1 60 Voyage of the Novara. 



consume as mucli as 100 grains daily ! ! Many Chinese spend 

 two-thirds of their earnings in the purchase of this drug, 

 which has become for them a necessity of life. 



The practice of eating opium in the form of pills, which 

 prevails in every Mahometan country in the East, and has in 

 a special degree been readily adopted by the disciples of the 

 Koran, in consequence of the prohibition of wine, would 

 seem, judging by the researches of physicians, to be much less 

 injurious and much slower in aifecting the human system 

 than smoking the opium, or otherwise bringing it directly in 

 contact with the lungs, while the effects of the former 

 practice is likewise different. 



We shall have an opportunity, when describing our stay in 

 Chinese waters, to revert to this most remarkable and most 

 profitable, but at the same time most iniquitous, monopoly of 

 the (late) East India Company, which crushes millions of 

 human beings in the most appalling and hopeless of all slave- 

 ries, and against the continuance of which the Chinese go- 

 vernment has repeatedly but ineffectually set its face. The 

 words of the idol-worshipping Emperor of China, when in 

 1840 he was solicited to convert the importation of opium 

 into a source of revenue to the state, were worthy of a Christ- 

 ian monarch : '^ It is true," said the Chinese ruler, "I cannot 

 hinder the importation of this subtle poison ; infamous men 

 in the lust for gain will out of covetousness or sensuality 

 set at nought the fulfilment of my wishes ; — but they shall 



