APPENDIX.

Looking at Christianity in the broad and true sense, as a great regenerating force breathing its beneficent spirit upon and promoting the welfare of all, of course the excessive use or abuse of opium and every other thing, is a serious hindrance to its happy progress. But this is a very different position from that of supposing that the present apparently slow progress of mission-work in China is to be attributed to the importation of Indian opium. China is a world in itself, and the influence of Christian missions has hitherto reached but a handful of the people, for there are many serious obstacles to its progress besides opium.

As before mentioned, the Roman Catholic missionaries have never complained that their missionary labours were impeded by the opium trade. I had the honour of being Solicitor at Hong Kong to a wealthy and important religious community of that persuasion which has missionary stations all over China, Formosa, and Tonquin, and might call the head of the order a personal friend, yet I never heard a complaint of the kind from him or any of his clergy. I was on very intimate terms with a Roman Catholic gentleman who was in the confidence of the Catholic Bishop at Hong Kong, and the Roman Catholic community generally, and I have had conversations with him on missionary matters. He has never uttered such a complaint, but, on the contrary, has always spoken of the success which attended the Roman Catholic missions throughout China. In this connection it should not be forgotten that the Chinese treat all foreigners alike; they know no distinction between them—English, French, German, Spanish, Americans, Portuguese, are to them one people. The victims of the Tientsin massacre were, with the exception, I think, of a Russian gentleman, a community of French nuns. The petition to the House of Commons set out in my first letter emanated from the Protestant missionaries alone, and it has not, I am well assured, been signed by a single Roman Catholic missionary. It is plain, therefore, that this alleged obstacle to the spread of the Gospel in China by the English and American missionariesis a monster of their own creation, and has no real existence. Bishop Burden, of Hong Kong, the missionary bishop for South China, who, although no authority on the opium question, ought, on this point at all events, to be well informed, estimates the number of Protestant converts in China at forty thousand, and of Roman Catholics at one million. The disparity is great, but then it should not be forgotten that Roman Catholic missions in China date from a period probably two centuries earlier than Protestant missions. If out of these forty thousand converts I allow five per cent., or two thousand, to be really sincere and able to give a reason for the faith that is in them, I believe that I am not underrating the precise number of true andbona fideconverts which these missionaries have made. But knowing this as I do, it is very far from my intention to cast blame upon the missionaries in consequence. To those who understand the difficulties those devoted men have to contend with in the progress of their labours, the wonder is not that they have done so little, but that they have achieved so much. Upon this point, I would say again, I am very far from attributing any blame to our missionaries, save in so far as they have allowed themselves to be cajoled by certain Chinese and others as to opium smoking. No one is more sensible of their piety, learning, zeal, and industry; and a very sad task it has been to me to impugn their conduct and controvert their views as I have done. A good cause, however, cannot and ought not to be promoted by falsehood; for such this Anti-Opium delusion amounts to, and nothing more, and there can be no hope for more solid results from the missionary field until it is swept from the missionaries’ path. Two thousand sincere converts after all is, in my belief, a great and encouraging result, considering the tremendous obstacles our missionaries have to encounter in overcoming in the first instance the prejudice of the Chinese against foreigners, and then in displacing in their minds the idolatrous and sensuous creed that has taken such firm root there, and become, so to speak, engrained in the Chinese nature, and implanting in its stead the truths of the Gospel. Each of these two thousand converts will prove, I am well assured, like the grain of mustard seed that will fructify and in time bring forth much fruit. But it must not be forgotten that China, in the terse and apposite words of the Rev. Mr. Galpin, is“a world in itself,” containing as it does about a fourth of the whole human race.

