply of the republican by strong public action by the Government, so that the world may know that it is the real desire and determination of the new republic to end this source of weakness and ruin to China. The people will earnestly support this strong moral appeal by the Government, that in the name of humanity this evil trade may stop.
The people of the republic have a right to ask and expect the freedom of self- preservation. They are doing so now, and a telegram was sent to the Republican Government urging action. Meetings will A great mass meeting was held in Soochow, be held in Shanghai to consider the same question. They will be held in other large cities. It is China's determination that the opium trade and cultivation must stop this year. The Christians of Great Britain will also co-operate in the effort to give freedom to China from opium in this the first year of the republic. The new agreement provides that it may be changed at any time. The citizens of this nation feel as never before that the opium habit is a disgrace to the republic and it great must go.
Pleas by British Missionaries.
And I can assure you at this time of a wider national life that and earnest British co-operation in this great reform. Let me read some of the opinions you will have strong expressed by British missionaries in China. And remember also the more than 1,000 appeals from the great British Empire which failed because the weak Manchu Government did not take action.
Mr. T. Hudson Taylor said :-
"Ah! we have given China something besides the Gospel, something that is doing more barm in a week than the united efforts of all our Christians are doing good in a year. Oh, the evils of opium! The slave trade was bad; the drink is bad; the licensing of vice is bad; but the opium traffic is the sum of all villanies. It debauches more families than drink; it makes more slaves directly than the slave trade; and it demoralises more sad lives than all the licensing systems in the world. Will pray, my friends?--I entreat you to pray to the Mighty God that He will
you not bring this great evil to an end."
Dr. Arnold Forster, of Wuchang, said, in closing his appeal against opium "Ours is the manufactory of the Indian opium that has poured into China a never- ceasing stream of poison all through the Victorian era. Ours have been and are the profits, ours is the sin. As we value the maintenance among us of those principles of righteousness that have made our nation great, as we pleas for making material wealth the standard of our nation's prosperity, let us exert deprecate all those low-toned ourselves, in the cause of this crucial and representative moral question--the maintenance or abandonment of our national opium trade--to show the courage of our convictions. Let us offer the sacrifices of righteousness and put our trust in the Lord, and let us do it at once."
(This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.
OPIUM.
CONFIDENTIAL.
[16201]
No. 1.
327
C. O.
13377
[April 18.]
SECTION 2.13 JUN 12
British Delegates to International Opium Conference to Sir Edward Grey.--- (Received April 18.) (Confidential.)
Sir,
WE, the British delegates plenipotentiary at the recent International Opium Conference at The Hague, have now the honour to submit to you our report on the proceedings and results of the conference. We have already transmitted to you (on the 24th January)* the convention and the final protocol in which the labours of the conference resulted, and we now submit two volumes containing respectively (a) minutes of the conference sessions, and (b) memoranda or other papers laid before the conference by the various delegations.
2. The conference was called together at the instance of the American Government, whose object was to give the force of law and international agreement to the proposals contained in the resolutions of the International Opium Commission which assembled at Shanghai in 1899, and to "the essential corollaries derived therefrom." That Govern- ment accordingly put forward the following tentative programme for discussion by the conference ---
(a.) The advisability of effective national laws and regulations to control the production, manufacture, and distribution of opium, its derivatives and preparations.
(5.) The advisability of restricting the number of ports through which opium may be shipped by opiura-producing countries.
(c.) The means to be taken to prevent, at the port of departure, the shipment of opium, its derivatives and preparations, to countries that prohibit, or wish to prohibit or control, their entry.
(d.) The advisability of reciprocal notification of the amount of opium, its derivatives and preparations, shipped from one country to another.
(e.) Regulation by the Universal Postal Union of the transmission of opium, its derivatives and preparations, through the mails.
(f) The restriction or control of the cultivation of the poppy, so that the production of opium will not be undertaken by countries which at present do not produce it, to compensate for the reduction being made in British India and China.
(y) The application of the pharmacy laws of the Governments concerned to their subjects in the consular districts, concessions, and settlements in China.
(h.) The propriety of restudying treaty obligations and international agreements under which the opium traffic is at present conducted.
(1.) The advisability of uniform provisions of penal laws concerning offences against any agreements that the Powers may make in regard to opium production and traffic.
(.) The advisability of uniform marks of identification of packages containing opium in international transit.
(k.) The advisability of permits to be granted to exporters of opium, its derivatives and preparations.
(1) The advisability of reciprocal right of search of vessels suspected of carrying contraband opium.
(m.) The advisability of measures to prevent the unlawful use of a flag by vessels engaged in the opium traffic.
(n.) The advisability of an International Commission to be entrusted with the carrying out of any international agreement concluded.
• Miscellaneous No. 2 (1912),
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