Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/105

Rh the same as though they did contemplate it. Facts induce us to believe that it is so. Those who grow and sell the drug, while they profit by the speculation, would do well to follow the consumer into the haunts of vice, and mark the wretchedness, poverty, disease, and death which follow the indulgence; for did they but know the thousandth part of the evils resulting from it, they would not, they could not, continue to engage in the transaction. Previous to the year 1796, opium was admitted into China on the payment of a duty, when a few hundred chests annually were imported. Since that time, the drug has been openly interdicted, and yet clandestinely introduced, at the rate of 20,000 chests annually, which cost the Chinese four millions of pounds sterling every year. This quantity at twenty grains per day for each individual, would be sufficient to demoralize nearly three millions of persons. When the habit is once formed, it grows till it becomes inveterate; discontinuance is more and more difficult, until at length, the sudden deprivation of the accustomed indulgence produces certain death. In proportion as the wretched victim comes under the power of the infatuating drug, so is his ability to resist temptation less strong; and debilitated in body as well as mind, he is unable to earn his usual pittance, and not unfrequently sinks under the cravings of an appetite, which he is unable to gratify. Thus they may be seen, hanging their heads by the doors of the opium shops, which the hard hearted keepers, having fleeced them of their all, will not permit them to enter; and shut out