The opium trade : including a sketch of its history, extent, effects, etc., as carried on in India and China / by Nathan Allen.

  • Nathan Allen
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The opium trade : including a sketch of its history, extent, effects, etc., as carried on in India and China / by Nathan Allen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    APPENDIX THE INCREASE OF REVENUE FROM OPIUM. The following is an extract from the Friend of India, published at Serampore on the increase of the opium revenue in Bengal. This measure, considered in its consequences, must excite feelings of sorrow in every philanthropist. How painful to see a Christian government encouraging a trade for pecuniary reasons which a Heathen government for moral reasons is endeavoring to prevent. The Chinese laws prohibit the importation of opium under severe penalties, but the government is afraid to enforce these laws upon those trading under the English flag, lest they should he again involved in an opium war. They must suffer the trade to go on, impoverishing their country and debasing the character of their people, or legalize the importation of opium and allow it to be cultivated in their own territory, both of which they believe to be morally wrong. [From the Friend of India, November 25, 1852.] The notification regarding the quantity of opium to be brought to sale during the ensuing twelvemonth, has just appeared in the Calcutta Gazette, and we find that it will fall little short of 40,000 chests. The last sale realized 1140 Rs. the chest; and the average of the year has been, we think, about 1000 Rs. We have, therefore, the prospect of a gross income of more than .€4,000,000 sterling from the opium of the Gangetic valley in the ensuing twelve months, and as the returns from the Malva opium were stated by Mr. Melville at 80 lakhs, we may calculate on a gross return of £5,000,000 sterling from this source, of which jC3,750,000 will be clear profit. The returns from the sale of the drug here, and from the opium passes at Bombay, are therefore equal to nearly one fifth of the gross revenues of the British empire in Tndia. The revenue thus drawn from the peculiar propen- sities of a distant foreign nation is the most singular fiscal phenomenon to be found in the history of finance; but the revenue itself is not less precarious than it is singular. It is, of course, well known that opium may be grown in great abundance in many parts of China. The cultivation of it, however, is as strictly forbidden as its importation, but as the Chinese government is much stronger in the interior of the country than on the line of coast, it is enabled to 10