OPIUM SMOKING. 
456 
authorities in Singapore would only lay before the Legislative 
council a plain statement of the evils resulting from its use, 
I feel sure that for the sake of % 7,500 a month (the revenue 
obtained from the sale of the opium farm last year) they 
would not by its encouragement, physically deteriorate and 
demoralize so many thousands of the inhabitants of this island. 
To finish this epistle, I will give the remarks on the trading 
in opium by a partner in one of the most extensive mercantile 
houses in China, and which has dealt more than any others 
in the drug. 
R. Little. 
IS THE OPIUM TRADE TO CHINA ONE IN WHICH A. CHRISTIAN 
MERCHANT CAN ENGAGE? 
The morality or immorality of the opium trade has been 
much discussed during the last twelve years, and it is un¬ 
deniable that the question admits of able arguments on both 
sides, if we take no higher ground than the ordinary morality 
of the world. 
On the one hand, it has been said that opium is a perni¬ 
cious article of luxury or a poison, and that by smuggling it 
into China, we break the laws of that Empire and injure our 
fellowmen ;—while on the other hand it has been argued, 
with some show of truth, that opium is only poison to those 
who abuse it, that the foreign merchant does not smuggle it 
into China, but merely brings it to its shores, to be pur¬ 
chased by the natives under the very eyes of th ir own 
government, with litle more than a show of objection, and 
therefore, that it does not deserve the epithet of smuggling, 
and further that a merchant is a mere agent betwean supply 
and demand, and that when these two elements of industry 
are brought to bear upon one another in any given field of 
commerce^ their consequences concern him no farther than 
the extent to which he can benefit himself by the interchange 
of the commodities. 
But to those taking a leading management or having a 
leading* interest in the trade, and who believe in the Christian 
religion, it is submitted for their serious consideration, whe¬ 
ther the opium trade to China is not exerting a directly hostile 
influence on the spread of Christian truth, and whether they 
are not thereby exposing themselves to the frown of that God 
whose truth they are engaged in counteracting? 
Let it be borne in mind that the importation of opium into 
China, and its consumption in the country, are really and 
truly prohibited by the Chinese government, however much 
its efforts may have been frustrated by the corruption of its 