The custom of opium smoking has existed in the Empire of China from time immemorial. You might as well try to reverse the course of Niagara as to wean the Chinese from the use of their favourite drug. As to the Treaty of Tientsin, it is unfair and ungrateful of the missionaries to speak of it as they do. It did no more than reduce to a formal settlement a state of things that had been for several years tacitly acquiesced in and agreed to by the Chinese and British authorities and people. That treaty was prepared with the greatest deliberation by an eminent statesman who was singularly remarkable for his humanity and benevolence, assisted by able subordinates who were in no way deficient in those qualities. The missionaries seem to forget that this very Treaty of Tientsin, which they so denounce, is the charter by which they have now a footing in China, with liberty to preach the Gospel there. They would have nolocus standiin China but for this sorely abused treaty. There is a special clause in it drawn up by Lord Elgin himself, providing that we should be at liberty to propagate Christianity in the country. That treaty is the missionaries’ protection. It is to it they would now appeal if molested by the Mandarins or people of China. They cry it down for one purpose, and rely upon it for another. I may here not inappropriately observe that the missionaries of Peking seem to have been under a misapprehension as to the nature of this treaty. From their petition to the House of Commons it would appear that they were under the impression that some special clause legalizing the importation of opium into China was introduced into it under pressure from the British Government; but that was a mistake. There is no “clause” whatever in the treaty on the subject of opium. The only place that the word “opium” appears is in the schedule, where it is set down amongst other dutiable articles, such as pepper and nutmegs, exactly as stated by Mr. H. N. Lay. It is plain, then, that these missionary gentlemen had not a copy of the Treaty of Tientsin before them when they drew up their petition, and I doubt very much if any of them ever read the treaty at all. They appear to have got the delusion so strongly into their heads that the legalization of opium was wrung from the Chinese Government that it seems theythought it quite unnecessary to read the treaty and took everything for granted.

I have now, I think, shown and fully refuted the fallacies which within the past thirty years have crept into the minds of the opponents of the Indo-China opium trade, dimming the faculties, blinding the reason, warping the judgment, ministering to the prejudices, deluding the senses, gratifying the feelings, until these fallacies have become so interwoven and welded together as to form and culminate into oneCONCRETE PLAUSIBLE, FASCINATING, DEFAMATORY LIE! A cruel, false, and treacherous lie, that misleads alike its votaries and its victims, and that, too, in the names of religion and charity.—A lie circumstantial,—so highly genteel and respectable,—so sentimental and pious,—so sleek and unctuous,—so caressed and flattered,—so bravely dressed, and so beflounced and trimmed with the trappings of truth, that even those who have bedecked the jade fail to see the imposture they have created, so that the tawdry quean struts along receiving homage as she goes, whilst plain honestTruthin her russet gown wends her way unnoticed.—I have shown that this Anti-Opium scare is a sham, a mockery, a delusion—a glittering piece of counterfeit coin, which I have broken to pieces and proved to you that, for all its silvery surface, there is nothing but base metal beneath.

Let me now recapitulate. I have, I think, made it irrefutably clear—

1. That the Chinese are a civilized people, very abstemious in their habits, especially as regards the use of opium, spirits, and stimulants of all kinds.

2. That there is and can be no analogy or comparison whatever between opium eating and opium smoking, as each stands separate and apart from the other, differing totally in the mode of use and their effects, and that opium eating is not a Chinese custom.

3. That an overdose of opium, like an excessive draught of spirits, is poisonous and produces immediate death.

4. That opium smoking is a harmless and perfectly innocuous practice, unless immoderately indulged in, which rarely happens, as seldom, indeed, as over-indulgence in tea or tobacco in England.

5. That even when immoderately indulged, any depressingeffects resulting from opium smoking are removed simply by discontinuing the use of the drug for a short period.

6. That no death from opium smoking, whether indulged in moderately or excessively, has ever occurred, and that death from such cause is a physical impossibility.

7. That opium smoking is a custom far less enslaving and more easily discontinued than dram drinking or even tobacco smoking.

8. That opium smoking is a luxury which can only be indulged in by those who are well-to-do and is wholly out of the reach of the poor, and, save in Western China and certain other districts, where the poppy is very extensively cultivated and opium comparatively cheap, beyond the means of the working classes.

9. That opium smoking is a universal custom throughout the whole of the immense empire of China, just as tea, wine, or beer drinking is with the people of the United Kingdom, its use being limited only by the ability of the people to procure the drug.

10. That it is admitted by Sir Robert Hart, a high official of the Chinese Government, that the greatest quantity of Indian opium of late years imported into China is only sufficient to supply about one million of people with a modicum of the drug, and that, in his own words, “neither the finances of the State, nor the wealth of the people, nor the growth of its population,” can be specially damaged by a luxury which only draws from five-pence to eleven-pence a-piece from the pockets of those who enjoy it, and which is indulged in by a comparatively small number of the Chinese people.

11. That the poppy is extensively cultivated in all the provinces of China proper as well as in Manchuria, and that there is probably three or four times as much native drug produced annually in China as is imported from abroad.

12. That in the western parts of China, where the poppy is more extensively cultivated and opium more generally smoked than in other parts of the empire, no decadence whatever is produced in the mental or bodily health, or the wealth, industry, and prosperity of the people, but on the contrary, that these very people are peculiarly strong and vigorous.

