OPIUM 137 



It is clear, then, that those races of India which 

 use opium are very highly resistant to it. As re- 

 gards China, while competent witnesses frequently 

 declared that the accounts given by missionaries 

 of its evil effects are exaggerated, it is significant 

 that none of them appear to have declared, as so 

 many did of India, that opium smoking is totally 

 unattended by harm. 



Sir Thomas Wade said : 



" No man who has lived the time I have in China, and who 

 has been in contact with Chinese of all kinds, can deny that the 

 excessive use of opium in that country is an exceeding misfortune 

 to that country, and I myself have stated that proposition perhaps 

 more positively years ago than I should be prepared to do at this 

 moment — that is to say, that without at all pretending to abate 

 the statement that many people — many thousands of people — do 

 suffer from the excessive use of opium, it is to a great number of 

 people precisely what the use of alcoholic stimulants to the people 

 in our country taken moderately is ; that is to say, that it will 

 cheer the workman just as our workman is cheered by his glass 

 of beer." 1 



In an article quoted before the Commission, 

 Dr Ayres wrote : 



" My opinion is, that it (opium-smoking) may become a habit, 

 but that the habit is not necessarily an increasing one. Nine out 

 of twelve men smoke a certain number of pipes a day, just as a 

 tobacco-smoker would, or as a wine- or beer-drinker might drink 

 his two or three glasses a day, without desiring any more. I 

 think the excessive opium-smoker is in a greater minority than 

 the excessive spirit-drinker or tobacco-smoker. In my experience, 



^ " First Report, Royal Commission on Opium," p. 87. 



