munication, either with the Chinese Government at Peking or its chief authority at Canton, a violent contention had arisen between the Chief Commissioner and the Viceroy. Lord Napier was instructed to proceed to Canton and announce his arrival by letter to the Viceroy. His Lordship not only began inauspiciously by having proceeded to Canton without the license or permission, theretofore required from the Viceroy, but insisted on addressing this High officer by letter direct and on equal terms, as the British representative, instead of by humble 'petition' sent through the Chinese Hong merchants, the usual course followed by the Select Committee of the East India Company. This was treated by the Chinese as an unheard-of act of presumption; and the Viceroy indignantly refused to receive, or let any of his subordinates receive, such a communication, and finally ordered a blockade of the factory, the stoppage of trade, provisions, and various other menacing measures. Lord Napier styled him a presumptuous savage,' and the Viceroy in his proclamations spoke of his Lordship as a Barbarian Eye' on whom it was incumbent to obey and keep the laws and statutes.' 'There has never been such a thing as outside barbarians sending in a letter,' wrote the Governor in great wrath to the Hong merchants.

It was evident the two pretensions-the one to the supremacy of a Suzerain State, and the other equality-could not be reconciled, and in effect admitted, under the circumstances, of no compromise. Lord Napier accordingly, in order to prevent further injury to the trade, and personal danger to those in the factory, was compelled to return to Macao, surrounded by an insulting guard of Chinese soldiers, where he shortly after died, harassed in mind and worn out by fever brought on by confinement during several weeks at the factory in a tropical heat.

The Chinese were jubilant and triumphant, and graciously allowed the trade to proceed again as usual. From this time, however, to Lin's proceedings in 1839, all our relations became more and more strained, and in an unsettled condition. As regards opium, the depôt ships continued without serious interference at Lintus or elsewhere, between Macao, Hongkong, and Canton. But the authorities of both countries, after Lord Napier's mission, were in a false position, and frequent difficulties and threats of interruption to the trade were the consequence; that being the usual resource, in those days of the Chinese local authorities, to compel obedience from the outside barbarians.'

This troubled period culminated in Commissioner Lin's imprisoning the foreigners in Canton until he extorted the surrender of all opium in Chinese waters, though quite beyond his reach, and otherwise out of his power to seize, by any other exercise of force or authority. The war which followed and terminated in the Treaty of Nanking, in 1842, established our relations, official and commercial, for the first time on a reasonable and well-defined footing. It has

commonly been called the Opium war;' and it was, no doubt, as so often asserted, intimately connected with the illegal traffic in opium '-and yet, had there been no opium or illegal trade of any kind in question, the same causes would have led to the same result. These causes were in operation during the whole period the foreign trade at Canton existed. Violent and arbitrary measures of a kind both oppressive and utterly unjustifiable, were so frequent that they must have led to a total rupture and war, sooner or later, as the only way of remedying a condition of things altogether intolerable.

The war and the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 left the trade in opium on the same footing as before-an unrecognised, and therefore, so far as Chinese legislation was concerned, a prohibited and illegal trade, with power untouched to deal with it as the Government of China might deem best-by the seizure of ships in their waters, or of the drug, when landed on their shores;-and any other repressive and penal measures they might see fit to apply to their own subjects. What they did under these circumstances we shall see presently. If we now trace the progress of the trade in opium, from the year 1790 to 1820, during which the import of the drug had never exceeded 5,000 chests, and rarely amounted to more than 4,000; and thence on to 1840, when the war commenced, we find that in 1830 the importation had increased to 16,873 chests; and thenceforth each decade to the present date has shown a continuous and large increase. In 1840 it had reached 20,619 chests (the quantity destroyed by Lin in the Canton waters), and from that year to 1850 it increased to 52,925 chests. In 1860 the quantity imported into China was 59,405 chests, according to the best statistics attainable by Mr. Commissioner Dick, without Custom House returns, Hongkong being a free port. In 1870 it increased to 95,045 piculs, and in 1880 to 96,839 piculs. This last amount is slightly over the average quantity sent annually to China during the whole decade preceding; the smallest quantity in any one of these being (in 1875) 84,619 piculs, and the highest (in 1879) 107,970. The average for the whole decade is 88,590 piculs, showing the fluctuation to have been from 84,619 to 107,970, with a variable tendency to increase.

