344  THE  CHINESE  EMPIRE
created  by  the  introduction  of  foreign  opium.  The  vice
came  because  opium  existed  in  the  world  ;  had  there  been
no  native  production,  the  foreign  drug  would  have  supplied
its  food  ;  had  there  been  no  foreign  importation,  the  native
supply  would  have  sufficed,  or  would  have  become  sufficient,
for  all  requirements,  even  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  a  craving
which  has  extended  to  every  corner  and  to  all  classes  in
the  Empire.  It  would  therefore  be  a  task  leading  to  no
useful  result,  to  search  for  statistics  to  determine  if  the
native  production  exceeded  the  foreign  importation  in
1729—we  know  it  did  ;  or  if  it  exceeded  the  foreign  supply
of  1800—it  very  probably,  almost  certainly,  did.  Coming
down  to  the  nineteenth  century,  during  its  fourth  decade,
when  the  great  question—to  legalise  the  foreign  trade  or
stamp  it  out—was  under  consideration,  the  native  production ­
  was  referred  to  in  several  memorials  presented
to  the  Throne.  In  1830  it  was  stated  that  “  the  poppy
cultivated  over  one-half  of  Chekiang,"  a  rhetorical  exaggeration. ­
  In  1836  a  memorial  of  Hu  Nai-tsi  proposed  to  legalise
the  traffic  on  various  economic  grounds,  and,  incidentally,
because  of  the  already  great  native  production.  This  was
opposed  in  a  memorial  of  Chu  Tsun,  who  was  convinced  of
the  evils  of  smoking,  and  based  his  objections  largely  011
the  amount  of  the  home  production,  instancing  that  in  his
native  province  of  Yunnan  the  annual  production  was  many
thousand  piculs.  The  habit  of  smoking  opium  had  been
known  in  China  for  at  least  a  century  and  a  half,  and  it  I s
probable  that  it  had  extended  to  the  inland  provinces,
while  it  is  improbable  that  the  15,000  to  20,000  chests,
which  constituted  the  foreign  supply,  penetrated  far  from
the  coast,  and  it  is  not  probable  that  they  supplied  much
more  than  the  provinces  of  Kwangtung,  Fukien  (including
Formosa),  and  possibly  Chekiang  ;  it  seems  probable  that
the  foreign  drug  reached  along  the  coast  beyond  the  mouth
of  the  Yangtze  only  after  1840.  This  is  supposition,  which
is  alien  to  the  purpose  of  this  chapter  ;  but  it  finds  som e
support  in  the  fact  *  that  at  Hankow,  prior  to  the  opening
*  “  Native  Opium,”  1863.  Shanghai,  1864.