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86 by law; those who were found guilty of smoking it, were pilloried and bambooed; and the venders and smugglers made liable to the severer penalties of banishment and death; so late as the year 1833, the amended law upon the subject, was as follows:—

Thus, as far as law goes, the government of China has, ostensibly, done every thing in its power to check the growing evil; and one would imagine that these regulations were sufficiently severe to ensure the entire exclusion of the article from the empire. Yet, in the year 1836, a Chinese officer, high in rank, presented a memorial to the emperor, in which he tells him,

"That, recently, the number of chests imported has exceeded 20,000, and that the sum paid, annually, exceeds eleven millions of dollars. Within the last few years, he adds, foreign ships have visited all the ports along the coast, from Canton, as far as Chinese Tartary, for the purpose of disposing of their opium, and though the local authorities immediately expelled them, yet the quantity clandestinely sold, is by no means small. The foreigners have, besides, a depot, for opium, at Lintin, in the entrance of the Canton river, where they have seven or eight large vessels, called receiving ships, anchored all the year round. In Canton, the native brokers pay the price of the opium to the foreign merchants, when they obtain orders for the drug from the receiving ships. They have also convoys,