THE VOTE AGAINST THE OPIUM REVENUE.
IT is neither useful nor quite fair to scold the one hundred and sixty Members who on Friday week carried the vote intended to prohibit the further cultivation of the poppy in India. Some of them may be notoriety- hunters, or men intent only on gaining a cheap reputation with their constituents for universal philanthropy ; but the great probability is, that the majority obeyed their consciences. They honestly think that opium is an evil thing, and, consequently, that the Government of India ought not, by licensing the culture of that evil thing, or by selling it when manufactured, to make revenue for its people. Thousands of worthy Englishmen, and tens of thousands of worthy Americans, hold the same belief about concentrated alcohol ; and so long as they are sincere, we not only have no quarrel with them, but think them bound by all reasonable and just methods to give effect to their convictions. It is the unwisdom of the majority in the matter, not their fanaticism, against which we would appeal to the common- sense of the community. The facts of the opium trade are, in our judgment, identical with the facts of the trade in spirits. The people of Southern China, like the people of Northern Europe, greatly desire the luxury of relief from the pressure of despondency, low spirits, and the ill-health engendered by infamous sanitary conditions. Unlike the Europeans, however, the Chinese desire the relief, not in the shape of a stimulant like alcohol, but of a sedative ; and they find the most perfect of the sedatives to be opium. That drug taken in strictly limited doses, whether by swallowing or inhalation, produces in most Europeans and all Asiatics a delightful sense of tranquillity and ease, accompanied by no loss of mental power, and attended by a great increase to that faculty of endurance which among the Chinese, who are a terribly overworked people, is held to be essential to life. That, so taken, the drug is injurious to its votaries, is probably a pure assumption derived from a study of the effects of opium-smoking on those who abuse it, or on the unaccustomed, who of course suffer as they would if they were learning to smoke tobacco. As a matter of fact, the Rajpoots of India, magnificently powerful and energetic men, habitually use the drug through life, as did Com- missioner Yeh, largest and most energetic of Chinese Viceroys, and as do scores of thousands of Chinese workmen, without ever intermitting their amazing in- dustry, or revealing any deleterious consequences from their indulgence. It is believed, too, by careful observers, that opium is, as it is also believed to be in Lincoln- shire, a protection against malarious fever, but we do not press that side of. the argument. Its moderate users, we are content to maintain, enjoy a luxury which makes life seem less dreary, and that is all. Unfortunately, the drug, like alcohol, is capable of being abused, tempts a certain proportion of its votaries to abuse it, and when abused, ruins the constitution and destroys mental energy as badly as absinthe or gin, though with this noteworthy difference, that while alcohol generates crime, opium does not. The drug, in this resembling the Peruvian's coca, when taken in too great quantity, destroys energy instead of stimulating it in unlaw- ful directions. The majority of its votaries avoid this excess as carefully as the majority of Englishmen avoid drunken- ness, and as one way of avoiding it, consume, not the coarse indigenous opium which has always been pro- curable, and is now a permitted article of ordinary sale, but opium from India, which is singularly pure, and so weak that it has never been used in medicine. It is absolutely unknown in Europe, not an ounce of it ever coming here, so that when the editors of the " Materia Medica " required sonic for scientific analysis, they were compelled to apply officially to the authorities in Calcutta. The Indian drug is, in fact, a refined article, and the taste for it is like the taste of a planter in the Philippines or a tobacco-grower in Virginia for Havannah cigars.
