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.

    54/96 (page 52)
    always sell tlie salt for copper coin, while they are invariably re¬ quired to pay the gabel in silver ; and, hence, the business of a salt merchant, a business formerly contended for as affording cer¬ tain profit, is, under existing circumstances, looked upon as a pur¬ suit surrounded with risks. If this state of things continue a few years longer, the price of silver will become so enhanced, that it will be a question how the revenue collected can possibly be ac¬ counted for, or the gabel paid up. And, should any unanticipated cause of expenditure arise, it will become a question, how it can by possibility be met. Whenever your minister reflects on these things, the anxious thoughts they occasion wholly deprive him of sleep. “ Throughout the empire, it is now universally acknowledged, that the draining of the country’s resources is the consequence of the introduction of opium: and many are the suggestions and propositions for staying the evil. By one it is proposed to guard strictly the maritime ports, and so block up the paths of outlet and admission; but it is not considered that the officers who must be appointed to this preventive guard, cannot always be depended upon as upright and public spirited men; and that the annual trade in opium, amounting to some tens of millions, will yield these officers, at the rate of one-tenth or one-hundredth only, as their share, [the price of their connivance,] not less than some millions of taels. Where such pecuniary advantage is to be acquired, who will faithfully watch or act against the traffic ? Hence, the instances of seizure that do sometimes occur are few' and far between. Besides, along a maritime coast of thousands of miles, places of outlet and admission abound everywhere. These considerations make it clear, that this, for one, is not practicable as a preventive of the national draining. “ Others say, f put an entire stop to foreign commercial inter¬ course, and so wholly eradicate the origin of the evil/ These, it would seem, are not aware, that the woollens, and the clocks and watches imported by the foreigners from beyond sea, together with the tea, rhubarb, and silk, exported by them, constituting the body of the legitimate trade, cannot be valuer at ten millions of taels. The profit therefore enjoyed from this trade, does not ex¬ ceed a few millions, and is at the same time but a barter of one commodity for another. Its value is not a tenth or twentieth part of that of the opium traffic; and, consequently, the chief interest of the foreign merchants is in the latter, and not in the former. Though, therefore, it should be determined to set aside the revenue derived from the maritime customs of Canton, and to forbid com¬ mercial intercourse; yet, seeing that the opium vessels do not even now enter the port, they will no doubt continue to anchor outside, in the open seas, there waiting for high prices; and the native consumers of opium, unable to bear a moment’s delay of smoking, will still find depraved people ready to go thither and