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acquirements of more favorable mercantile privileges, and also hailed with delight any revolts which might be made a pretext of asking enormous indemnities for destroyed merchandise and thus get rich quicker and with less effort than would have been possible by honest, legitimate trade.
In regard to the opium-import in China, it must be said that the Chinese Government never slackened in its efforts to fight the consumption of the poison. Everywhere anti-opium societies were founded, the members of which vowed to abstain entirely from its use and to work for the conversion of the habitual smokers. The Christian missionaries were called upon for help and to petition, simultaneously with the Foreign Office, the English Government to forbid the opium-trade. On account of these representations the House of Commons, 1891, with small majority passed a resolution in which it admitted that "India's opium-trade is morally indefensible, but economic considerations prevent any efforts to discontinue it." Since Christianity exists there has never so shamless degrading a declaration of bankruptcy of the Christian principles been passed by a Christian Government.
For 10 years the situation remained unchanged. Powerless, the statesmen of China had to see how the destruction of the Nation by English shopkeepers proceeded. Meanwhile these scoundrels had cursed also other countries of the Pacific Ocean with their devilish dissemination of the opium-vice: Formosa, the Philippines, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Hawaii Islands, Canada and California, from whence the vice spread with alarming rapidity to New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago and New York. Startled by the rapid progress of this pernicious vice, industrial and religious societies. Chambers of Commerce and the International Reform Bureau asked the President of the United States to remonstrate with the British Parliament. On this instance in 906 negotiations were renewed, and when discussion came up, some very strong arguments were made. Mr. T. C. Taylor, member of Parliament, outlining with forcefulness the history of the opium traffic and holding England responsible for its continuance, met the arguments and objections of the revenue officers with the unanswerable moral aphorism: "Wrong cannot be justified by revenue nor misery by money." This moral argument was strengthened by the opinion of medical men, reference being made to the declaration of the harmfulness of opium, signed by five thousand physicians in 1892. Embarrassed by these proofs of growing anti-opium sentiment the House of Commons this time expressed its feelings in the following words: "This House
