Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/378

366 same opinion has been very generally held by the majority of the British officers employed in Burmah. Also it seems to have been an admitted fact, that those views are in accordance with those of the more intelligent classes of the Burmese themselves. 'Native opinion,' Sir Charles Aitchison wrote, 'is unanimous in favour of stopping the supply of opium altogether, and no measure we could adopt would be so popular with all the respectable and law-abiding class of the population. In a matter so intimately affecting the well-being of the community,' he added, 'these expressions of opinion are entitled to the greatest respect. When practical questions of this kind arise, it may become a duty to yield to the strong and general desire of the people, even when their opinions may appear unreasonable.' Now although I have myself, I must say, failed to discover the facts upon which this belief in the injurious effects of opium on the Burmese population rests, I cannot deny that it was right to yield to this general consensus of opinion on the part of both the Burmese themselves and of the English officers most competent to form an accurate judgment, and to take measures for preventing the sale of opium to Burmese, and their possession of the drug, and this has been actually done throughout the whole of Burmah. In regard to this question of the consumption of opium by the Burmese, it is, as Mr. Batten says, remarkable that the authorities in Burmah seem to have arrived at the conclusion that opium is a benefit to every one in the country except the Burmese themselves. I should like to add, that while there has been this unanimity of opinion in regard to the mischievous results of opium on the Burmese, there has been an equal unanimity in regard to the harmlessness of the practice among the large foreign population, Chinese and Indian, of Burmah. Sir Charles Aitchison writes—'There are large numbers of the non-Burmese community, constituting perhaps the most thriving and industrious section of the population, to whom the drug is a necessary of life, and by whom it is rarely abused. It is impossible to say precisely what the numbers of the Cliinese and the natives of India are,