TOPICS OF THE DAY.
STRANGE news from China ; which, however strange, has the ap- pearance of being authentic, and, at all events, receives general credence among well-informed persons. The accounts are down to the 7th of April ; and those aware of the unwonted activity and vigour of the steps taken by the Chinese Government in the pre- vious month towards suppressing the smuggling-trade in opium, will have been prepared for some news like that which has just come to hand. The statement amounts to this—that the British Superintendent, namely, her Majesty's representative, has been seized and rigorously imprisoned, and with him the whole of the English merchants on the spot ; that they have been compelled to deliver up opium to the value of 2,000,000 of tahels, equal to near 700,0001. ; and that the entire trade of the British nation with the Chinese empire (of which the annual value is now about twelve millions sterling) is for the moment, and until the smug- gling-ships depart from the coast, put a stop to. If all this, or one- half of it be true, there is ground, not for going to war with, but certainly for signally chastising an unsocial people, who conduct themselves, not like men, but spoilt and naughty children.
We hear it often said that opium is a poison, and that the Chinese have not only a right, but are fully justified, both in a moral and political point of view, in prohibiting the introduction of the drug into their country. Before adopting these views, it will be well coolly to examine them. Opium is the produce of a poppy, which acts as a stimulant, or produces inebriety, according to the quantity taken ; and ale and gin are the produce of barley, brandy of the grape ; and these produce much the same effects. No man who by experience has had a proper opportunity of judging, will venture to decide that inebriety produced by opium is in any one respect worse than inebriety produced by gin or brandy. Both are bad enough, and so are drunkenness with champagne or claret, or gluttony. This is all that any man of sense or experience can conscientiously aver ; although our philanthropists preach on the subject as vehemently as if we were disseminating among the Chinese the poison of the rattlesnake or the juice of the upas-tree. The Turks take opium in large quantity, and yet are eminently a sober people: many persons take it largely in this country, without making beasts of themselves,—witness the late Mr. WILBERFORCE, whose health required its habitual use in great quantity, and who lived a virtuous life to beyond eighty. Did any one ever hear of excess iu brandy, or beer, or claret, with so much impunity?
Next, as to the right of the Chinese Government to prohibit the vend of opium, or any thing else to its subjects. The abstract right is indeed unquestionable ; but it is the right in this case to commit an act of folly ; and the Chinese must take the conse- quences, in the same way that we are obliged to take the conse- quences of our folly, in the shape of law-breaking, when we put an inordinate tax on brandy and gencva, and thus hold out by law a premium on smuggling and immorality, while we lose much re- venue. The Chinese folly is the greater of the two; tier the Government not only loses all the revenue which might keep con- sumption within bounds, but it contrives to secure at the same time the largest consumption, and the greatest possible amount of smuggling and its concomitant demoralization. What the Chinese Government attempts, is equivalent to what in this country would be a total prohibition of all foreign spirits and wines, and even to opium itself used for medicinal purposes ; for to the tastes of the Chinese opium is all that wine, brandy, genera, end rum are to us. They choose to stimulate themselves with opium, and sometimes they procure a drowsy inebriety with it, just as some of us stimulate or lush ourselves with brandy, while others prefer to be muddled with beer or mad with champagne. Still, we admit that the Chinese Government has the right which authority and custom give to commit an egregious folly as regards the subjects of China ; and it is certainly not for foreigners to dispute it. The mat- ter, however, does not rest here, even in so far as the opium- trade is concerned. The opium-trade, always nominally prohi- bited, has notwithstanding always been carried on almost ever since Europeans knew China ; and within the last thirty years has advanced from the annual value of half a million sterling to three millions. During this whole period the officers of the Chinese Government, from the highest to the lowest, have winked at the traffic, and accepted huge bribes for their connivance—in fact, pocketed what ought to have gone into the imperial treasury. Even the Viceroys, and other great functionaries of Canton, have paid large sums to the Emperor for their places ; the bribes for connivance at the smuggling of opium being one of the chief sources of the emoluments which enabled them to buy those places. All that the Chinese Government ever did, in all the long time alluded to, was to publish every two or three years an angry edict, never carried into execution. By its virtual connivance, it has allowed a prescription of fifty or rather of a hundred and fifty years to be esta- blished, and a trade of 3,000,0001. to grow up. An European na- tion, that suddenly destroyed such a trade, must be very strong in- deed to escape condign punishment.
