174 THE OPIUM TRADE. 



Sir John Hobhouse, President of the Board of Control, 

 said in Parliament : " he could not but deprecate it as a 

 vice, for a great vice it was." 



Lord Sandon said : " It is a disgrace to a Christian 

 country, to carry on the opium trade as we have done." 



Mr. Squire, agent of the Church Missionary Society, 

 said of the opium shops : " Never, perhaps, was there a 

 nearer approach to hell upon earth, than within the pre- 

 cincts of these vile hovels. Truly it is an engine in 

 Satan's hands, and a powerful one ; but let it never be 

 forgotten that a nation professing Christianity supplies 

 the means ; and further, that that nation is England." 



Rev. Howard Mai com, of the United States, said : 

 " The great blot on foreigners at Canton, though not all, 

 is the opium trade. No person can describe the horrors 

 of the opium trade. That the government of British 

 India should be the prime abettors of this abominable 

 traffic is one of the great wonders of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. The proud escutcheon of the nation that declaims 

 against the slave is thus made to bear a blot broader and 

 darker than any other in the Christian world." 



I will give the following extracts from a table given by 

 Mr. Martin in his work on China, to show the number 

 of smokers. Mr. Martin has made up the table to 1835 ; 

 I will continue it up to 1849 : 



Total chests of Opium. Total candareens. Smokers, at 3 cands. per day. 



1820 - 4,287 - 400,440,000 365,699 



1823 - 5,073 - 505,000,000 461,187 



1826 - 8,452 - 894,160,000 816,584 



1829 - 11,080 - 1,132,800,000 1,034,520 



1832 - 15,662 - 1,615,920,000 1,475,726 



1835 - 21,677 - 2,233,800,000 2,039,998 



1840 - 42,117 - 4,195,760,000 - 3,831,744 



