CHAPTER VIII.
The Opium Question and the Exodus from Canton.
1839.
The taste for opium is a congenital disease of the Chinese race. At the beginning of the Christian era, the uses and effects of opium were the secret of the Buddhist priesthood in China. Priests from India secured for themselves divine honours by performing feats of ascetic discipline, fasting and mental absolution, sitting for instance motionless for months at a time indolently gazing at a black wall. These feats were performed by means of opium. Buddhist and Taoist priests peregrinated through the whole of China performing astounding medical cures by means of opiates. Centuries before European medical science discovered the uses of opium, there was all over China a large and constantly increasing demand for this drug, and, though opium was grown in China from the earliest times, most of the supply was imported into China by Arab traders at Canton and Foochow. Nevertheless, while numbers of individuals taking opium in excess were physically and morally ruined by it, the use of opium never affected the health of the race to any perceptible extent. When the smoking of opium and the consequent practice of introducing opium vapour into the lungs commenced in China, is not known. As early as A.D. 1678 a regular duty on foreign imported opium was levied at Canton, but for 77 years after that date the annual import did not exceed 200 chests. By the year 1796, however, the annual rate of importation had risen to 4,100 chests and the rapid spread of a taste for opium smoking, and the consequent demoralisation of individuals who smoked opium to excess, attracted the attention of the Government. Accordingly the importation of
