Page:James Hudson Maurer - The Far East (1912).pdf/6

 for them to fasten their curse upon. China after all was a long way off and Chinamen were only Chinamen, besides they were miserably poor. For ages the social parasites of China had been sucking the life's blood out of the great race of yellow men. Surely, reasoned the British, these miserable, impoverished beings would welcome their drug. Would it not act as a stimulant and prove a blessing as a cheap luxury to these weak and underfed people?

China was a wonderful field ready prepared for the ravages or opium; none better. But there was an obstacle in getting opium into the currents of trade. The Chinese were not an opium consuming race.

They did not use opium; they did not want opium, and steadily resisted the inroads of opium. But the British rulers were far-seeing men. Tempt misery long enough and it will take to opium.

As late as 1765 the importation of opium into China by energetic traders (smugglers) had never exceeded 28,000 pounds a year which was mostly consumed as a remedy for malaria, and these first smokers seam to have mixed a little opium with their tobacco.

Four grains of opium administered in one dose to a person unaccustomed to its use, is apt to prove fatal.

The Chinese government, conscious of the demoralizing effect that the use of opium would have on her people, strongly prohibited the importation of if. Yet in spite of official resistance, British traders, with the assistance of Chinese merchants, succeeded in smuggling into China the death-dealing drug. But the work of cultivating a taste for opium was slow. In 1785 it could be bought in China for $1.40 a pound (Mexican money). Its cheapness proved a temptation to many and thirty-five years later, during the year of 1820, the Christian British disposed of 566,000 pounds of opium.

These figures show that the debauching of a nation, of then more than three hundred million beings, was making considerable headway.

But the Christian gentlemen were far from satisfied. India must produce mete opium and China must consume it. Capital must have its profit even if the largest and oldest nation on earth must be destroyed.

Smuggling was too slow and uncertain; it entailed risk and expense. China must rescind her attitude towards opium. The East India Company, in itself, was not powerful enough to accomplish this, but the British government would be. Therefore, in 1843 the British government took full control of the far eastern trade and