59 
IN SINGAPORE. 
filling the act is gone. One Chinaman who keeps an Opium shop 
has been an inveterate smoker for 10 years, he has had 2 children 
only, one a little more than 8 the other 7 years old, his wife is young, 
and without blaming* Opium he knows not how he has no more chil¬ 
dren. 
Class. Children before using No. of children born subsequent 
Chinese Opium. to the use of Opium. 
1 
1 
2 
1 
1 
1 
1 
All under 
30 years. 
Malays 
under 30 
years. 
2 
1 
2 
3 
i 
none 
none 
1 
1 
1 
2 
1 
none 
none 
none 
none 
one 
four 3 died 
none 
one 
none 
none 
one 
one 
This table is constructed not from women of abandoned character, 
but of supposed respectability and who arc married; from it is seen 
that out of 12, 6 had no children subsequent to the use of opium. 
One has no children either before or after, one has no children before 
commencing, hut subsequently four, because co-eval with her mar¬ 
riage was the commenceiqent of the vice. It is difficult for a writer 
on tliis subject to convey to his reader such a mass of faetsasto com¬ 
pel him who reads to believe, but it is much more difficult for one 
who has investigated the subject to withstand being’ convinced, that 
the long continued abuse of opium deprives man of the power of ful¬ 
filling the chief purpose of marriage—the continuation of the species. 
In this island, if the present number of inhabitants were not to be 
kept up or increased by the monthly immigrations which take place 
from China, and the vice of opium smoking not depressed or dimi¬ 
nished ; such would be its effects on the population that the pre¬ 
sent race could not by the births, compensate for the deaths, and in 
the course of a few generations the race would become extinct or 
confined to a few families. This is a subject well deserving the at¬ 
tention of the Political Economist. 
i 