The Indian Government avails itself of this taste in two ways. It taxes a singularly fine opium mado in Malwah at the port of shipment, and it manufactures for itself opium in Behar. In order to keep the drug pure, it pro- hibits private manufacture in its own territories, and in order to restrict its use, as well as to obtain revenue, it puts on in both instances a price which, were not the quantities consumed so small, would be absolutely prohibitory. Nothing consumed in the world is now or ever has been taxed like Indian opium. The Government itself admits that it asks six times the value of the drug, and it is probable that, if the estimate were made on a competitive basis, the truth would be much nearer ten times, the best calculation yet offered being that the monopoly price is equivalent to a tax of 865 per cent. Those who denounce opium, however, say that this is not enough, that opium is in se an evil thing, and that its cultivation ought to be prohibited; and they carried on Friday week a vote of the House of Commons which was accepted by Mr. W. H. Smith, on behalf of the Govern- ment, as intended to be read in that sense. It is probable that the vote will be rescinded in some way, but, of course, for the moment it must be considered as expressing the true desire of the ultimate authority in the realm. Well, it is pos- sible, if that is the serious decision of the House of Commons when a decent number of its Members are present, to accept even that extreme exercise of the controlling power. It is a tremendous stretch of the rights of conquest, to deprive a great Dependency of a property producing six millions a year, against the will of its people, who regard the opium revenue as a protection against taxation. It is also an immense act of sovereignty to order the Indian Govern- ment, which entirely approves the existing system, to risk in- surrection byimposing a heavy tobacco-tax, which is the only possible equivalent for the abandoned tax on opium. Still, if the House is resolved, the change can be made, the right to sell tobacco being sold, as in France, district by district ; and as final power in the Empire must reside somewhere, wo should be loth to argue that the representatives had entirely exceeded their reserved rights. But the House should consider the effect of its order as regards its own philanthropic objects. In order to carry it out, the Indian Government, besides increasing taxation in India by six millions a year, must establish a most vexatious and inquisitorial excise law, throwing hundreds of people into prison every year for the illicit cul- tivation of the poppy. The profit on such culture, when not intercepted by the State, will be so great that it will be commenced everywhere—in every petty Native State, for example—and India is not like England, a Kingdom which could be easily watched. It is a con- tinent in which tribes are lost, with a frontier towards the Chinese dominion which, as against a drug like opium, it will take an army of inspectors and Custom-House guards to watch. When, moreover, the work has been done, and the equivalent revenue has been found, and the cultivation has been stopped as completely as the illicit manufacture of salt, no Chinaman alive will eat or smoke a drachm of opium the less. He will not, perhaps cannot, abandon the one luxury which makes his life tolerable, but will at once hunt the world to find a substitute for the intercepted Indian drug, and will find it, as the Chinaman of London, San Francisco, or Australia does, in the Smyrna variety of the poison, which can be prepared, and is prepared every day, until it bears to Indian opium about the relation which a Trichinopoly cheroot bears to a Savannah cigar,— that is, a coarser and much more deleterious, but still satis- fying, variety of the same article. Smyrna, and indeed all Asia Minor, will grow quite rich for a few years, and then an American syndicate will import Indian poppies into Florida or Louisiana, prepare the juice as care- fu]ly and honestly as the Opium Department has always done, and divide on its manufacture a profit, as the Indian Government does, of five or six hundred per cent. The Americans will like that, and although the Chinese will not be benefited in the smallest degree, the Indian Govern- ment will be " cleansed from the stain " of selling an article of diet which it is possible to abuse. Is that what the House desires, especially remembering that Government could be " cleansed " just as easily by the sale of its factories to European merchants, and the substitution of a restrictive export duty for the existing monopoly ? That has been recommended a hundred times, but would, we presume, in the present condition of opinion, be denounced as " unworthy compromise." Tho resolution of the House, in truth, abolishes the tax, which is the restriction imposed on Malwah opium, as completely as the monopoly itself, and can only be carried out by prohibiting culti- vation. Such splendid consistency is not sense, but still we fully admit that even nonsense gains by complete consistency.
Sir J. Pease, we perceive, promised to ask the House of Commons to make up to India the loss to be incurred by the resolution he proposed, and as he is a decent man, no doubt believed that he could fulfil his promise. That is most creditable to his character for sincerity, as his constituents will probably turn him out for his costly philanthropy ; but does he know what he is talking about ? He apparently thinks that a grant such as was made to the slaveowners would meet the justice of the case ; but to give X20,000,000, is only to plunder India under a show of equity. The grant, to be honest, must be equal to the capital value of £6,000,000 a year, or, say, at 4 per cent., £120,000,000 sterling, If there is any claim for compensation at all, less than that that would be cheating. The talk about the ".uncertain character" of the opium revenue is talk merely. The Chinese can grow poppies of course, and poppies yielding the right juice, and so can Australia grow grapes ; but for all that, the rich Australian vignernn will continue to give the top price for real Lafitte. The Indian opium is a luxury to opium- consumers, and its profit will no more die away than the profit on Tokay, or fine Havannah tobacco, or Chinese beche-de-mer. The fear of competition is equally vain, the effect of time being the one quality no grower can impart to any plant ; and as to taxation imposed by the Chinese Government, let it tax till it is tired,—ten guineas an ounce, if it is so inclined. It will only revive the extinct smuggling trade, and have no other effect whatever. The Indian opium revenue is just as safe as the English duty on wine, and if compensation is to be made for its loss, the compensation must be calculated on that basis. We must add, however, that we think Sir J. Pease needlessly liberal of his constituents' money, there being no moral claim to compensation whatever. The right to govern includes the right to prohibit the sale of a poison, and that, we presume, is Sir J. Pease's view of the opium traffic. If it is not, his cool inclusion of " Malwah," a group of Native States, in his area of prohibition, is per- haps the most audacious instance of deliberate spoliation recorded in our annals,—worse than the decree which once forbade Irishmen to grow flax. He is right enough, how- ever, from his point of view, and blameable, if at all, only for his ignorance.
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