PAP AVER 



SOMNIFBRUM 

 History 



THE OPIUM POPPY 



Opium 

 Smoking. 



Tobacco 

 Smoking. 



Connivance 

 of Chinese 

 Authorities. 



Imperial and 



Provincial 



Bevenues. 



Destruction of 

 Foreign Opium. 



.Free Trade 

 System. 



Best 

 Opium. 



Ram Chand 



Pandit's 



Account. 



Method of Sale. 



consequence of Japanese raids, but its immediate effect was to lessen the supply 

 of foreign opium, and in consequence regulations were issued -with the view 

 to improve and extend Chinese home production. 



Dr. Edkins, from whom most of the above historic facts regarding China 

 have been derived, says that towards the end of the Ming dynasty the legitimate 

 practice of taking opium medicinally was destined soon to change into that of 

 smoking it. The new phase, he affirms, was intimately associated with the 

 introduction of tobacco-smoking from the Philippine Islands. Tobacco reached 

 China about 1620 A.D., or just about the time that King James I. published in 

 England his Counterblast to Tobacco, and the last of -the Ming Emperors pro- 

 hibited the smoking of tobacco. But the habit nevertheless spread rapidly, 

 and unfortunately various substances came to be mixed with the tobacco, such 

 as opium, arsenic and the like. These were for some years vised as flavouring 

 ingredients, but in time they became the chief materials smoked. It may 

 thus truly be said that tobacco was a lesser evil than the early Chinese reformers 

 supposed, while opium-smoking proved a far greater danger than they feared. 

 The Emperor Ch'eng Tsung is much to be respected for his strong moral convic- 

 tions. He made great efforts to cope with the evil of narcotic indulgence, but 

 in vain. According to Bretschneider, opium-smoking is a Chinese invention and 

 quite modern. Nothing, he adds, proves that the Chinese smoked opium before 

 the middle of the 18th century. Dr. Edkins regards the connivance of the 

 Chinese authorities (during 1729-96), from the highest to the lowest, as having 

 served to render repressive measures futile, both against local production and 

 foreign importation. Opium-smoking originated, moreover, in a lawless locality, 

 at a great distance from Peking, and (as observed by Holmes) "while the Court 

 at Peking was endeavouring to suppress the foreign trade in opium, from 1793' 

 to 1840, it did not or could not put a stop to the home cultivation of the drug, 

 since a Chinese Censor in 1830 represented to the throne, that the poppy was 

 grown over one-half of the province of Chekeang, and in 1836 another (Cho 

 Tsun) stated that the annual production of opium in Yunnan could not be less 

 than several thousand piculs " (Encycl. Brit.). 



This state of affairs culminated, and naturally so, in a conflict of interests 

 as represented by local production on the one hand (an item of provincial revenue) 

 and foreign importation on the other (an item of Imperial revenue). While the 

 British and Indian Governments were in treaty with the Emperor of China, with 

 regard to the enforcement of such restrictions on the foreign traffic as the Im- 

 perial Government of China deemed desirable, the provincial authorities of 

 China, as represented by the Commissioner Lin Tse-hsu, demonstrated their 

 desire for the complete discontinuance of the foreign supply by destroying 

 2,000,000 worth of opium, the property of British traders. Had the Chinese 

 Government taken the course open to it, and that, too, without arbitrary injury 

 to a trade of large proportions (the growth of several centuries), namely to 

 impose a gradually increasing taxation on imported opium ; had it exercised 

 also the power, which it should have possessed if it did not do so, of restricting 

 or prohibiting the cultivation of the poppy within its own territory, little would 

 have been heard of the perplexing Opium Question of the present day. 



By the middle of the 18th century Bihar had become the province in which 

 opium of the best quality and greatest quantity was produced. In the anarchy 

 of the period, the Government monopoly had fallen into abeyance. The system 

 under which, in the early part of the century, business in opium was conducted, 

 in that part of India, is described by Ram Chand Pandit. In the first year of 

 the British monopoly he was one of the joint contractors of the opium provision. 

 There was, he tells us, a body of Native merchants, then resident at Patna, 

 known as the opium-dealers, who made advances to the cultivators and received 

 in return the opium produced, took it to their houses, and made it up in the form 

 required by the exporters. After the growers had delivered as much as liquidated 

 the advances received, they disposed of the surplus as they thought fit, and the 

 price rose accordingly. In October, the opium being prepared in the required 

 form, the merchants used first to offer it for sale to the Dutch, having previously 

 agreed among themselves as to the rate they would accept. A dealer owning, 

 say, 500 maunds would dispose of 200 to the Dutch. After such preliminary 

 sales, the dealers would then go to the English merchants and offer a further 

 quantity, at a higher rate, and finally they would go to the French and dispose 

 of some more at a still higher rate. Thereafter, say in November, the Dutch 

 would make a second contract with the opium merchants, but at a higher price 