From this retrospect it will be seen it was not the English, as so constantly assumed, but the Portuguese, who first imported opium into China. Secondly, that in 1781 the foreign trade in the drug

See Report of Imperial Maritime Customs, ii. Special series, No. 4, on Opium ('Hongkong Statistics '), published by order of the Inspector-General of Customs-just issued.

2 The Malwa opium chests are equivalent to one picul, but Patna and Benares to one picul twenty catties-that is, twenty catties more; but only 40 per cent. of the total imports in the last ten years consisted of Patna and Benares (the Government opium), Malwa being the production of native States, and amounts to 60 per cent. of the whole quantity imported into China from India.

was so insignificant that 1,600 chests could not be sold. At this date, then, we may fairly conclude that, if the Chinese had any acquaintance with opium, otherwise than as a medicine, they did not derive their supplies from abroad-from India or elsewhere. Dr. Wells Williams, who doubts whether the Chinese had long known opium, even as a medicine, admits that, from the way the poppy is mentioned in the Chinese Herbal, compiled more than two centuries ago, there is reason to suppose it to be indigenous. And as both the plant and the inspissated juice, together with the mode of collecting the latter, is mentioned, the inference is clearly that it was well known at this period, and in common use otherwise than as a medicine. We know, further, that in the General History of the Southern Province of Yunnan, which was revised and republished in the first year of Kien-Lung's reign 3 (A.D. 1736), opium is noted as a common product of Yung-Chang-Foo, and Mr. Hobson, the Commissioner of Customs, says truly, if 134 years ago so much opium was produced as to deserve it notice in such a work,' it may well have increased since, and could be no novelty at the beginning of the present century. Dr. Williams, in his exhaustive chapter on the opium trade, hazards a guess that, as the natives of Assam and the adjoining region have used opium for a long period, it is not unlikely that it was made known to the Chinese from that quarter.' Whether it be likely or not, there is no evidence of the fact. And, if so derived, the Chinese must have bettered their instruction by inventing the opium pipe, and smoking instead of eating or drinking it, as they do yet in India and the adjoining countries. He readily admits, at all events, that none was imported coast-wise for scores of years after that date.' It is beyond all doubt that the use of opium has been general amongst Asiatic nations as a stimulant and narcotic from a time unknown, and consumed in one form or other, much as wine, beer, and spirits are used by Europeans. We cannot even say what country is the original habitat of the poppy. It is cultivated in India, Asia Minor, Persia, and Egypt, and, if not indigenous in China, it has certainly for a very long time been cultivated there by the natives.

6

For our present purpose it is unimportant how far back in the last century—that is, before any foreign opium was imported-the cultivation and consumption of the produce became common. In 1792, the date of Lord Macartney's embassy, Barrow mentions the prevalent use of the drug by officials and others in the upper ranks of society; and yet at that date, and for thirty years later, the whole amount of imported opium did not exceed 4,000 chests, and without showing any tendency in that period to increase. It is important to know in this long interval what the Chinese themselves were doing in the

See Mr. Hobson's Report for 1868 in Reports on Trade, published by the Inspector-General of Maritime Customs.

production of native opium. And we are not left in much doubt on that subject; for, if Imperial edicts and proclamations of local authorities have answered no other useful purpose, they supply the most indisputable evidence of the poppy culture in China. It is commonly assumed that all these edicts were solely directed against the importation of foreign opium and all who consumed it. But many of these are directed against the Emperor's own subjects for growing the poppy against his reiterated commands. In 1796, it is true, the foreign opium was prohibited under heavy penalties, on account of its wasting the time and destroying the property of the people of the Innerland, and exchanging their silver and commodities for the vile dirt of foreign countries.' And the supercargoes of the Company at that time recommended the Directors of the East India Company to prohibit its shipment to China-the only measure now advocated by the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade. But this could not be done then, any more than it can be done now; but they did all that was in their power to give effect to the Imperial edict, by prohibiting their own ships bringing it to China, and, unlike the Emperor's orders-theirs were obeyed.

