misery and calamity consequent on smoking opium. The account is taken from the Chinese Repository for April 1837, and describes "Some paintings by a native artist in China-street, (Canton) named Sunqua. They are on rice-paper, six in number, forming a series, designed to exhibit the progress of the opium-smoker, from health and prosperity to misery and degradation: in fact, they are a counter-part to Hogarth's famous 'Rake's Progress." So far as we can ascertain, the idea was original with the painter; and, regarded as mere works of art, the pictures are by no means unworthy of notice. The figures and attitudes are well conceived and drawn, and the story clearly and strongly carried through. We were surprised to see how exactly some of the pictures' hit off the character of the opium-smoker, as described by the writers in the preceding appendix; and we will not fail to make further inquiries respecting them, and the circumstances which led the painter to form his design." The following is the description which the artist himself gives of his fanciful productions, which no doubt aptly mirror the truth : "The son of a gentleman of fortune, his father dying while he was yet but a youth, comes into possession of the whole family estate. The young man having no inclination for either business or books, gives himself up to smoking opium and profligacy, In a little time his whole patrimony is squandered, and he becomes entirely dependent on the labour of his wife and child for his daily food. Their poverty and misery are extreme. "No. 1. This picture represent the young man at home, richly attired, in perfect health and vigour of youth. An elegant foreign clock stands on a marble table behind. On his right is a chest of treasure, gold and silver; and on the left, close by his side, is his personal servant, and, at a little distance, a man whom he keeps constantly in his employ, preparing the drug for use from the crude article, purchased and brought to the house. "No. 2. In this he is reclining on a superb sofa with a pipe in his mouth, surrounded by courtesans, two of whom are young, in the cha. racter of musicians. His money now goes without any regard to its amount. "No. 3. After no very long period of indulgence, his appetite for the drug is insatiable, and his countenance sallow and haggard. Emaciated, shoulders high, teeth naked, face black, dozing from morning to night, he becomes utterly inactive. In this state he sits moping, on a very ordinary couch, with his pipe and other apparatus for smoking lying by his side. At this moment, his wives-or a wife and a concubine-come in; the first finding the chest emptied of its treasure, stands frowning with astonishment, while the second gazes with wonder at what she sees spread upon the couch. "No. 4. His lands and his houses are now all gone; his couch exchanged for some rough boards and a ragged mattress; his shoes are off his feet, and his face half awry, as he sits bending forwards, breathing with great difficulty. His wife and child stand before him, poverty stricken, suffering with hunger; the one in anger, having dashed on the floor all his apparatus for smoking, while the little son, unconscious of any harm, is clapping his hands and laughing at the sport! But he heeds not either the one or the other. "No. 5. His poverty and distress are now extreme, though his appetite grows stronger than ever; he is as a dead man. In this plight, he scrapes together a few copper cash, and hurries away to one of the smoking-houses, to buy a little of the scrapings from the pipe of another smoker, to allay his insatiable cravings. "No. 6. Here his character is fixed; a sot. Seated on a bamboo chair, he is continually swallowing the fœces of the drug, so foul, that tea is required to wash them down his throat. His wife and child are seated near him, with skeins of silk stretched on bamboo reels, from which they are winding it off into balls; thus earning a mere pittance for his and their own support, and dragging out from day to day a miserable existence." The next point to which our author addresses himself is-the extent to which opium is introduced into China by our countrymen in the East Indies. To the Chinese Repository again we refer, as quoted by Mr. Thelwail : "In India, the extent of territory occupied with the poppy, and the amount of population and capital engaged in its cultivation and in the preparation of opium, are far greater than in any other part of the world. Malwa, Benares, and Behar (Patna), are the chief localities; and nearly every chest of the drug exported from India bears one of their names, according to the part of the country in which it was produced. About one-half of the whole product of India is obtained from Malwa. Though the chiefs of Malwa are under British protection, the management of the soil is entirely beyond the Company's authority, and both the cultivation of the poppy and the production of opium are free. The traffic in the drug is also free, excepting 'transit duties,' which are levied upon it when passing