CO129-405 - Public Offices - 1913 — Page 286

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the Opium Prohibition Bureau, each fined 250 dollars, while the opium was confiscated, Again, there is the case of a doctor of means and position, a detective having got into his house in the night on the pretence of wanting medical advice, discovered Indian opium and smoking utensils. As a result, the doctor was arrested, taken to the Opium Prohibition Bureau, and fined 5,000 dollars.

The cases our association have cited are within our own knowledge. There are, loubtless, countless other similar instances.

On Monday last, the Yuan Ta firm, raw opium dealers, purchased for cash from Messrs. E. D. Sassoon and Co, one chest of Malwa opium. They reported it at the Maritime Customs and paid duty. They then sold sixteen packages, each of four nakes, to a customer, who reported it for conveyance to Chinking and received from the Customs the transit certificates. On reaching the railway station, the opium was seized by the Opium Prohibition Bureau. When the customer protested that it was covered by Customs certificates bearing the Customs seal, he was told that, whether or no there were certificates and labels, all Indian opium whatever would be prohibited, and the said opium was taken, and is now in the Opium Prohibition Bureau.* The Ta Yuan firm went to Messrs. E. D. Sassoon and Co. and demanded the return of the price of the goods; they also asked them to demand back from the Customs the duty paid. In neither case were they able to get back a single cash. It would seem therefore, that on the one hand, to levy duty, and on the other hand, to seize the opium, amounts to a system of fraud and robbery and is not a civilised practice.

In view of the nature of these preventive measures against Indian opium, if your firms still insist on our taking delivery of the goods contracted for, it is undoubtedly beyond our power. At the present time the amounts contracted for by our guild, together with those for which we hold godown delivery orders, amount to a total of 11,000 chests. Through the General Chamber of Commerce, we telegraphed to the Ministry of Commerce begging that permission be granted to clear these stocks, and got a telegraphic reply contained no suggestion of compromise, but merely bidding us change to some other business.

In this, our desperate plight, we look to your firms to devise means to support us.

We are, &c.

!

Enclosure 7 in No. 1.

(Seal of Foreign Opium Guild)

Jung Shao ch'ian (a native of Hsiang Shan) to Messrs. E. D. Sassoon and Co.

Dear Sirs,

December 29, 1912. DATING from the 14th October, I have been in receipt on various occasions of instructions from my head office in Hong Kong, to enquire into poppy cultivation in the Chang Chou and Ch'tan Chou prelectures in the province of Fukien.

As a result of my enquiries, I value the amount of poppy under cultivation at 15,000,000 dollars. On the arrival of Mr. Huang, the special commissioner, at Amoy, he at once decided to operate first against the baudits, whose depredations in the Chou An and Yung Ch'un districts were very marked, and, in consequence, had no leisure to attend specially to the prevention of opium cultivation. As a result, without his knowledge, opium has been planted in increased quantities everywhere on the fields, As the late winter grain crops were gathered in. In the mountain districts of Tung An, Ma Hsiang, the two prefectures of Chang Chou and Ch'üan Chou, and of Amoy, I calculate that a further 5,000,000 (dollars worth of opium) has been planted, which makes, with that planted in gardens, &c. (already cited), a total value of over 20,000,000 dollars; no small amount.

Those crops which were planted early will be ready for gathering either in the 12th moon or the 1st moon, and I now hear that at Tung An prices are already quoted. Dried raw opium of the best quality is quoted at 1 dollar per ounce, of which 20 per cent. must be paid at once and the remainder in full when the crop is gathered. It would seem, therefore, that in future Indian opium must only fetch 2,300 dollars per chest; a change of price is clearly indicated.

you

I beg to submit the above result of my investigations with the request that will transmit them to the head of your firm.

JUNG SHAO-CH'ÜAN.

C.O.

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

RECE

OPIUM.

CONFIDENTIAL.

[7034]

No. 1.

Sir Edward Grey to Sir J. Jordan.

REGE 20 MAR 13

[February 14.]

SECTION 1.

(No. 53.) (Telegraphic.)

Foreign Office, February 14, 1913. YOUR telegram No. 30 of 1st February, and Viceroy of India'a of 10th February. You may inform Chinese Government that His Majesty's Government agree to Indian trade with China in opium being formally extinguished, and to establishment by Chinese Government of an opium monopoly having total suppression as object. But their agreement is strictly conditional on merchants claims being reasonably and fairly met by the arrangements for acquiring stocks.

His Majesty's Government concur in the hope of the Government of India that the chests, in respect of which the right of export was sold in November and December last in Bombay, will be reckoned as part of the stocks to be taken over.

[2806 6-1}

G