334 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



issued, declaring that the injury done by the influx of opium, and by the 

 increase of those who inhaled it, was nearly equal to a general confla- 

 gration, and denouncing upon the seller and smoker of the poison the 

 bastinado, the wooden collar imprisonment, banishment, confiscation 

 of property, and even death by public decapitation or strangulation. 

 But, notwithstanding all this, the trade kept increasing, until at length 

 an imperial commissioner was appointed, clothed with the highest 

 authority and powers, to proceed to Canton and- endeavor to effect an 

 utter annihilation of the trade. In carrying out this determination, he 

 seized and destroyed some 20,280 chests of opium, and. compelled the 

 merchants to sign a bond that they would forever cease trading in the 

 article. This bold and decided measure on the part of the commissioner 

 led to the war with England, which is commonly known as the opium 

 war, the result of which is well known to all our readers. One result 

 of the war was the ceding of the island of Hong Kong to the English. 

 In this island, after passing into the hands of the victors, the trade in 

 opium, was legalized, and twenty shops for its sale immediately licensed, 

 within gun-shot of the Chinese empire, where such an offence is pun- 

 ishable with death. Thus the war, instead of putting an end or check 

 to the system, through the cupidity of the English resulted in afford- 

 ing greater facilities than ever for its prosecution. The Chinese dare 

 not impose the penalties affixed to a violation of their laws restricting 

 the trade, which have never been abrogated or repealed, for fear that, 

 if they should do so, it might be made the groundwork for another war, 

 which would result in their being despoiled of still larger portions of 

 their territory and possessions. 



It is stated, upon the highest authority, that the British government 

 in India could not be sustained without the immense revenue derived 

 from this trade. This revenue, for the last six years, it is said, has 

 amounted to nearly $80,000,000. It is also estimated that the im- 

 mense sum of $400,000,000 of specie has been drained from China to 

 pay for this single article alone, within the last half century. That 

 this pernicious contraband traffic is upheld mainly by the British gov- 

 ernment, through its agent, the East India Company, all are aware ; 

 and the stain of its conduct towards the Chinese, in forcing this 

 " flowing poison " upon them, is held up to the detestation of the civil- 

 ized world. Money, not morality, has been its governing principle ; 

 and to increase its own resources and power, it has legalized and up- 

 held this traffic, which is destroying, morally, socially, and politically, 

 the whole Chinese nation, and which threatens to blot it out from 

 among the nations of the earth. Well does the author of the pamphlet 

 before us ask, " What must be the verdict of future generations, as they 

 peruse the history of these wrongs and outrages ? Will not the page 

 of history, which now records 20,000,000 as consecrated on the altar 

 of humanity to emancipate 800,000 slaves, lose all its splendor and be- 

 come positively odious, when it shall be known that this very money 

 was obtained from the proceeds of a contraband traffic on the shores of 

 a weak and defenceless heathen empire, at the sacrifice, too, of millions 

 upon millions of lives ? ' 