through the British territories, as most of it does on its way to Bombay, from whence it is exported to China. But in Benares, Behar, and throughout all the territories within the Company's jurisdiction, the cultivation of the poppy, the preparation of the drug, and the traffic in it, until it is brought to Calcutta, and sold by auction for exportation, are under a strict monopoly. Should an individual undertake the cultivation, without having entered into engagements with the government to deliver the produce at the fixed rate,' his property would be immediately attached, and the ryot* compelled either to destroy his poppies, or give securities for the faithful delivery of the product. Nay, according to a late writer, the growing of opium is compulsory on the part of the ryot.' Advances are made by government, through its native servants, and if a ryot refuses the advance, 'the simple plan of throwing the "* The ryot is the immediate cultivator of the soil." rupees into his house is adopted; should he attempt to abscond, the peons seize him, tie the advance up in his clothes, and push him into his house. The business being now settled, and there being no remedy, he applies himself, as he may, to the fulfilment of his contract.' "Vast tracts of land, formerly occupied with other articles, are now covered with poppies, which require a very superior soil in order to produce opium in perfection. Hence, its cultivation has not extended over waste and barren lands, but into those districts and villages best fitted for agricultural purposes, where other plants, 'grown from time immemorial,' have been driven out before it. But though poppies are now spread over a wide extent of territory, the cultivation is still, as it has long been, rapidly on the increase. In 1821, in the single district of Sarun, belonging to the province of Behar, there were, according to the testimony of Mr. Kennedy (many years collector of land revenue and deputy opium agent in that district), between 15,000 and 20,000 bigahs of land (about one-third of an acre per bigah), then under cultivation. In 1829, the amount was nearly or quite doubled, and the produce, in the meantime, had increased in a still greater degree." According to a calculation, the value of the opium that was sold in the year 1837, amounted to £2,539,530 sterling. We have not room to extract or enter into the estimates of the quantity which, on an average, individuals may take of the potent and deleterious drug, nor of the number of Chinese addicted to it. We must quote, however, our author's conclusions on these points, calmly and carefully drawn as they are : "If this estimate be correct; if a mace weight would fill twelve pipes (which may be allowed to be a tolerably good allowance' for each day). and if it be further observed that (according to some accounts) the mace weight which has served a luxurious smoker to day will supply the pipe of a more wretched slave to this habit to-morrow; then will 34,000 chests (the amount imported during the last year to which my information extends) be abundantly sufficient to ruin the health and shorten the days of no less than 2,980,000 individuals. And, if he who begins to use this baneful drug at twenty years of age can never expect to reach his fortieth year, then what must be the average number per annum, of those who are cut off prematurely by the use of opium. The ordinary calculation is, unless my memory fails me, that of sixty persons living and in health at the age of twenty, one may be expected to die every year. That is to say, the above-mentioned 2,980,000 persons who are living and in health at the age of twenty, would not, in the ordinary course of nature, be all dead in less than sixty years. If, on the contrary, in consequence of the use of opium, they all die in twenty years, the rate of mortality is tripled! and thus within the space of twenty years, not less than 1,996,000 are murdered by the use of this pernicious drug; or 99,300 every year! I confine myself, in this calculation, to the effects of imported opium." From the Chinese Repository for Nov. 1836,— "We have no such access to China as enables us to render a full statis tical account of the desolation spread there by opium. It would be of comparatively little use if we had; for at the rate at which the trade is now advancing, statistics are utterly distanced long before they could be properly compiled. The importation of opium into China is increasing in a ratio which doubles it in nearly four years! It amounted in value last year to not much less than four crores of rupees! (About Sp.Dls. 19,230,769.) Notwithstanding the rapid progress in the increasing supply, the demand more than keeps pace with it; and there is every probability, unless some direct interference of Providence mercifully thwart the natural course of events, that both will go on increasing in an increasing ratio until 'ruin stand aghast at its own awful doings." This brings us to the consideration of a third question, viz., in what manner is the drug imported from