13. That the Chinese Government is not, and never was, sincere in its professed desire to put down the practice ofopium smoking in the empire, which is evidenced by the fact that the poppy is largely cultivated throughout the country, and that a revenue is derived by the Government from the native drug.

14. That Hong Kong being the great depôt of Indian opium and the place where the drug is most largely prepared for smoking purposes, and where also the native population (about three-fourths of whom are adult males) are in good circumstances, and therefore better able to indulge in opium smoking than their countrymen in the mainland of China, is the place where the alleged evils of opium smoking, if they existed, would be found in their worst form, yet thatthose evils are unknown there.

15. That the outcry, got up and disseminated for so many years past in England against the Indo-China opium trade has not, and never had, any substantial foundation; that such outcry has arisen from the complaints, of the Protestant missionaries in China, which also are equally baseless, those missionaries having been simply made dupes of by certain designing and mendacious natives for purposes of their own, or of the Government of China.

16. That opium was inserted into the Schedule to the Treaty of Tientsin at the express desire and request of the Chinese authorities; that Lord Elgin wished and proposed to those authorities by his Secretary, Mr. Laurence Oliphant, to place a higher duty than thirty taels on the drug, but that the Chinese officials declined to do so, fearing that, if the duty were raised, an impetus would be given to smuggling.

17. That the career of the Anti-Opium Society has been signalized by a continuous series of mistakes and blunders—commencing with the monstrous figment (the invention of an American missionary) that there were twenty millions of opium smokers in China supplied by the Indian drug, and thattwo millions of these smokers died annually from the practice,—and that the Anti-Opium confederacy is only kept alive by the continued reiteration of exploded fallacies, sophistries, and mis-statements of the same nature.

18. That the British merchants connected with China in the past and the present were and are wholly free from the stigmas cast upon them by the Anti-Opium Society, anentsmuggling and the opium trade;[12]that, so far from having acted wrongfully towards China and the Chinese, their conduct towards both has been, and still is, emphatically characterized by honour and rectitude, and by uniform courtesy and kindness; and that those merchants, have deserved well of their country.

19. That the Anti-Opium Society, from its formation to the present time, has wrought nothing but mischief, crippling by its pragmatical efforts the action of Her Majesty’s Government, both here and in India and China, abstracting by its mis-statements enormous sums of money from the charitable and benevolent, and squandering that money in the propagation of unfounded theories and injurious reflections against our fellow-countrymen in China; and that the public should withdraw their confidence from the Society, and cease to supply it with one farthing more.

20. That, save in respect of the blockade of Hong Kong by the armed cruisers of the Hoppo or Revenue Farmer of the provinces of the two Kwangs, which inflict great and bitter hardship upon the Chinese merchants of Hong Kong and the junk owners who trade to that place, the British nation, by its Government and people, has amply redeemed the promises made to the people of China by Her Majesty’s representative, Sir Henry Elliott, on taking over Hong Kong, which is amply verified by the flourishing state of that Colony, and its large, thriving, and contented Chinese population.

21. That, whilst it is desirable to maintain the most amicable and cordial relations with the Government of China and its various viceroyalties, that most unjustifiable blockade by the Hoppo or Revenue Farmer of Canton should be promptly suppressed; a matter which has only to be taken in hand by Her Majesty’s Consul at Canton, supported, if necessary, by the British Minister at Peking, andfirmly but courteously pressed upon the Viceroy of the two Kwangs, who cannot but acknowledge the gross injustice and cruel wrong inflicted on Hong Kong and its native merchants by those cruisers, and who has the power and only wants the will to let right be done.

In the course of these lectures I have spoken of some of the vices of the Chinese, and of our own also. The people of England have, however, many virtues, the growth of centuries; one of these is a broad and liberal charity, that pours forth a continuous stream of benevolence over the whole world. It is a virtue that pervades all classes, from our honoured Queen to the humblest of her subjects. It is not without a swelling heart that one can walk through the streets of London and see the noble charitable institutions surrounding him upon all sides, such as hospitals, convalescent institutions, homes for aged and infirm people, educational institutes, and such like,supported by voluntary contributions—living evidences of the charity and benevolence of our people in the past and present. Yet these splendid monuments but faintly testify to the flow of munificence perpetually running its course around us. Observe how liberally the public respond to the appeals made to it almost daily. Look at the case of the persecution of the Jews in Russia, the famine in the North of China, the distress and troubles in Ireland. Then, again, there is the charity “that lets not the left hand know what the right hand doeth,” of which the world sees nothing, but which is known to go on unceasingly, and which probably is the most liberal of all. The history of the world, so far as I am aware, does not record a parallel to this in any other nation or people. With such an active and unceasing charity going on amongst us, we should take care that this beneficent stream is not diverted into worthless channels, for that would be a matter concerning the whole public.