But let us attend to the worst part of the subject, the seizure and imprisonment of the persons of British subjects ; and first of these, of the merchants. Some of them are engaged in the opium- trade, and there are others who have nothing to do with it. Even
respecting those that have, it is impossible to produce a tittle6 ! evidence ; for the parties in question not only have no elot„0,,' their persons, or in their premises, but never even see the article, The parties in possession of the opium are the Chines; or ti,; masters of the English ships at the mouth of the estuary epth,
Canton river ; and the imprisonment of the merchants is
gulps
species of torture inflicted upon them in hopes of getting at their
supposed accomplices. With respect to the seizure and imprineti ment of the representative of the sovereignty of this country i; admits of no palliation whatever. He had nothing to do with the opium-trade, but, on the contrary, went even a little out of his by backing the Chinese proclamation for its suppression. Rebekj. his appointment direct from the Crown ; is its true representative!' and, as such, time Chinese Government has, over and over again a6 dressed him for the last five years.
Supposing the narrative which has readied the East India Bons to be genuine, the necessity of inflicting punishment and exacting contribution is unquestionable. How is it to be done ? It is nai difficult either to punish the Chinese or to make a permanent as rangement for our future relations with the empire. China is the weakest nation on earth, and its people those of all others, he Ilindoos not excepted, time most docile and unwarlike,—as testified by their conquest by a few Northern shepherds, who still hold then in subjection, although in manners and conduct even now th. reigners. Nothing has preserved the Chinese over and over again from foreign subjugation, but the deserts, weak hordes, and semi. barbarous people that Surround their land frontiers in every digee. tion, with the sea, and the absence of an enemy that would avail itself of the sea, in every other quarter. That sea is open to ug. We must proceed resolutely, and do the work promptly and a 4 once. The seizure and temporary occupation of a couple of the great maritime towns, will be quite sufficient to bring the Chines Government to its senses; and the Indian fleet, with some three thousand European troops on board, and a couple of good steam. boats, will be sufficient to effect this both cheaply and safely. Canton and Tchaa-teu-fu, in the bay of Amoy, are the most suit. able, being wealthy, populous, with good harbours, and near at hand. Another plan, still more speedy and effectual, is to sail up the Yellow Sea ; enter the Pei-ho ; when a couple of day's march carries us under the walls of the Imperial Palace, less defensible than an American log-house. The Chinese army is a very nume sous rabble—a few armed with matchlocks, none with muskets, some with short spears, but the greater number with bows and arrows and targets. A regular European force has about as much to ap. prebend from it as the stork has from the frogs. The Government as the greatest political bully on record. It swaggers and blusters, but is cowed by the very first appearance of resistance. Five-and. twenty years ago, a Chinese freebooter on the coast set it at de. fiance for years together, defeating its armies and its fleets; and the Government suppressed the rebellion, and made its peace with the rebel, by making him an assignment of lands, granting Trim a pension, and raising him to a rank equivalent among us to a dukedom!
The next point will be to make the aggressors pay for all the mischief they have occasioned. For this they possess better means than zany other people of Asia. CLIVE, eighty years ago, and when we were struggling for empire in India, thought that enterprise not difficult, which we may now doubt and boggle about before we resolve on ; and we believe his proposition to this effect is still preserved in the private archives of his family, But we must not stop at mere punishment and temporary retribae Lion. A trade of the value of twelve millions, the supply of an article of necessity for which the nation pays six or seven millions per annum, and a revenue to England and to India of five mil. lions, ought not in future to be put to yearly risk by the individual caprice of a barbarian residing at Pekin, and blindly ignorant both of the interests of his own people and ours.* We ought to insist on the cession of an island close to the Chinese coast, with a safe harbour, from which our future commerce might not only be con- ducted without danger of collision, but greatly extended.
* It is remarkable enough, that the Emperor himself proposed to the pre. sent Viceroy to equalize the trade in opium, by imposing a fair ditty. The Viceroy approved of the plan in his reply ; but the Emperor in the mean time listening to new counsel, prohibition was adopted instead, and n rescript addressed to the great functionary, in which he was styled " blockhead'."
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