6

It would occupy too much space to quote many of these evidences of the general prevalence of opium cultivation by the Chinese. Mr. Walters, a consular officer stationed at Ichang, on the Upper Yangtze, made special inquiries at my desire in 1865 into the origin of opium smoking, and he was led to the conclusion that it had existed for centuries. He found the opium consumed in the West was locally produced, and Indian opium did not pass higher up the Yangtze than the port of Hankow and surrounding districts; and was not imported by any channel into Western Hu-pei, Szechuen, or the other provinces of the West.' Indian opium was only consumed, as a general rule, in the provinces in which the Treaty Ports are situated, and was smoked mostly by the well-to-do classes, while the common people smoke chiefly the native drug.

The production of Chinese opium in the province of Szechuen appeared by all accounts to be greater than the whole amount of the Indian crop, Malwa, Patna, and Benares put together. All over Western China,' he reports, the conditions of poppy culture, as far as the officials are concerned, are those of perfect freedom, and even open encouragement.' And other witnesses attest that, in like manner, there is no obstacle whatever to the cultivation of opium throughout the length and breadth of the land. Although nominally the laws of China forbid the cultivation of opium, it is actually encouraged by the high tariff placed on the foreign drug; Likin taxes being regularly levied on the native produce, which are fifty per cent. lower than those charged on foreign opium. Where do these taxes go? To the provincial treasuries and the constituted authorities of the country. What can be the worth, then, of Imperial edicts prohibiting

the consumption and the native culture of opium, when the whole of the governing classes either openly or covertly encourage and profit by it? Thus, for example, Li-Hung Chang, who was, and is at this day, one of the most influential of the Viceroys, and a leading statesman, who lately wrote an official letter in a highly moral and aggrieved tone on the subject of the foreign opium trade, and the cruel wrong we inflicted on his country by it; when he was governor-general of the Hukwang province, actively employed himself both in Honan, which he also governed provisionally, and in the adjoining province, then under his brother's rule, in promoting the cultivation of the poppy. Reports reached me at the time, that a large portion of the province of Szechuen was given up to the culture under this influence. And on the appearance of an Imperial edict reiterating the standing prohibition, he memorialised the throne for leave to issue licences for the cultivation of the poppy as a productive source of revenue, and a means of further preventing the consumption of foreign opium (a much more pernicious drug, as he alleged) and the importation of which impoverished the nation!

What could the Emperor's prohibitory edicts effect under such conflicting conditions? In 1869 one of the censors, Yuen-hoChung, memorialised the Emperor, urging that the cultivation of the poppy should be sternly prohibited, and it was published in the Peking Gazette of the 21st of January, with an edict in conformity, referring to previous edicts to the same effect, and enjoining once more the High officers and Magistrates to enforce the prohibitions. This censor states that the cultivation of the poppy is attended with grave prejudice to the people's means of subsistence; that the culture beginning in Kansu has spread to Shensi and Shansi, and has now gradually extended to Kiangsu, Honan, Shantung, and other provinces-in a word, all over China.' This last assertion was not strictly true, for all the reports I received at that time tended to show that a longitudinal line might be drawn from north to south, dividing the eastern provinces, in which were all the Treaty Ports, from the western and southern provinces, and in the latter only the native culture and consumption would be found general-very little Indian opium finding its way there-while to the east little else was in demand. So that it is evident, whatever prejudice to the Chinese may arise from the importation of Indian opium, it is very closely limited to the eastern or sea-coast provinces in immediate connection with the Treaty Ports; and the Chinese alone were and are responsible for all the rest, exceeding, to all appearance, in area of cultivation and amount of produce, the land so employed in India, and all the foreign opium imported. A large proportion of Chinese opium smokers belong to these western provinces, and by all accounts their population is to this day practically unacquainted with foreign opium.

Further evidence on this head can hardly be necessary. I will