Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/535

 ARTICLES OF IMPORTATION. 519 11^ sicca rupees, or L. 14 Sterling. In culture it is a monopoly of the government, who limits the quantity grown to about 4500 chests, which are disposed of by public auction to the highest bid- der, at two annual sales at Calcutta, in the months of December and February, with the view of suit- ing the markets of China and of the Archipelago, where almost the whole is consumed. The price has risen of late years, from sicca rupees 738, which it bore about the year 1801, to rupees 1124 in 1803, rupees 1437 in 1804, rupees 1589 in 1810, rupees 1639 in 1811, rupees 1813 in 1814, and ultimately, in 1817, to rupees 2300, its highest price. This price, equal to above twenty times the natural cost of the commodity, shews that the quantity produced and brought to market was unequal to the demand, and that, acting as a bounty on the opium of other countries, it has been the cause of a great importation of Turkey and Malwa opium, as already mentioned. Ben- gal opium, as an article of trade, is usually sold in the Indian Islands at an advance of 35 per cent, on the Calcutta prices. Throughout the islands, it is made with more justice than under the government of the country of which it is the produce, a subject of heavy duty. The native princes usually monopolize the sale, and the Euro- pean government of Java farms the privilege of vending the drug in a medicated or prepared form*