that the additional import duty was largely nominal, as the Chinese could impose what transit duties they pleased upon opium, and did impose upon it very heavy duties of this kind.
Sir R. Temple inquired whether the Chinese Government would be willing to enter into an agreement for repressing the growth of the poppy in China, upon condition that the Government of India would fix a limit to the amount of opium to be sent to China; also, whether they would have the power and the will to observe their side of any such agreement. Sir Rutherford Alcock thought that they would be ready to adopt any reasonable proposition, and would be able to carry it out more or less effectually.
He repeated that the Chinese Government did certainly hope and desire that the British Government would agree to some arrangement for giving effect to the wish of China for the discouragement of the consumption of opium by the Chinese people.
- 4th February, 1870.
This memorandum of the Conference in Calcutta, when read in connexion with the letter of the Chinese Statesmen to Sir R. Alcock, makes it abundantly plain that up to this very hour the continuance of the opium trade with China is maintained, not by any voluntary assent of the Chinese Government, but against their protest, by the superiority of physical force possessed by the British Government. Only the peculiar nature of the monopoly can explain how this unhappy state of affairs has grown up; and nothing but a severance of our connexion as a Government with the profits of opium will relieve us from the odious character of armed supporters of the trade.
Having, we trust, sufficiently answered the defence which has been set up for the present system, we conclude by pointing out that there are two distinct relations of this opium question, the confusion of which has involved the matter in a good deal of needless perplexity. The first regards the internal economy of a state, the second its external relations.
I.
If we abolish, the monoply what would you have us do? Would you permit free cultivation and free exportation of opium? So ask our opponents; and we are bound to furnish the self-evident reply, which they could furnish as easily as ourselves were it their interest to do so.
It must be accepted, as a sad but undeniable fact, that human
