THE TRUTH ABOUT OPIUM . BEING A REFUTATION OF THE FALLACIES OF THE ANTI-OPIUM SOCIETY AND A DEFENCE OF THE INDO-CHINA OPIUM TRADE . BY WILLIAM H. BRERETON, LATE OF HONG KONG . “ Let truth and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? ”— John Milton. SECOND EDITION. LONDON: W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE. PUBLISHERS TO THE INDIA OFFICE. 1883. ( All rights reserved. ) LONDON: PRINTED BY W. H. ALLEN AND CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE....

In the preface to my first edition I expressed a hope that these lectures, however imperfect, would prove in some degree instrumental towards breaking up the Anti-Opium confederacy, and I have the satisfaction of knowing that my anticipations have not been altogether disappointed. The lectures were well received by the public and the press, and struck the Anti-Opium Society and its versatile Secretary, the Rev. Mr. Storrs Turner, with such consternation that, in the language of people in difficu

The following lectures were given in pursuance of a determination I came to some six years ago in Hong Kong, viz. that if I lived to return to England I should take some steps, either by public lectures or by the publication of a book, to expose the mischievous fallacies disseminated by the “Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade.” About that time nearly every mail brought out newspapers to China containing reports of meetings held in England condemnatory of the Indo-China

The object of these lectures is to tell you what I know about opium smoking in China—a very important subject, involving the retention or loss of more than seven millions sterling to the revenue of India, and what is far more precious, the character and reputation of this great country. With respect to the former, I would simply observe that I do not intend to deal with the question on mere grounds of expediency, strong as such grounds unquestionably are, for, if I believed that one-half of what

I closed my first lecture with a list of fallacies, upon which the objections to the Indo-China opium trade, and the charges brought against England in relation to that trade, are founded, stating that I should return to them and dispose of each separately. I also said in the earlier part of my lecture, that the extraordinary hallucinations which had taken hold of the public mind, with respect to opium smoking in China, arose, amongst other causes, from the fact that the public had formed their

In my last lecture I dealt with the fallacy that the poppy is not indigenous to China, but has recently been introduced there presumably by British agency, and that opium smoking in China was confined to a small percentage of the people, which had been steadily increasing since the introduction into China of Indian opium. I now proceed to discuss fallacy number 3, which is, that “ opium smoking is injurious to the system, more so than spirit drinking .” I think I shall be able to show most clear

APPENDIX. Being an Official Letter from the Hon. Francis Bulkeley Johnson, of the firm of Jardine, Matheson, & Co., Chairman of the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce, to Charles Magniac, Esq., M.P., President of the London Chamber of Commerce. Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, Hong Kong, 22nd November, 1882. Sir ,—The attention of the Committee of this Chamber has been called to certain statements recently made in the United Kingdom regarding this Colony, on what must unfortunately appe