304 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



friends, when tliey talk ahont opium, what they suppose to be the 

 ordinary food of the people of India. The almost universal an- 

 swer, perhaps with an air of displeasure that they should be asked 

 such a foolish question, is that of course it is rice. I believe that 

 nine tenths of the educated men and women of this country be- 

 lieve this to be true. V/hen they have not learned such an ele- 

 mentary fact as this, that throughout the greater part of India rice 

 is no more the ordinary food of the people than it is in England, 

 how can we be surprised if they do not know the truth about 

 opium ? We who have spent our lives in India are not all fools 

 or impostors. When I hear the Government of India charged 

 with the abominable wickedness of poisoning its own subjects, 

 and millions of Chinese also, for the sake of filthy lucre, there is 

 only one reason that prevents me from being filled with indigna- 

 tion, and that is that I know that these charges are the offspring 

 of ignorance alone. Unfortunately, this does not make them less 

 serious, for, of all enemies to human progress, ignorance is the 

 most formidable, and is especially formidable when, as in this 

 present case, it is combined with honest enthusiasm and an anx- 

 ious desire for what is right." 



The commission, having finished its investigations in Eng- 

 land, visited India, and there renewed them in nearly every 

 place of importance for obtaining information. It examined 

 seven hundred and twenty-three witnesses, of whom four hun- 

 dred and sixty-six were natives of India or China, including gov- 

 ernment officials, planters, landowners, traders, members of the 

 professional classes, especially physicians, missionaries of nearly 

 every denomination, military ofiicers and private soldiers, and 

 the chiefs and ofiicials of the native states. 



As a result of this elaborate inquiry, the commission, by a ma- 

 jority of eight to one, pronounced clearly and unhesitatingly in 

 favor of the maintenance of the existing system of opium produc- 

 tion and sale of opium in India ; finding no evidence of extensive 

 moral or physical demoralization arising in India from the use of 

 the drug, or of any desire on the part of its people or of the Chi- 

 nese Government to prohibit it. 



The commission also decided, in respect to the effect on the 

 finances of India of a prohibition of the sale and export of opium, 

 that, " taking into consideration the compensation payable, cost of 

 the necessarj'' preventive measures, and the loss of revenue that 

 would result from a policy of prohibition, the finances of India 

 are not in a condition to bear the losses that such a policy would 

 entail." 



The testimony of the missionaries in India before the commis- 

 sion was not unanimous. That of the members of the American 

 Methodist Episcopal and Canadian Presbyterian commissions. 