Now, though I hold in respect all the officers and supporters of the Anti-Opium Society, who are actuated, I admit, by the best motives, and whose characters for benevolence and good faith I do not question, I cannot forbear from repeating that their crusade against the Indo-China opium trade is as unjustifiable as it is mischievous, and is well calculated to produce the results I have deprecated. It encourages the Chinese Government to makeuntenable demands upon us, under false pretences, and it is an unwarranted interference with an industry, wholly unobjectionable on any but sentimental grounds, affording subsistence to millions of our fellow-subjects in India. It aims, also, at cutting off some eight or ten millions sterling from the revenue of that vast dependency, now expended in ameliorating the condition of its dense population. Furthermore, it offers to useful and legitimate legislation an opposition and obstruction of the worst kind, seeing that it obtrudes upon the Legislature its unfounded and exploded theories, to the displacement or delay of really useful measures.

I say that the Anti-Opium Society, in the course of its agitation for the abolition of this Indo-China opium trade, is vilifying its countrymen and blackening this country in the eyes of the whole world, so that the foreigner can convict us out of our own mouths, and jibe at us for hypocrisy and turpitude we are wholly innocent of, and for crimes we have never committed.[13]I say that the history of this Society presents nothing but a dreary record of energies wasted, talents misapplied, wealth uselessly squandered, charity perverted, and philanthropy run mad. The members of this Society never think, perhaps, of the mischief they have done and are doing. Here has our Government been trying for the past seven or eight years to agree upon a revised commercial treaty with the Government of China, and here also, side by side, is an irresponsible political body doing its utmost to cripple, paralyse, and defeat our Government in its efforts, taking up, in fact, a downright hostile attitude to the action of the Imperial and Indian Governments, by carrying on an unauthorized unofficial correspondence with Li Hung Chang, the Prime Minister, and the most influential public man in China, who is a master of the arts of diplomacy, and who is doing his utmost to get the better of us if he can in the matter of the Chefoo Convention. Here, I say, is this society putting forward Li’s audacious and misleading letter to its secretary, Mr. Storrs Turner, as an embodiment of truth and justice. Is this patriotic orproper on the part of this Anti-Opium Society? Should that body, instead of setting itself up as a junto, with a quasi-official standing, having a monopoly of all the virtues, be allowed by the Government to carry on its mischievous organization any longer? I think not. I believe there is no other country in the world—not even America, where liberty has run to seed—where such an intermeddling, anti-national and mischievous confederacy would be permitted to exist. Instead of trying to thwart Her Majesty’s Government, as it is doing, it should be the duty of its members, of every Englishman interested in China, and, indeed, of the whole country, to strengthen as far as possible the hands of the Government in its endeavour to bring the pending negotiations for a commercial treaty with China to a successful close. Yet what are the present plans of this pragmatical body? In its latest publication, a compilation of the most fallacious and misleading matter, bearing a title meanly plagiarized from this book, it is announced that the following motion stands upon the Order Book of the House of Commons, and is intended to be moved in the Session for 1883, viz:—

That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that in the event of negotiations taking place between the Governments of Her Majesty and China, having reference to the duties levied on opium under the Treaty of Tientsin, the Government of Her Majesty will be pleased to intimate to the Government of China that in any such revision of that treatythe Government of China will be met as that of an independent State, having the full right to arrange its own import duties as may be deemed expedient.

What a modest proposition! The Queen’s Ministers, it appears, cannot be trusted in their negotiations with the Government of China, and Her Majesty in consequence is to be asked to ignore her constitutional advisers, and personally inform the Chinese Minister that his Government shall be treated as an independent state, and so forth. In fact, this proposal is tantamount to a vote,pro tantoat least, of want of confidence in the Government, which, I have little doubt, would be rejected by an overwhelming majority of both sides of the House. I only hope it will be pressed to a division, as the result, I believe, will show to the country in an unmistakable manner, once and for all, the utter insignificance of the Anti-Opium confederacy as a political body,the falsity and mischief of its teaching, and prove the knell of its existence. If motions like this were to be passed, it would be impossible to carry on Her Majesty’s Government. The matter is really too absurd to be seriously dealt with by Parliament, and I bring it before my readers more for the purpose of showing the downright folly, infatuation and fanaticism which characterize this Anti-Opium confederation than for any other purpose. To these political philanthropists and amateur statesmen I would recommend these lines, which seem to me to meet their case exactly:—

“No narrow bigot he, his reasoned viewThy interest, England, ranks with thine, Peru;War at our doors, he sees no danger nigh,But heaves for all alike the impartial sigh;A steady patron of the world alone,The friend of every country—save his own.”

