40 
ON THE HABITUAL USE OF OPIUM 
the predisposing causes of disease, except that which leads gradually 
to the consummation of all life, which is death, but in the moral state 
no one is exempt; hence the physical man can pass thro’ life without 
disease sensibly breaking out, until exhausted nature, like the rim 
of an old wheel, by constant use is worn out, but the moral man has 
not the same chance, for having always with him the predisposition 
to sin, he cannot live and not meet with exciting causes. In the 
civilized world, and I would confine myself to England, the preven¬ 
tive checks are many and numerous, but the second or direct causes 
include one that in itself is “ legion,” that is want. In Singapore 
the preventive checks are fewer in number and less powerful, but 
with a slight exception, the second or direct causes of crime do not 
include that one, which is, according to the annals and statistics of 
crime, the direct cause in nearly one half of the cases, I mean want. 
Our prisoners here have not in such force the preventive cheeks of 
education, religion, and example, hence their inherent, or predispos¬ 
ing aptitude to sin is in greater force than it is in England, but their 
exciting causes do not number amongst them, that want or starvation, 
which drives multitudes to sin and crime, the consideration of which 
ought, like the recording Angel’s tear, to blot out much of the crimi¬ 
nality of the transgression, but here no one except a helpless infant, 
or bed ridden adult can starve, therefore the gratification of the pas¬ 
sions, and the indulgence of evil habits, are, I may say, the only two 
direct exciting causes of crime. Amongst the evil habits, which re¬ 
quire the commission of crime to keep it up, is one, that of Opium 
smoking, and which is so universal and so powerful as to have none 
other like it. 
Let the reader examine this table, it is taken by myself from the 
prisoners sentenced by the police to the house of correction. July 
1847. 
