The opium revenue : Sir William Muir's minute and other extracts from papers published by the Calcutta government also extracts from Parliamentary papers compiled for the information of Members of Parliament / issued by the Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade.

  • William Muir
Date:
1875
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The opium revenue : Sir William Muir's minute and other extracts from papers published by the Calcutta government also extracts from Parliamentary papers compiled for the information of Members of Parliament / issued by the Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    abroad, what supplies of opium they required. This country, however, has a natural monopoly of good and cheap opium. If any one seriously contends that this natural advantage, which Providence has granted to India, should be artificially counteracted by the prohibition of poppy cultivation in this country out of regard for the Chinese, such an argument may safely be left to its fate. If things were left to their natural course India would supply China with the greater part of the opium which Chinese con- sumption demands. It is the policy of the Indian Government to let things run as nearly as possible in their natural course, whilst it gives the public exchequer the benefit of the natural monopoly in question, thereby avoiding the necessity of equivalent taxation in some more inconvenient form. In doing this, the only duty of the Indian Government is to decide what method is most expedient and most for the advantage of this country. To this point the question narrows itself ; and a candid decision in favour of the present system as compared with that proposed, will not be assisted by dragging into the discussion fancied advantages to the foreign consumer, which in reality do not at all enter into the motives by which the fiscal arrangements of India are regulated.” For this straightforward thorough-going defence of the monopoly, its opponents have reason to be thankful. Difficult as it is to comprehend how a man of clear intelligence and high moral cha- racter can have failed to see the patent immorality of the opium revenue, it is yet a satisfaction to have the subject cleared of ambi- guities and side-issues, and reduced to the plain question of fact: Is the system immoral or is itnot? We believe it is. We believe that we can show it to be so to any person whose passionate desire for the prosperity of India, and the easy acquisition of the revenue on which this prosperity is supposed to depend, has not temporarily obscured the ordinary clearness of his mental vision. Before joining issue on the point of fact, we must remark that we hesitate to concur in the sweeping denial of regard for the welfare of their own subjects on the part of the British rulers of India. Unless we charge them with a degree of hypocrisy quite uncommon, we must hold that the frequent professions by Directors, Governors, and Boards of a desire to see the use of opium restricted in India and Burmah, were prompted by a real conviction of the injuriousness of the drug, and a sincere desire to preserve their own ‘subjects from its baneful effects (a philanthropic sentiment which the smallness of the contribution to the revenue accruing from Indian consumption may have assisted). Whether these gentlemen would have manifested the same benevolent desire to restrain the people from using opium, had the whole or the greater portion of the annual production been consumed within their own dominions,
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