Opium in China / extracted from China; political, commercial, and social.

  • Robert Montgomery Martin
Date:
[1847?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Opium in China / extracted from China; political, commercial, and social. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    4/96 (page 2)
    It is primarily their sacred duty to bring the whole sub¬ ject under the immediate and serious deliberation of the exalted assembly in which they sit; if this duty be neg¬ lected, then they become as much participants in the crime as if they themselves were engaged smuggling Opium on the coast of China. Next, to the Clergy of all Denominations in the United Kingdom this Report is presented ; if they also continue passive, when ignorance can no longer be pleaded as a justification for their silence, their hebdomadal prayers to a just Being, whose laws we are daily outraging, become a mockery. To the Laity—Protestant, Presbyterian, Romanist, or Sectarian,—these pages are also submitted. We have abolished slavery, mitigated our sanguinary code, purified our prisons, and ministered relief to suffer¬ ing humanity everywhere. If our collective opinion be pronounced on the crime developed in these pages, no government nor individual can longer continue in its perpetration. Finally—this Report is dedicated, (by gracious permis¬ sion) to the Sovereign of the British Nation, with an earnest prayer that the Almighty,—by whose authority, “ kings reign ancl princes decree justice”-—may influence the councils of Her Majesty to do that which is right in the sight of Him who cleclareth, that “they who set their heart on their iniquity will have the reward of their doings OPIUM: PROGRESS AND EXTENT OE CONSUMPTION; INDIVIDUAL AND NATIONAL EFFECTS; IMPE¬ RIAL EDICTS; CONTINUED DENUNCIATION BY THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT; ITS SEIZURE AND DESTRUCTION; STATE OE THE TRAFFIC, AND UNCHRISTIAN CONDUCT OE ENGLAND. [EXTRACTED EROM VOL. II.-CHAPTER IV.-OE REPORTS ON CHINA TO HER MAJESTY^ GOVERNMENT.] The consumption of the intoxicating and pernicious drug called opium, is so large in China, so entirely contraband, and so strongly denounced by the imperial government, that a brief notice of the events that arose out of the desire of the Chinese government to suppress the traffic will be necessary, in order that the present state of the trade may be fully understood; for the question is by no means a settled one with the cabinet at Peking, and it is far