IS SINGAPORE* 
39 
CHAPTER VII. 
THE MORAL EFFECTS OF OPIUM SMOKING- 
We have now examined the physicial evils that result from the 
use of Opium, and have contrasted it with the like use of ardent 
spirits. In this chapter we will endeavour to shew its moral effects 
as one of the causes of crime and poverty. 
In the physical state we have two causes for the production of di- 
sease, first the predisposing cause, or au aptitude to receive the im« 
pression of the second, or direct exciting cause. Two men may, for 
instance, be exposed at the same time to malaria while sleeping 
in the jungle, but one only may be attacked with fever,—the direct 
cause or the Malaria was present to both but the predisposing cause 
existed in the one attacked ai:d not in the other, and that predis¬ 
posing cause might proceed from fear, anxiety, derangement of the 
bowels &c. Now with the moral man two conditions require to he 
present, before moral disease or crime can lie committed, the first con¬ 
dition is the natural inherent depravity of man received from our first 
parents, one of whom once was “ oh fairest of creation, last and best of 
all Gods works, creature in whom excelled whatever can to sight or 
thought be formed, holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet/’ until she 
came to violate the sacred fruit forbidden, when “ on a sudden lost, de¬ 
faced, deflowered, and now to death devote ” She has cursed all suc¬ 
ceeding generations with this predisposing aptitude to sin, which makes 
it as natural for a man to sin as to live. Certain moral feelings rais¬ 
ed by the voice of conscience, and a perception of right and wrong 
received from education, religion and example, with a sense of shame 
and fear of detection, are the preventive checks to this universal de¬ 
velop ement of the inherent depravity of man, but these checks may 
give way before the second or the direct exciting causes, which are 
want, the gratification of the passions and habits; according to the 
number and the force of the preventive checks will you have more or 
less crime, and the same applies to the second class or direct exciting 
causes. In the physical state all are not afflicted at all times, with 
