HISTORICAL NOTK. 37 



various crimes already condemned in (lie statute hook. It sprang up in a lawless 

 locality at a great distance from Peking; tin-re was therefore no inclination to 

 leniency from tin- fear of offending persons or classes whom tin- (Jovcrnment would 

 not like to offend. The la\v was in consequence promptly made, decided in tone, and 

 severe in detail. Was this law acted upon? No allusion was made to it by the 



! ^!<i iiffs or in the Mniwirrs concernant lea Chinois. 



The habit of Opium-smoking is not mentioned in these works. The trade in Opium 

 mined as l>efoiv. -joo chests a year continued to be imported, and in 

 17G7 that quantity had gradually increased to 1,000 chesta The duty was TI& 3 

 a cli I: would appear, then, that the old tariff of the MIXG dynasty was still 



followed in the main. The sale of Opium was prohibited by statute, but we do 

 not find proof that it was refused as a drug at the Custom Houses of Amoy and 

 Canton. The import steadily increased during the time it was in the hands of the 

 Portuguese, till Kurdish inn-chants took it up in 1773, after the conquest of Bengal 

 by CI.IVK. The East India Company took the Opium trade into its own hands 

 in 1781. At that time the minor portion only of the imported Opium was devoted 

 to Opium-smoking at least we may assume this. The Superintendents of Customs 

 in those days would continue to take the duty on Opium as a drug. What was 

 contraband they would say was ya-pien-yen (Ift )r JB), which means Opium for 

 ung; the drug ya-pien would still pass the Customs as medicine. This seems 

 to have been the reason that the import still continued to increase at about the 

 same ratio as before the edict of A.D. 1729, not till after 40 years reaching a 

 quantity amounting to 1,000 chests. Medicine claimed Opium as a most powerful 

 id since the commencement of the trade at Canton and Amoy, whether the 



merchants were PortHguese, Chinese, Arabs, or Dutch, it was as medicine that it 



^^~ ^> 



had been sold. When DEFOE says of his hero in Robinson Cntsoe that he went from 

 the Straits to China in a ship with Opium, it was as a drug that he pictured it to 



* TV i/i (f$ fi | jJO, chapter 52, tells us that in 1662 the duty on Opium as a medical 



dm<; was 7h 3 a picul, and that, beside this, TZt 2 and 4 or $ candareena were collected at a later period on each parcel, 

 without saying what a parcel was. It is added that on account of the growth of Opium-smoking in the latter part 

 of the eighteenth century, the Viceroy of Canton petitioned the Emperor to prohibit the importation, which was done 

 in 1796. 



