THE PKESENT EVOLUTION OF MAN— MENTAL 865 



He also quoted the following from a letter written in 

 1892 by Dr. A. T. Rose, an American missionary — 



" You must not write our mission indifferent to the 

 opium question ; it has been connected with it from 

 the days of Judson and Wade. Thirty years ago I was 

 appointed to write a report on the introduction, increase, 

 and effects of opium in Burmah by the ' British Burmah 

 Missionary Convention.' The elder Hough, Wade, 

 Bennett, and Kincaird were then living on the field. 

 They all affirmed that there was no opium in Burmah 

 before the English came. We laboured with Sir Arthur 

 Phayre, who professed to believe that the Government 

 must introduce opium in order to control and regulate 

 it, otherwise the country would be flooded with it. As 

 a revenue measure, the introduction of opium is an 

 enormous blunder, for it blasts the vital sources of the 

 revenue, it converts honest labourers into idle thieves 

 and vagabonds. If all the cultivators in Burmah were to 

 take to growing opium, in five years there would not be 

 a basket of rice. I have never known a Burman or 

 Karen to use it who did not go to the bad sharp." — ■ 

 Ibid. p. 26. 



Sir John Strachy said — 



" The only country — I cannot say of India, because it 

 is not India, it is as unlike India as Algeria is unlike 

 France — but the only country under Indian adminis- 

 tration in regard to which it appears to me that any 

 evidence has been produced that deserves serious con- 

 sideration, to show that any considerable section of 

 the people has suffered from the consumption of opium, 

 is Burmah. Now it is indisputable that there has 

 been a great body of opinion as to the injurious 

 effect of opium on the Burmese. Two chief Com- 

 missioners, Sir Charles Aitchison and Sir Alexander 

 Mackenzie, both of them men who are entitled to speak 

 on the subject with the highest authority, have con- 

 curred in that opinion, and there is no doubt that the 



