36 
ON THE HABITUAL USE OF OPIUM 
drug than among the lower classes by spiritous liqours to drunk¬ 
ards. This is to be kept in mind that the number of those who take 
opium to excess is comparatively small indeed, nay among the poor 
I never knew of one such case, whereas drunkenness, fatally is a na¬ 
tional vice, with us almost at once an epedemscal disease, a contagion 
and an infection. 
Opium Eater. But my dear Sir, may it not be that the moderate 
use of opium among the working classes in manufacturing towns, and 
you seem to believe that there it is rarely immoderate, is in a moral 
view preferable to the use of spiritous liquors which you rightly say 
is there so prevalently immoderate as to deserve the names you have 
so eloquently inflicted upon it, and the fearful character you have 
drawn on its effects in your admirable little book? 
Modern Pythagorean. This I will say Sir, that any means of 
making the wretched forget or endure their miseries, used in the 
shape of any other drug, must be better, and that none can be so bad 
as spiritous liqours, used to such an extent as to make men and 
women habitual drunkards. And this I say freely without at all com¬ 
promising my opinion, that among the poor the use of opium is an 
unmixed evil. 
Opium Eater. Pardon me Sir, but in many cases when taken 
medicinally it may not be an evil at all, for mark my word medici¬ 
nally, and who can say when 18 hours toil out of four and twenty 
have bowed down, both soul and body to the dust, a few drops of 
laudanum, may not be in the best term, a blessing. It may not be 
what physicians, what even you Sir, in your ©alighted humanity 
would prescribe, but still in the destitution of other and better medi¬ 
cine, in the destitution of sustaining and restoring food, it may act as 
a charm and not as a baneful charm, on those whose heartstrings are 
as weary as their backs, loins, and reins, and who are thus lulled in¬ 
to endurance or oblivion.” 
The preceding will give an idea to the general reader, in what 
opinion the use of opium is held at home, and this opinion has had - 