Of the missionaries themselves, beyond this opium craze that has unfortunately possessed them, I have nothing to say except to their credit. A more conscientious and deserving body of men this world has never produced; under hardships, troubles, and unspeakable difficulties, they have sped their way with courage and cheerfulness, undeterred by dangers, great privations and hardships which nothing but their strong faith and unflagging zeal in their sacred mission could have enabled them to surmount. Of their ultimate success I entertain, perhaps, as little doubt as they do themselves; but on this opium question the “zeal of their house hath eaten them up,” and they have unconsciously been playing the game of the crafty heathen. Let them pursue their good cause, and not allow themselves to be cajoled by their bitterest enemies; above all, let them keep clear of politics. No clergyman ever improves by intermeddling in such matters, but, on the contrary, by doing so he invariably becomes a bad politician and a worse priest. Let these vast sums, subscribed for the promotion of a chimera, be transferred to the missionaries’ fund, so as to improve the lot of these missionaries and give them a little more comfort in the hostile climate and the bitter fight that is before them. “The labourer is worthy of his hire,” and it is starving the missionary work not to pay its servants liberally, I should say most liberally. With respect to the Rev. Mr. Storrs Turner, whose name I have so often mentioned, and whose writings I have so frequentlyanimadverted upon, I had the pleasure of knowing him in China. No worthier or better gentleman, and no more able and zealous missionary clergyman ever set foot there. In referring to him and his writings as I have done, nothing was further from my thoughts than to impute to him for a moment an unworthy motive. He is in the first rank of the missionary clergymen who stood the brunt of the battle, and is deserving of praise and honour. As yet the missionaries have been like husbandmen tilling an unkindly soil, trying to produce wholesome fruit where only gross weeds grew before; and although small apparently has been the fruit as yet, the unfriendly soil has shown signs of yielding, and I feel assured that the day will come when their labours shall be rewarded with a plenteous harvest.

I have now told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth on the opium question; certainly such has been my intention. In doing so I am afraid I may have given pain to many good and excellent people; I know that I have given pain to myself. I can only repeat that I have never intended to impute a wrongful or unworthy motive to any of them. Those who are and have been engaged in the Anti-Opium agitation are, I admit, influenced by the best motives. I have myself throughout been solely actuated by a desire to remove the unfounded delusions that have got possession of these worthy people, which have done great injustice to our fellow-countrymen in China, as well as to the benevolent British public, which has kept this Anti-Opium Society provided with the funds that have enabled them to carry on their operations, to the embarrassment of the administration of our great Indian Entire. Personally, I say again, that I have no interest whatever in the matter, nor have I any leaning towards the interests of any of the merchants now engaged in the opium trade. My hands in this matter are absolutely clean. In the preface to the first edition of these lectures I have explained how and why I came to deliver them; that is my explanation without any mental reservation whatsoever. I have, I admit, a very strong feeling upon the subject, but so also have those who differ from me; and I would ask those most excellent and honourable people to remember that there are two sides to most questions,—to imagine, if they can, that there are other persons, totally opposed to their views, who are quite as honest in theirconvictions as they are themselves,—to look upon me as one of those persons, and to measure my feelings by the strength of their own. I say this because I have heard that a rumour to the effect of my being in some way personally interested in the Indo-China opium trade has been circulated. If such is the case, this rumour has no foundation in fact. I cannot prevent the dissemination of such reports; but they are, I repeat, utterly groundless. Honest in my purpose, I can afford to treat them with unconcern, and can justly add, whilst far from setting myself up as better than my neighbours, that—

“I am arm’d so strong in honesty,That they pass me by as the idle wind,Which I respect not.”

APPENDIX.

Being an Official Letter from the Hon. Francis Bulkeley Johnson, of the firm of Jardine, Matheson, & Co., Chairman of the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce, to Charles Magniac, Esq., M.P., President of the London Chamber of Commerce.

Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce,Hong Kong, 22nd November, 1882.

Sir,—The attention of the Committee of this Chamber has been called to certain statements recently made in the United Kingdom regarding this Colony, on what must unfortunately appear to the public mind to be competent authority, but which are nevertheless unwarranted and misleading.

