The Chinese Opium Trade

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THE CHINESE OPIUM TRADE.

The vast population of the Chinese Empire, the comparative ignorance respecting it under which other nations labor, and the present disturbed state of the relations between the Chinese authority and the American and European residents, impart an interest to all information which may be given regarding it. The North British Review, for February, contains an article on the trade in opium which deserves a careful perusal.

Less than a century ago, only about 200 chests of opium were imported annually into China; but that amount has since multiplied to about 60,000 chests. This trade is in the hands of the British East India Company, who derive a revenue of twenty-five millions of dollars therefrom. The importation of this drug is forbidden by the Chinese authorities; but the vessels conveying it, being fully armed, are more than prepared for any effort the Chinese government may make to hinder them from accomplishing their object. The authorities of that country wink at the contraband introduction of the article, and the amount imported has under this system so largely increased, that whereas not many years since opium-smoking was a luxury only to be enjoyed by the opulent, it is now brought within the reach of all classes, and many of the poorer Chinese are said to expend two-thirds of their earnings in this one gratification. Allowing that each smoker consumes an average daily of 17 grains of the drug, and estimating the quantity imported into the country as low as 30,000 chests, not less than five millions of Chinese will be found to have fallen victim to this destructive habit.

The opium thus consumed consists of the juice of the poppy, to the growth of which a hundred thousand acres of the richest land in India is devoted. The total value of the opium thus procured for importation into China, approaches fifty millions of dollars. This amount the tea and silks furnished by China to the British are wholly insufficient to pay for; the deficit to be paid by China is now $15,000,000, and is continually increasing. This large balance, paid in silver, is rapidly depriving China of her silver currency, and this evil is all the more felt, since the rich silver mines of China have become for the most part exhausted. Under these circumstances the British entertain a well grounded fear that the Chinese may grow the poppy on such portions of their soil as are adapted to the purpose, and so cut off this large item of the East India's Company's revenues. The government of China have made repeated efforts to cure its subjects of their unfortunate appetite for this deadly drug, but without success; and it is not unnatural to apprehend they may resolve, if opium must be consumed, that it shall be of native growth rather than of foreign importation.

That the consumption of the drug will be lessened, or an increased demand prevented, is not to be supposed. Opium, says Mr. Pohlman, an American missionary, who has resided several years in China, "holds its victim by a tighter grip than does any kind of intoxicating liquid: the drunkard sometimes breaks his chain and escapes, the opium-eater or smoker scarcely ever. When the habit is formed, he has entered a cavern with a steep descent, and which allows of no turn. There is no slavery on earth to be compared with the bondage into which opium casts its victim. There is scarcely one known instance of escape from its toils, when once they have fairly enveloped a man. The practice quickly destroys the appetite and the digestion, vitiates the blood, weakens the command of the mind over the voluntary muscles, as well as its command over itself, and ends in helpless insanity and death."

Nor are the Chinese themselves insensible to the deadly nature and effects of the poison. The emperor has been known to shed tears on learning of the ever increasing appetite of his subjects for the fatal dose; and Chinese writers have again and again, but in vain, besought their countrymen to abandon so pernicious a practice. Medical men who have resided in the Celestial empire aver that the hospitals and poor houses are filled with the victims of the habit of opium smoking. Missionaries state that the great obstacle in the Chinese mind to the reception of Christianity is, that it is the Christian English who have brought into their country that vile drug, which for the sake of gain they have sold to thousands upon thousands, whom it has brought to penury, misery, and untimely death.

The same number of the Quarterly also contains articles on—The Employment of Women, Modern Style, Dr. Samuel Brown, Dr. Kane's Explorations, Mrs. Browning's poems, Richard Hooker, Art Unions, and United States Politics. Published by L. Scott & Co. 79 Fulton street, New York; of whom either of the four British Reviews may be had for $3 a year, or the four Reviews and Blackwood's Magazine for $10.