OPIUM

337
20,619  chests  of  1838  the  import  of  opium  increased  to
about  50,000  chests  in  1850,  and  to  85,000  chests  in  i860  ,
and,  as  opium  smoking  had  debauched  the  Chinese,  the
opium  traffic  debauched  the  foreign  traders  and  dragged
them  down  from  their  high  estate.
It  will  be  well  to  repeat,  in  a  brief  summary,  the  salient
facts  relating  to  opium.  The  poppy  has  been  known  in
China  for  at  least  twelve  centuries,  its  medicinal  use  for
nine  centuries,  and  that  the  medicinal  properties  lay  in  the
capsule  for  six  centuries.  Opium  has  been  made  in  China
for  four  centuries.  Tobacco  smoking  was  introduced  through
the  Spanish  at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century,
and  the  smoking  of  opium  mixed  with  the  tobacco  through
the  Dutch  in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  ;  there
is  no  historical  record  to  show  when  opium  was  first  smoked
by  itself,  but  it  appears  to  have  nearly  coincided  with  the
prohibition  of  all  opium  importation  in  1800.  Foreign
opium  was  first  imported  by  the  Portuguese  at  the  beginning ­
  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  was  first  handled
by  the  English  in  1773  ;  from  1781  to  1800  it  was  mainly
in  the  hands  of  the  East  India  Company.  After  that  the
principal  importers  were  English,  though  there  is  nothing
to  show  that  traders  of  any  nationality,  who  could  lay  hands
on  the  drug,  refused  to  deal  in  it  ;  it  is  on  record  that  in
1839,  on  the  occasion  of  the  famous  surrender,  one-thirteenth
of  all  the  opium  surrendered  was  given  up  by  an  American
firm,  and  smaller  quantities  came  from  Parsees,  who,  though
under  British  protection,  would  readily  have  transferred
their  protectorate  to  others,  had  there  been  sufficient  motive.
For  the  pandemonium  of  the  period  1840  to  i860  the  Chinese
must  be  held  primarily  responsible  ;  the  Emperor  and  his
Commissioner  Lin  attempted  the  impossible  in  applying  to
foreign  nations  alone  the  restrictions  which  they  could  not
enforce  on  their  own  subjects,  so  removing  all  regulation
from  a  trade  which  they  would  not  consent  to  legalise  ;
and  his  representatives,  the  whole  length  of  the  coast,  acted
in  every  respect,  except  as  to  turning  their  receipts  into
the  treasury,  as  if  the  trade  had  been  legalised.  The  dis-