The statements referred to are, in the opinion of the Committee, calculated not only to affect injuriously the reputation of the Colony, but to damage its interests by prejudicing the policy of the Home Government and the Imperial Parliament, when dealing with the settlement of questions arising out of the close political and commercial relations which the Island of Hong Kong from its juxta-position must necessarily hold with the Empire of China.

The Committee offers no apology for addressing you on this subject as it ventures to believe that the promotion of British Commercial enterprise abroad in all legitimate channels is one of the objects the London Chamber of Commerce has in view, and, to that end, it is clearly desirable that a true appreciation should prevail, not only among the members of your influential Committee, but throughout the United Kingdom, as to the position and character of British trade and traders in the Colonies and foreign countries.

In the course of an address on the Repression of Crime delivered at the Social Science Congress, recently held in Nottingham, Sir John Pope Hennessy, Governor of this Colony, now on leave of absence in England, is reported to have said—I quote from theNottingham and Midland Counties Daily Express, of the 22nd September:—“In the little Colony under my government one million sterling changes hands every month in the article of opium. But, with commercial activity and profits, there comes an increase of crime from opium, from its consumption, and fromits smuggling. Hong Kong wages a chronic opium war on a small scale with China. A desperate class of men, the opium smugglers make the Colony the base of their operations—they purchase cannon and ammunition there, they fit out heavily armed junks and engage, within sight of the island, in naval battles with the revenue cruisers of the Emperor of China. Sometimes the Emperor’s revenue officers are killed, sometimes the smugglers. Not unfrequently wounded men of both sides are brought into the Colony. All this gives rise to a class of crimes difficult for the Governor to repress, difficult on account of the influence of those who profit by it, whether they are local traders or the financiers of a Viceroy.”

The picture thus sensationally drawn is one which, from its great exaggerations, gives an untrue representation of the state of things prevailing in these waters, and cannot fail to lead to the formation of wholly incorrect inferences as to the relations existing between the population of this island, for the most part law-abiding and pursuing honest and industrious callings, and the authorities of the neighbouring mainland.

Sir John Hennessy states that opium, to the extent of a million sterling,changes handsin this Colony every month, and this assertion as to the magnitude of the trade was obviously made in order to show the vast and wide-spread interests involved in it, and the influential protection therefore likely to be afforded to a traffic which the general tenour of the remarks just quoted cannot fail to lead ordinary readers to suppose is to a very large extent, if not mainly, contraband.

Your Committee will be able to judge from the following facts how far the injurious imputation, thus plausibly insinuated, if not directly stated, is to be justified by the actual position of affairs.

The import of opium from India and Persia to Hong Kong andthe whole of China, for the year 1881 was—

of an approximate value of £10,000,000 sterling.

With some slight and unimportant exceptions the whole of this opium, the trade in which it is worthy of note is now practically monopolized by British Indian firms, passes through this harbour, but by far the larger proportion of it can only be classed under the head of Hong Kong trade in the sense in which the traffic through the Suez Canal can be considered as Egyptian trade. About one half of the quantity of opium I have named as the entire import, is immediately sent on either in the original foreign vessels conveying it here, or by other vessels, also foreign, to Shanghai, where it is entered regularly at the Custom House under official foreign superintendence.

Of the remainder, about one half, that is to say, one quarter of the whole, is shipped by foreign vessels to other treaty ports open to foreign trade, where it is duly entered at the Customs. The local trade proper of the Colony, whether for shipment to Macao or Canton by foreign and native vessels, or in native bottoms, to non-treaty ports,—i.e.to ports andplaces with which foreign vessels cannot trade,—for consumption on the island, and for re-export in a prepared state to California and Australia, or for smuggling purposes, embraces therefore about one fourth of the entire export to China from India and Persia, or say, in quantity about 21,000 chests of an approximate value of £2,500,000, or about £200,000 per month instead of £1,000,000 per month as asserted by Governor Hennessy.

There being no Custom House at this port, it is impossible to obtain thoroughly accurate statistics as to the disposition of the 21,000 chests of opium which form the local trade of the Colony. As regards the local consumption and export in a prepared state, it may be estimated that from 2,500 to 5,000 chests are boiled in the Colony every year, leaving a balance of 16,000 to 18,500 chests to be accounted for. To suppose that this quantity is taken into China by smugglers would be to disregard all the known conditions of the trade and the fact that the preventive service of the Chinese Empire is probably in point of espionage the most carefully organized one in the world. On every road, in every village bordering on a river or waterway, at every port, village, and fishing station along the coast, there is a watchful Customs Station rendering it very difficult for a boat of the smallest size to touch the shore without being overhauled and made to pay levies purporting to be imperial or local dues. To what extent such dues are honestly levied and declared, there is no means of ascertaining. The Customs Stations are believed to be farmed out by the provincial authorities to officials who pay for their appointments, and although a service thus organized would be considered as a demoralized one and its system unreservedly condemned according to Western ideas, it is probable that the receipts of perquisites, and the partial remission of duties by Customs officials who farm the revenue, is aquasirecognized practice acquiesced in by all classes throughout the Empire.

