TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS Showing the Ruin which our Opium Trade with China is bringing upon that Country. LONDON: S. W. Partridge & Co., 9, Paternoster Row. PRICE SIXPENCE....

The incipient opium-smoker is reclining (as is usual) on a couch in his mansion, while his companion is indulging in tobacco through the water-pipe common in China....

The opium-smoker, still portly and well-dressed, is entreated by his poor wife on bended knees to desist from the disastrous habit. His child is running off with the dreaded pipe; while the aged grandmother is seen coming, leaning on her staff, to add her tears and entreaties—now for the first time proved to be powerless. The hold of the pipe is already established; interest, duty, affection, reputation—all prove too feeble to arrest the downward career of the smoker. Sad indeed is the prospect;

Representing the progress in dissipation of the once sober gentleman, who has now, alas! become the victim of this vice. To him day has now become night, and night day. He can no longer sleep at night; and to banish the tedium of its long quiet hours, and to drown thought of the sure ruin awaiting him, becomes an absolute necessity. Regardless, therefore, alike of entreaty and censure, he now openly introduces into his house singing men and women, and gives himself up to their society. His books

All trace of literary occupation is now gone: the opium scales have taken the place of the classics. In the foreground a servant is preparing extract of opium, for crude opium is never smoked. Before the portable stove stands a small bucket of water, and a little charcoal lies on the ground beside it. The opium is boiled in water, and filtered; and the dregs are again boiled, till all the soluble matter is extracted. The watery solutions are then boiled down to the consistency of treacle, when i

Creditors will no longer forbear. Either the habit must at once and for ever be given up, or all hope of retaining possession of the ancestral property must be lost. The very graves of the ancestors join, as it were, in the last appeal of the weeping wife and mother, and of the weeping child, whose hopes of education, of literary advancement, and thus of promotion to office, are destroyed by the baneful narcotic. The aged mother, now needing the support of a staff, is bringing hot tea for her so

It is easy to imagine the feelings of the unfortunate wife, who, seeing the misery and wretchedness wrought in her once comfortable home, determines to destroy the whole of the smoking apparatus. The tray and lamp are dashed upon the floor, a few more moments will see the destruction of the pipe itself; but the noise has reached the ears of her lord, who rushes in, and, forgetful of all the teachings of his great master, Confucius, proceeds to belabour her with the bamboo stick he has seized for

Still lower sinks the opium victim in his miserable career. The comfort and shelter of his paternal home are now things of the past. A roof which, from the absence of tiles, can hardly be said to cover, with at one side some bamboo matting to screen from the blast, and a mat, arranged to form a shelter, covering the place where meals, when forthcoming, may be cooked, is all that now remains to him of home. Surely he will see his folly, and give up the practice which has wrought him such ruin? He

Not much better than the shed in which he lives by day, is the shelter in which he now spends the night. Somewhat screened by the garden fence, his bed, supported at one end on a pile of bricks, at the other on his only remaining stool, is still covered by his curtains, and his opium lamp is sufficiently sheltered to keep alight. Most of his clothes have gone to the pawnshop; ere long his curtains will follow them. His wife and child, the picture of misery, can only look with hopeless sorrow on

The victim of opium is now a homeless beggar, squatting in some out-of-the-way corner, and dependent upon charity for a morsel of bread. His unshaven head well agrees with the general squalor of his appearance, and the ground is now his only bed and table. His sole remaining possessions are his opium-pipe and a few earthenware cooking utensils. Some compassionate person, perhaps a former farm-servant, is bringing him a small flattened loaf....

Crime too often follows the destitution caused by opium-smoking; for at all costs opium must be had. Thefts, robberies, or even murders may result. The wretched culprit may have to flee from justice, or to make his escape from a neighbourhood which will no longer tolerate him. The very dogs pursue him. Probably the bucket in which the wanderer carries his pipe, and the labourer’s hat slung behind him, are both stolen. Some cave among the hills may shelter him, or the rocks may shield him from th

The downward course of the opium-smoker is now very rapid. Exposure to the weather and want of food accelerate the injurious effects of the opium. No one would think of giving a night’s shelter to a man whose imperious craving for opium would compel him to rob his benefactor before morning. Endeavouring to warm himself in the sunshine, with unshaven head and haggard countenance, the sower coming with his seed-basket finds him in a sheltered corner of the field....

Winter draws on apace. The fields supply nothing that the wretched opium-smoker can eat. All he can beg is insufficient to purchase that opium without which he could not exist for a single day; he has therefore exchanged his only shirt for a little opium, to quiet for a time what an opium-smoker well called “the torments of the hell within.” All power of enjoyment has long since passed away: now there is nothing before him but suffering—suffering beyond the grave! With trembling steps and a shiv

On this point the evidence of Mr. (now Sir Thomas) Wade, K.C.B., Her Majesty’s minister at the Court of Peking, given in Government Blue Book, No. 5 (1871), p. 432, is so decisive, that it precludes the necessity of further testimony. He says:— “It is to me vain to think otherwise of the use of the drug in China, than as of a habit many times more pernicious, nationally speaking, than the gin and whisky drinking which we deplore at home. It takes possession more insidiously, and keeps its hold t

In the absence of an official census, we can only select the most reliable evidence to be had on the subject. J. Dudgeon, Esq., M.D., C.M., of the Peking Mission Hospital, estimates that of the male population in China generally, probably 30 to 40 per cent. smoke opium; of the general city population, 40 to 60 per cent. The former of these statements is perhaps rather excessive, seeing that the same authority gives the number of agriculturists and field labourers as averaging only 4 to 6 per cen

Summary of facts bearing upon the relation of Great Britain to the Chinese opium-trade:— 1.—When China, as a nation, knew nothing of the vice of opium-smoking, British merchants introduced the drug, enriching the treasury of the East India Company to the demoralisation of the Chinese nation. 2.—When the Chinese Government vigorously remonstrated and strenuously opposed, England carried the legalisation of the trade at the point of the sword. 3.—When the Chinese, discomfited in the field, appeale