but the most audacious impiety will venture to assert that the permission of evil is exactly equivalent to the causation of evil, when evil occurs in the dominions of the only absolutely Omnipotent Sovereign? Have we never heard on the highest authority that "offences must come: but woe to that man by whom they come!" To descend to lower levels for our illustrations, every human government refrains from interference with a vast variety of evils which, nevertheless, no sane man would advocate that the Government should itself promote. Gambling and prostitution exist in England. Would our State be no worse if the Houses of Parliament were to create branches of the public service to conduct gambling-houses and brothels, in order to divert the profits of these vices from private individuals to the public treasury? It would be waste of time to occupy more in exposing this false principle. If evil must needs be, better, incalculably better, that the evil should not be the work of the Sovereign, the Government, the magistrate; but that of private persons, who at least do not compromise the dignity of the Crown, the sanctity of law and justice by their wilful proceedings.
Passing away from the false principle which underlies and vitiates Sir J. P. Grant's argument, there is an erroneous assumption involved in it, the exposure of which will make it crumble to pieces. The former Lieut.-Governor of Bengal argued as though the production of the 50,000 chests of opium and the income of £5,000,000 sterling to the Indian Government were fixed and necessary facts. To this the simple reply is, that there is no fixed natural necessity in the case. Bengal will not produce 50,000 chests of opium next year by the operation of a natural law like that of gravitation. If we may, to make our meaning plain, suppose the improbability that this very day our Government should sever itself entirely and at once from the business; in that case, instead of 50,000 chests being brought to market next year, perhaps not so many as 5000 chests would be brought; in fact, something approaching to a complete stoppage of the trade would take place. After Government withdrawal private capitalists might possibly succeed in restoring or even increasing the trade after an uncertain interval, perhaps of three, five, or ten years. But if the Government were to withdraw this moment, next year there would be little or no opium. Does not this make the Government responsibility manifest beyond dispute? How can you pretend to be irresponsible for the effects of your opium, indifferent to the inquiry whether or not it is injuring hundreds of thousands of people, when you are as actual matter of fact solely responsible for all the