With this system, however, the Colony and merchants of Hong Kong have no concern, and for its results they are in no way responsible. As the vast majority of the junks which leave the mainland with produce or arrive there with imports, undoubtedly obtain from the local Custom Houses port clearances and bills of entry, the large trade, whether in opium or other goods, carried on between this port and places on the coast in native bottoms, being thus subjected to the ordinary fiscal dues levied on the China coast according to the practice of the Empire, is for the most part a strictly legal one.

Smuggling between this island and the mainland in goods other than opium scarcely exists, as an evasion of the lowad valoremduty of five per cent. which is payable on entry at the treaty ports, and is probably the maximum similarly leviable at other ports, would not compensate for the heavy charges which must be incurred by transit over unusual routes even if the ubiquitous Customs officials could be avoided. Opium, owing to its portable character, the facility with which it can be hidden beneath water without serious deterioration, and the high duty imposed upon it, is more readily and profitably smuggled, but the returns which have been received through the Native Custom House at Canton make it nearly certain that the quantity which evades the payment of duty, either at the treaty ports or the ports and places not open to foreign trade, is not greater than 2,000 to 3,000 chests per annum. (See ParliamentaryPapers—China No. 2, 1880.) And the quantity thus estimated to be smuggled is not conveyed, as alleged by Governor Hennessy, in junks heavily armed for the purpose, fighting their way to the mainland through the revenue cruisers, but is concealed, a few balls at a time, about the persons, and in the luggage of Chinese passengers by the steamers plying between this port and Canton, and other places on the coast, or in ordinary trading junks and fishing boats of unpretentious character, or fast pulling boats propelled by a number of rowers, or by various devices such as are practised by the persons who evade the duties on tobacco in the United Kingdom. That the revenue cruisers which surround this island keep up an effective blockade which prevents the smuggling of opium on a much larger scale than at present takes place, is probably true, and it is also true that Chinese junks and boats in the estuary of the Canton river, which do not promptly submit to be overhauled by the cruisers, are chased and brought to for examination, if necessary, by being fired upon. The propinquity, however, of this island to the mainland, so far from being a cause of injury to the Chinese Customs Revenue, operates most advantageously for the collection of fiscal levies upon the foreign trade of the southern coast of the Empire. Were the island situated at a greater distance from the mainland than it is, or did not exist in its present conditions as a free port under a foreign government, the difficulties which would be placed in the way of the Chinese authorities, when engaged in checking smuggling in opium, would be much greater than they now are. Opium in that case would probably be shipped in native vessels from more distant depôts, such as Singapore, Saigon or the French mediatized territory of Tonquin, to Chinese ports and places, and it would be impossible for the revenue cruisers to watch the entire line of their own coast as effectively as they are now able to blockade this island in which the trade is centred and controlled.

There is, therefore, no ground for Governor Hennessy’s statement that this Colony is engaged in chronic war with the neighbouring mainland, or for his implied imputation that the course of its trade is injurious to the Chinese fiscal revenue. On the contrary, the facts of the case show that the physical conditions of the island of Hong Kong not only afford the ready means by which the Chinese Government is enabled to protect its legitimate revenue, but also unfortunately place it in the power of the authorities of the province of Quangtung to surcharge the trade in foreign goods, carried on in native vessels between Hong Kong and the southern ports of China, with additional taxation in excess of that authorized by the foreign treaties.

With the view to make a representation to H.M. Government in support of which it may hereafter be necessary to invite the good offices of your Committee, this Chamber is now engaged in an investigation into the facts, so far as they can be ascertained, relating to this alleged surcharge of duties upon the Colonial trade for the collection of which, as well as for the prevention of an illicit traffic in opium, there is reason to believe the blockade of this island by Chinese revenue cruisers is maintained.

So much as regards the general conditions of the trade of the Colony which evidence the grave misrepresentations contained in the Nottingham address, but in order to show conclusively, by official returns on matters of fact, the groundlessness of the specific accusation made by Sir John Pope Hennessy, your attention is invited to the annexed copies ofcorrespondence, with its enclosures, between the Colonial Government and the Committee of this Chamber.

