176 



THE OPIUM TRADE. 



smoker of a year or two standing, will do aught in the 

 morning until he either gets his opium pipe, or his opium 

 diluted in water to drink. And when he is in the habit 

 of using it for three or four years, he has no power over 

 his body, and his spirits are in that state of depression, 

 that a man on the moment of preparing for public execu- 

 tion could not be more mentally prostrate. 



Is this generous England, so intermeddling in the do- 

 mestic affairs of foreign nations, prying into their prisons, 

 to get some loop-hole to make an empty parade of her 

 good will towards the oppressed ? Alas, there is nothing in 

 all that but to blindfold. Think that a nation that can 

 for some 45,000,000 of dollars of Hood-money send yearly 

 a hecatomb of three to four millions of souls prematurely 

 to tlieir grave, is humane ! Nor does this accursed poison- 

 ing trade stop in China only ! Alas, no ; England has 

 nearly 200,000,000 of subjects in East India, amongst 

 whom she is pushing the same vile trade, and viler and 

 more basely still in stooping to retail this drug of hell by 

 pounds and half pounds, to smoking shop-keepers, 

 licensed by them, and that never existed before this 

 morbid craving after money suggested it to them, so that 

 in East India the government are the tempters of the 

 people into a vice they say they are not accountable for 

 in China. China, India, Java, and all eastern countries, 

 will be exterminated by a few millions of people styling 

 themselves Anglo-Saxons, because nations and people 

 will not inquire into the state and condition of that peo- 

 ple, who are beginning even now to waste away from 

 the face of the earth themselves as is seen in the last 

 decade, although the starving Irish raised the population 

 of most of her large towns in England, as that of Liver- 