India into China? The answer is by smuggling, with all its direful concomitants and results; smuggling carried on by British merchants, or the subjects of Britain, and not repressed, but positively as well as negatively, directly as well as indirectly countenanced by the Indian Govern ment. There is a number of evils at which we have not glanced, and which persons conversant with the entire trade, from the planting and culture of the poppy to its full fruits and operations in China, have detailed to Mr. Thelwall. Even the oppressions, disasters, and demoralization attending the system as realized in India are appalling, as well as injurious to traffic and economy, as the reader of the small work before us will clearly perceive. But there are other things that most urgently demand our consideration connected with the traffic of British India in opium. The blood of tens of thousands of its victims is daily calling aloud for judgment. Indeed the sin and crime inseparable from the system are amongst the darkest that ever invoked the wrath of Heaven upon a people. This point our author very earnestly enforces in his Remarks, addressing himself to the humanity of the traffickers themselves, as well as to the humanity and Christianity of the British people, wherever spread, and however fractional may be the influence of each individual. His appeals are warm and arousing, and unquestionably just and well founded; such indeed as it very well becomes a minister of the Gospel or any one who professes the religion of good will to mankind, and believes that there is a judge of the quick and the dead, to whom he must answer. We feel, however, that in the space we can afford to the remainder of this paper, the arguments addressed to the cupidity of the worldly, and to the selfish interests of individuals, are likely to have more force and weight than any sermon from which we could quote, can in the existing reign of avarice, be expected to carry. We therefore dip into Mr. Thelwall's volume where he states that the Government of China looks upon the Opium Trade with the greatest detestation; that the subject engages the attention of the authorities, of the most enlightened and respectable of the empire; that the community and the persons in power are perfectly aware from whom the desolating plague proceeds, and of the nefarious methods taken to accomplish the infernal purpose of the traffickers; that every effort has been made to get free or to check the desolation wrought; and lastly, that much of the jealousy and the despite of the Chinese towards us as a people, and all Christians through the specimens familiar to them of British wickedness and cruelty, is attributable to the facts detailed and others that might be enumerated by us. Mr. Thelwall finds many proofs from the authority of native writers and functionaries, as well as from European travellers, for all he advances, and which are exceedingly humiliating to our national pride. The following are Chinese testimonies ; At the present moment, throughout the empire, the minds of men are in imminent danger; the more foolish, being seduced by teachers of false doctrines, are sunk in vain superstitions and cannot be aroused; and the more intelligent, being intoxicated by opium, are carried away as by a whirlpool, and are beyond recovery. Most thoughtfully have I sought for some plan by which to arouse and awaken all, but in vain." "Heu Kew, sub-censor over the Military Department, kneeling presents this memorial, to point out the increasing craftiness of foreigners from beyond the seas, in their pursuit of gain, and the daily diminution of the resources of the empire." "According to the information that I have obtained, the sale of opium is the chief medium through which money is drained off, and carried beyond the seas. In the first year of Keäking (1796), the opium sold by foreigners in Kwangtung did not exceed a few hundred chests. The number has now increased to upwards of 20,000 chests. These include three distinct kinds, the "black-earth," the "white-skinned," and the "red-skinned." The price of each chest is from 800 to 900 dollars for the best, and from 500 to 600 for the inferior quality. This applies to what is sold in the province of Kwangtung. With regard to the other provinces, the vessels of which carry on illicit traffic with the receiving ships at Lintin, it is difficult to obtain any full and complete statement respecting them. "The amount annually lost to the country is about ten and some odd millions of money. The money thus lost was, at first, the foreign money wherewith foreigners had previously purchsed goods; now it is entirely the fine silver of the inner land, cast into a different form at Macao. Formerly the foreigneris imported money to purchase the merchandise of the country, but now it has all been carried back. In the first instance it was their practice to recast the foreign money, fearing lest any discovery should be made of their transactions, but now they openly carry away sycee silver. From the Chinese Repository, |