In response to the request of the Committee, the Acting Colonial Secretary under the direction of His Excellency the Administrator has furnished the Chamber with the following documents, viz.:—

1. Extracts from a Report by the Colonial Treasurer and Registrar General upon the Opium Trade of the Colony.2. Return from the Harbour Master, showing the character of the native vessels engaged in Opium Smuggling and the number of cases of alleged smuggling brought before the Marine Court since April 1877.3. Return from the Captain Superintendent of Police, showing the total number of attacks and seizures made by Customs Revenue Cruisers in the neighbourhood of the Colony and reported to the Police since 1st January 1877.

1. Extracts from a Report by the Colonial Treasurer and Registrar General upon the Opium Trade of the Colony.

2. Return from the Harbour Master, showing the character of the native vessels engaged in Opium Smuggling and the number of cases of alleged smuggling brought before the Marine Court since April 1877.

3. Return from the Captain Superintendent of Police, showing the total number of attacks and seizures made by Customs Revenue Cruisers in the neighbourhood of the Colony and reported to the Police since 1st January 1877.

The Colonial Treasurer’s Report on the Opium Trade for 1876, confirms the figures of the approximate estimate made by this Chamber from independent sources and given above, as to the probable quantity of opium smuggled into China from this Colony.

The Harbour Master’s Return shows that there is no special class of vessels fitted out in the Colony and heavily armed for the purpose of opium smuggling, as alleged by Governor Hennessy, and in the five cases cited in the report which comprise the whole number brought before the Marine Court in the course of five years, it will be seen that the quantity of opium found in the vessels charged with being engaged in illicit trade was so inconsiderable, as to make it obvious that the concealment of opium took place in each case in an ordinary trading junk. It is also clear from this Return that nothing is known in the Harbour Master’s Department of the armed organization for the purpose of opium smuggling which is stated by Governor Hennessy to carry on a chronic war with the Empire of China.

The return from the Captain Superintendent of Police dealing with the entire number of cases reported to the police authorities during the years 1878 to 1882 (inclusive) of seizures by Chinese Revenue cruisers and affrays between the cruisers and native vessels on the neighbouring China coast, is instructive.

The number of cases is 23, but of these only 6 are reported to be connected with the opium trade and the value of the opium seized varies from $3 in one case to the maximum amount in another of $800, showing, in confirmation of the Report by the Harbour Master to a similar effect, the comparatively unimportant character of the opium smuggling which prevails in these waters, and the absurdity of the allegation that there is a large contraband trade conducted in heavily armed junks fitted for the purpose in this harbour.

The remaining 17 cases of seizures by revenue cruisers during five years do not appear by the returns to have been connected with opium; 7 of them were salt junks, 1 sulphur and saltpetre, 3 general cargo, and 2 sugar. In 4 cases the particulars of cargoes are not stated.

The return shows the number of casualties with fatal results reported to the police as having occurred in affrays between native vessels and the revenue cruisers during the period of five years under review. Such casualties have been 8 in number, but not one of them appears to havehad any connection with opium smuggling, or to have arisen out of any case of contraband trading with which this Colony was concerned.

In August 1878, a fisherman on the Hong Kong shore was accidentally killed by a shot fired by a revenue cruiser when pursuing a junk ultimately seized for some breach of Chinese regulations with general cargo on board.

In May 1879, three men of a revenue cruiser were killed in an affray with a junk carrying salt. As salt is not produced or prepared in this island, this affray was not generated in the Colony or within Colonial waters. The preparation of salt in China is conducted as a very strict monopoly by means of Government licenses, and trade in it other than by duly authorized persons is contraband. Serious affrays between salt smugglers and revenue officers are well known to be common throughout the Empire, they are frequently alluded to in thePeking Gazette, and in the case referred to in the Police Report, the junk must have been passing from one part of the territory of China to another part outside of British waters.

On 28th November 1881, a man was killed in a boat which was conveying two gentlemen of this Colony who were returning from a shooting expedition on the mainland. Passing by a Customs Station on the Chinese side of the channel the boat was ordered to heave to; not doing so promptly, musket shots were fired at it and one of the crew was most unfortunately killed. In this case there appears to have been no smuggling attempted.

In April this year a man was killed on board a rowing boat in the narrow channel separating Hong Kong from the mainland, and in June last two men were killed outside British waters in a trading junk carrying sulphur and saltpetre, which are contraband articles of trade in China. In neither case does it appear that opium was concerned.

With reference, therefore, to Sir John Pope Hennessy’s allegations, which were to the following effect:—

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