園
i
87
20
possibilities of an opium revenue. They plainly said that opium smoking could not now be eradicated, a statement fully borne out by the observations of Vice-Consul Spence regarding cultivation in South-West China in 1882. Spence considered the arguments of the Anti-Opium Society regarding opium cultivation in China, the attitude of the Imperial Government, and the effect of opium smoking to be "absolutely untrue," and for the following reasons. The cultivation of poppy was carried on in nearly every district of Szechuan.
In country hamlets almost every second honse was an opium shop, and in the whole region Indian opium was unknown. In face of this,
the people were healthy, well housed, well fed, and well clad, though probably six-tenths of the adult male population were opium smokers. The production of Szechuan, Yunnan, Kneichow and South-West Hupei, Ichang Fu, and Shih Nan Fu came to 224,000 piculs, or 29,866,666 lbs., from 850,000 acres, This was 24 times the whole Indian import into China.
Here it may be noted that in view of the present conditions
in China, and the recent recorded prices of the native drug. it looks as if, by depriving China of Bengal opium, we have prohibited champagne, but not affected gin. By 1905 one Chinese province showed a production two or three times the total Indian imports, and for many years before the stoppage of export in 1914 Malwa opium was suffering heavily from the competition of the China crop.
Spence added that Shensi was producing top, grade opium in the very year that the Governor was reporting that he had uprooted the poppy everywhere in his jurisdiction. He concluded his report with the following prophetic remarks:-
The right of the people to grow and smoke opium has been for years unquestioned by their officials: to compel them to surrender the right now, would be to provoke a rebellion. Even if the Government were willing to incur this risk, and determined coûte que coûte to be rid of opium, which it would be at present nonsensical to affirm, success would require a vigorous executive, free from venality and opium smoking, having under its orders armies of constables equally free from these faults. But China has no such executive and no such armies. Of the local official class, their attendants, hangers-on and constables, it may truly be said that if there is one quality more conspicuous than their venality, it is their love of opium smoking. Even were the prospect of a bonâ fide effort not a chimera its success would be impossible.
What, under the circumstances, would be the practical effect of the rigorous prohibition of opium cultivation in India, and the attempted exclusion by China of foreign opium, it is easy to see. Its effect on opium smoking in Yunnan, Kueichow, Szechuan, Kansuh, Sheashi and Western Hupei, where Indian and foreign opium are all but unknown, would be nil. Amongst the poor smokers in the East, who now use the
21
native drug, its effect would be equally nil. Many who now use Indian opium would take to native, and one effect would be to give a great stimulus to production in the West. But well- to-do smokers in the East and seaboard provinces, amongst whom I include all who at present spend 10d. a day on Indian opium, would everywhere seek for a high-class smuggled opium. Smuggling would be organised all along the const, Chinese desperadoes would find willing associates in running foreign opium into the country in European and American adventurers, the Maritime Customs service would have to become an armed force, quiet seaports would be turned into hells of disorder, and international relations between China and foreign Powers would be embittered to an intolerable degree. The opium which could not be grown in India would come in part from Turkey and Persia; new fields for its growth would he opened in Mozambique and similar latitudes in Africa; and the profits of the trade, instead of passing, as they do now, to the support of our beneficent rule and civilisation in India, would become the incentive to, and the reward of, lawlessness, disorder and crime."
The attitude of the British Government towards China during these years was well expressed in the declaration in Parliament of Sir J. Fergusson on 10th April 1891, that, "if the "Chinese Government thought proper to raise the duty on opium to a prohibitive extent, or to shut out the article altogether, this country would not expend 1. on powder and shot, or lose the life of a soldier in an attempt to force the opium trade on the Chinese," and in Mr. Gladstone's state- ment of the 30th June 1893, that "we have left that matter to
China herself.
The opium which we allow to be
f
exported
+
is sent to that country to be received by
* China if she chooses to receive it.'
>>
In section 1. (c) of their findings, the Royal Commission of 1893-95 stated that, in their opinion, it was not found that satisfactory reasons existed for unsolicited action by the British Government for the destruction of the trade in Indian opium with China, and they agreed in not recommending any action that would have that effect. If at any future time the Chinese Government declared a wish to prohibit import, however, they thought that the question would be changed and should be reconsidered.
The question changed in 1906, when, for the first time since 1858, the Government of China decided to prohibit the cultivation and consumption of opium,
seems
Whatever the real causes of the anti-opiam movement in China, and however badly that movement has failed, it true that both the Imperial Government in 1906 and the young China party in the best days of the Republic earnest in their desire to suppress the importation, cultivation and use of opium; and when the British Government
were
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